5 best Character Animation Explainer Toolkits to design characters, animations, and create explainer videos right inside of After Effects.

Character animation explainer toolkits play a vital role in designing marketing and promotional videos for any kind of product or service. You can design your own characters and scenes, combine all the elements, and change colors to create your own unique video presentation.

With new and advanced features, such as lip-syncing and facial expressions, your characters will come to life in no time. You don’t need high-level After Effects skills to use the Character Animation Explainer Toolkits.

However, if you are a complete beginner, I recommend familiarizing yourself with the basic features of After Effects.

Character Animation Explainer Toolkits are essentially After Effects templates. You can directly download one from the list of the 5 Best Character Animation Explainer Toolkits provided below.

To assist you in getting started, most of these toolkits also include video tutorials.

1. FrameStory

FrameStory is an explainer animation toolkit for After Effects with a built-in UI builder. It is a complete animation pack of over 5,000 components with a user-friendly navigation tool

There are 255 characters in this toolkit including 20 famous personalities, 255 rigged poses, premade stories, and 110 beautifully designed scenes.

Let’s take a quick look at all the components that together make up the FrameStory character animation explainer toolkit.

  • Characters – You can either pick a pop star, teacher, secretary, or queen or change clothes and characteristics and invent a new figure. Choose between a variety of professions, hobbies, and personalities that perfectly suit your needs. Change head shapes, expressions, hairstyles, hats, accessories, and skin color and create unlimited face designs.
  • Poses – 90 Males, 90 Females, and 75 Kids pose with a flexible rigging system to make the character animation process easy! Created with Duik, a free plug-in that you don’t have to install.
  • Scenes – Animated background for any kind of project theme. All scenes are fully editable so you can customize them according to your project needs.
  • Props – Electronics, Food, Gaming, Home, Medical, Finance, Signs, Transport, Work, and many more categories. Tons of animated graphic props. All color editable!
  • Graphic Elements – Dynamically place your text and edit colors, Logo Strings, Motion Styles, Symbols, Transitions, Word Bubbles, and many more elements!
  • Narratives – 8 premade stories ready for use to pick the one that better suits your needs.

Want More?

With FrameStory Character Animation Explainer Toolkit, you also get extra elements like Animated Graphics, Stickers, and Transitions.

Compatibility

FrameStory character animation explainer toolkit is compatible with Adobe After Effects CC 2017 and all the above versions.

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2. Explainer Video Toolkit 4

Explainer Video Toolkit 4 is a library of 1000+ customizable elements and animations. It is one of the most flexible character rigging toolkits for beginners and professional motion graphic artists.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the top features of Explainer Video Toolkit 4. Many of these features are the results of months of research and are exactly what animators need in order to do their work effectively.

  • Loading Elements From Custom Panel – This toolkit comes with a UI panel that allows you to load the elements you need. Thus making it easy to navigate through hundreds of elements with the search bar and HTML catalog.
  • Fast Customization – Customizing characters and scenes is just a matter of drag-and-drop and moving a few sliders. Everything can be controlled from one single place.
  • Minimal System Requirements – Using minimal system resources is the top feature of this character animation explainer toolkit. This template will work flawlessly even on low-end computers. 6-8 GB RAM is enough to go by, however, 16 GB or more is going to be a breeze.
  • Reusable Character Textures – You can create your character textures just once and use them as many times as you want. There is no need to copy-paste the same parameters over and over.
  • Fast Character Rigging – Character rigging in this toolkit is very flexible with minimal latency. You can rig and animate almost any part of your character’s body.
  • High-Quality Elements – All the elements in the template are high-quality and made to keep pace with the latest trends in motion graphic design and illustrations.
  • After Effects Only – The template was 100% made using After Effects, so you don’t have to switch between different software. This speeds up your workflow to a great extent.
  • HTML Catalog – The HTML catalog comes in handy while creating characters and scenes. Download the catalog PDF to know what’s inside the package so you can get the most out of it.

Compatibility

Explainer Video Toolkit 4 is compatible with the latest version of After Effects CC 2020.

if you use an older version of After Effects, you can still use this toolkit as there is a special version of the template optimized for older After Effects architecture with exactly the same components.

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3. Pixity Land

Pixity Land is the premier After Effects template for creating explainer videos. With more than 500 elements, it facilitates the easy creation of explainer animations and videos. You can design your own characters and scenes, combine various elements, and even alter the colors to craft a unique video presentation.

This toolkit is brimming with features. Notably, it boasts a Character Creator with over 85 elements, allowing you to design characters to fit diverse narratives.

Both adult and charming kid characters are available. They have the capability to dance, manipulate objects, laugh, and perform various other actions.

Additionally, there are Dynamic Environments equipped with 10 animated backgrounds rich in detail.

The package also offers some pre-made stories for your convenience. You can modify and render these tales, or glean insights from them to understand how the package can be used to weave your own narratives.

To further assist users, step-by-step tutorials are provided, guiding you through customizing Pixity Land to your liking.

Compatibility

Pixity Land character animation explainer toolkit is compatible with almost every version of After Effects, starting from CS5 to the latest CC 2020.

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4. 3D Explainer Video Toolkit

This explainer video toolkit provides over 300 3D elements. It boasts a vast selection of premade scenes, character animations, transitions, backgrounds, and icons.

The toolkit offers a wide array of options and settings. All animations can be easily looped and rearranged.

Furthermore, there’s no need for any additional programs or plugins to utilize this toolkit. This template is ideal for crafting company portfolios, business presentations, compelling explainer videos, and more.

Compatibility

This video explainer toolkit is compatible with all versions of After Effects CC.

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5. The Character Animation Explainer Toolkit

The character animation explainer toolkit is a revolutionary product. With these templates, you can design characters, pick animations, and create explainer videos right inside After Effects.

Characters can be created easily from a single intuitive panel using simple slider controls. You can import your own custom characters designed in third-party software and use them with the included character rig and animations.

Let’s take a look at some of the essential features of this toolkit.

  • Head Design Studio – A unique system, that allows separate forehead and chin control. You can achieve any head shape imaginable.
  • 200+ Loopable Animations – The key to great explainer videos lies within good animation. This toolkit delivers 200 fluid animations made from real-world studies. This leads to the most captivating set of animations available on the market.
  • 180 Degrees Character Rotation – Powerful character rig with the ability to smoothly rotate from side to side.
  • 3D Face Rotation – Animate the head and eyes by dragging a controller. The head will automatically turn to look at it.
  • 56 Face Expressions – Apply face and mouth expressions using simple sliders. It gives you the ability to blend between expressions to create your own.
  • Auto Lip-Sync – With auto lip-sync and face animation, the mouth and eyes of the character will automatically react to your voice.
  • Hand Rig – A full-featured hand rig is included with 50 hand gestures.
  • Scene Designer – Over 200 vector images, all packed in one After Effects package. Easily change colors, add animations, and build your own scenes.
  • Transitions – Build scenes and move from one to the other using the included transitions.

The developers have also included a detailed user guide and help videos covering all aspects of this character animation explainer toolkit.

Compatibility

This template is compatible with all versions of After Effects CC.

Taking into account the versatility and amount of features that the toolkit packs, a well-performing computer with at least 16 GB of RAM and an i7 CPU is highly recommended.

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Visit VideoHive Library For More Templates

The listed Character Animation Explainer Toolkits are some of the best and most selling products on the Envato marketplace. For additional After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Final Cut Pro templates and toolkits, visit VideoHive.

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