How to Create Your Own Animated Charts & Graphs

Let’s face it … charts and graphs can be a total snooze. While we won’t knock their importance in conveying complex data, they don’t make for the most thrilling visuals … which is why animating your charts and graphs can improve your videos.

With animation, you can make your presentation more engaging to viewers … so they pay better attention to it, comprehend the information in a deeper way, and yes, even enjoy watching your video more.

Fortunately, although animating charts and graphs may seem difficult, Doodly actually makes it pretty easy. In this blog, we’ll walk you through the entire process, using a video tutorial, as well as a written step-by-step guide that includes screenshots.

Ready to get started? Let’s go!

Video Tutorial for Creating Animated Charts & Graphs

In this video tutorial, master Doodler Pamela Dimmick shows you how to animate charts and graphs.

Note that Pamela uses a borderless rectangle to achieve this effect. To download that rectangle, click here. Additionally, because Doodly’s been updated since this video was created, you’ll also need to adjust your video/duration settings by performing Steps 4 and 5 shown in the written tutorial below.

Don’t want to watch the video? Our written guide takes you step-by-step through this process, so you don’t have to.

Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Animated Charts & Graphs

Step 1 – Select Your Chart

Your first step is to select the chart you want to use in your video. For instance, you might choose an Excel graph, PowerPoint chart, or an image of a graph.

In the screenshot below, we grabbed this chart from the Doodly library:

Step 2 – Add a Borderless Rectangle to Doodly

To animate your chart, you’ll want to slowly reveal the entire image over multiple scenes. The easiest way to do that is to create a masking effect with a borderless rectangle.

To save time on this step, we’ve already created the borderless rectangle for you, and you can download it here. (Open link then right-click and select “save image as” to download)

Once you’ve downloaded the rectangle, just open Doodly and click on the Props tab.

In the lower-right hand corner of the Props pane, you’ll see a circular blue Plus button. Click the Plus button, navigate to the file you want to use, enter a title, then click Continue.

Step 3 – Hide the Chart

In our animation, we want the chart to be revealed one bar at a time, from left to right.
And, as each bar is revealed, we want that bar to grow vertically in size. To see an example of this animation effect, go to the 1:18 mark in the tutorial video.

Since the graph is going to be revealed slowly (rather than all at once), you’ll want to begin by hiding the right side of your graph with the borderless rectangle–just like we’ve done in the screenshot below.

Once you’ve hidden the right side of your chart, you’ll want to use another borderless rectangle to cover up the remainder of your graph, just like we’ve done here:

Step 4 – Adjust the Video’s Settings

At this point in the animation process, you’ll want to adjust your video settings. You can do this by clicking the Settings wheel shown on the left, right above the timeline.

This will open up the Settings dialogue box. From this dialogue box, choose “NO HAND,” beneath the Hand Style menu AND “None” from the Scene Transition menu.

These options will allow you to create the style of animation that’s taught in the video tutorial accompanying this blog.

Step 5 – Adjust the Duration

On the right side of the screen, you’ll notice that the scene you created has a number of layers, each specifying two settings–delay and duration.

For each layer along the right, you’ll want to set the Duration to zero so your video renders correctly.

Step 6 – Duplicate Your First Scene

So, by now you should have a graph that’s completely covered up by borderless rectangles. That’s your first scene.

Go ahead and duplicate it, creating a second identical scene just as we’ve done below:

Step 7 – Move the Rectangle to Reveal the Chart

Now, you’re ready to slowly reveal the bar graph. You can do so by raising the rectangle up to reveal a small portion of the graph.

Step 8 – Duplicate the Slide

Duplicate the slide you just created.

Step 9 – Reveal More of the Graph

Move the borderless rectangle higher up, revealing more of the bar graph.

Step 10 – Duplicate the Slide

Again, you’ll want to duplicate the slide you just modified.

Step 11 – Repeat Steps 9 & 10

Continue revealing a little more of your graph in each slide, then duplicating the slide. Reveal. Duplicate. Reveal. Duplicate. Do this until you’ve revealed the entire graph.

For instance, in the example below, we slowly revealed all of the first bar (from the bottom to the top), then the second bar (in the same fashion), followed by the third, etc.

This makes the graph almost appear to ripple when the animation is in progress.

When you’re finished–and the final scene shows the fully revealed graph–you can click the blue Preview button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to view the animation.

In Conclusion

Animated charts are a great way to liven up presentations. They can help viewers retain what they’ve learned, while comprehending the information you’ve shared in a deeper way. They can also make your videos much more engaging.

Fortunately, the animation process is pretty straightforward with Doodly. If you’ve never tried to do it before, see for yourself by animating a chart right now!