Type Private Services Video production | Founder Alvin Hung | |
Founded November 1, 2007; 9 years ago (2007-11-01) Headquarters San Mateo, CA, United States Key people Alvin Hung
(Founder & CEO)
Gary Lipkowitz
(COO)
Nicolas Lassus
(Product Manager) | ||
GoAnimate is a cloud-based, animated video creation platform. It is designed to allow business people with no background in animation to quickly and easily create animated videos. These videos can be created in multiple styles, including 2D animation, whiteboard animation (a.k.a. videoscribing or scribing) and video infographics.
Contents
History
GoAnimate was founded in 2007 by Alvin Hung, and the first version of GoAnimate went live in mid 2008.
In May 2009, DomoAnimate was launched. This program allowed users to create GoAnimations based on the Domo shorts. The site closed down on September 15, 2014, and later redirected to the GoAnimate for Schools website.
In early 2011, GoAnimate became a founding partner of YouTube Create – a suite of apps available to content creators within YouTube.
A U.S. office in San Francisco opened in June 2011.
In late August 2011, GoAnimate for Schools was publicly launched. GoAnimate for Schools is a school-safe version of GoAnimate featuring dedicated privacy, security, content moderation and group management features.
In late 2011, a custom set of “Election 2012” characters became popular.
On March 1, 2012 (2012-03-01), GoAnimate created the Business Friendly Theme, known as the first Business Theme in GoAnimate.
In April 2012, the first business-oriented subscription plans were publicly launched. These included 1080p download, logo removal & replacement, and new business-oriented visual themes. These plans led to increased popularity and exposure for GoAnimate.
By July 2013, over ten million videos had been created using the GoAnimate platform.
On September 16, 2013 (2013-09-16), GoAnimate changed its logo, being the removal of the exclamation mark. That same day, the site relaunched with a new user interface, plus the removal of GoBucks.
At the end of 2013, the “paper cutout” assets of explainer video pioneer Common Craft were integrated into GoAnimate as a new visual theme.
In April 2014, multi-seat business subscription plans were launched, including full-featured administrative tools along with group collaboration and review. Around the same time, GoAnimate also released the Whiteboard Animation theme and a publishing integration with elearning courseware authoring platform Lectora.
By the end of 2014, GoAnimate’s library contained over 10,000 assets, including a new set of Supreme Court justices and settings.
In 2015, the Taiwan office was opened, making it GoAnimate’s third location (after Hong Kong and San Francisco).
As of May 2015, GoAnimate announced future expansion plans included going public, but there had been no decision on the listing venue.
On October 19, 2015, it was announced that GoAnimate was migrating from Adobe Flash towards HTML5 animation to allow mobile device compatibility.
On November 25, 2015, GoAnimate replaced their free plan with a trial plan that lasts 14 days. After the subscription expires, the ability to create or edit videos is locked until you buy a paid plan.
By the end of 2015, the company had over 50 employees.
Product
GoAnimate provides its users with a library containing tens of thousands of pre-animated assets, which can be controlled through a simple drag & drop interface. Asset types include characters, actions, templates, props, text boxes, music tracks and sound effects. Users can also upload their own assets, such as audio files, image files or video files.
There is also a drag & drop composition tool, which users can employ to create pans and zooms.
Spoken dialogue and narration can be recorded directly into the platform or imported as an audio file. Characters can automatically lip-sync dialogue that is assigned to them. Alternatively, audio can be set as voiceover narration. Users can download their finished videos as MP4 files, GIFs or video presentations. They can also export them directly to a variety of video hosting sites including YouTube, Wistia and Vidyard.