2D animation has been around for more than a century, but it is still one of the most useful ways to explain ideas, tell stories, and make complex information easier to understand.
For businesses, that is where 2D animation really shines. It can turn a complicated product, service, process, or message into a visual story people can actually follow. From hand-drawn characters to clean motion graphics, 2D animation gives brands a flexible way to educate, promote, and connect with their audience.
In this guide, we will walk through where 2D animation came from, the most common 2D animation styles, and how an animated video moves from concept to finished piece.
What Is 2D Animation?
2D animation is a style of animation that creates movement using flat, two-dimensional artwork. That artwork can include characters, backgrounds, icons, typography, shapes, product illustrations, or full illustrated scenes.
The movement happens when individual images, drawings, or digital elements are shown in sequence. When those visuals change quickly from one frame to the next, the viewer sees motion.
That basic idea has powered everything from early animated films and Saturday morning cartoons to modern explainer videos, app demos, social ads, training videos, and brand campaigns.
The tools have changed a lot. The purpose has not.
Good 2D animation still does what it has always done best: it helps people see, understand, and remember a story.
The Origins of 2D Animation
The history of 2D animation is a fascinating mix of art, invention, and visual experimentation. Long before digital software, people were finding ways to create the illusion of movement through shadow theater, puppetry, flipbooks, and optical toys.
One major milestone was the zoetrope, invented in 1833. The zoetrope used a spinning cylinder with vertical slits and a row of images inside. When the cylinder spun, the images appeared to move. It was simple, clever, and a huge step toward modern animation.
By the early 1900s, artists were experimenting with animated films created from hand-drawn images. Emile Cohl's 1908 film Fantasmagorie is often recognized as one of the first fully animated films. Later, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs helped show the world that animation could carry a full-length cinematic story.
That long history matters because the core idea has not changed. Animation works by guiding the viewer through movement, emotion, and visual sequence. What has changed is how businesses can now use those same principles to explain products, train teams, support sales, and make brand messages easier to remember.
Today, 2D animation generally falls into two broad categories: traditional 2D animation and digital 2D animation.
Traditional 2D Animation
Traditional 2D animation, also called classical animation or frame-by-frame animation, involves creating each movement one frame at a time. Historically, every frame was drawn by hand. Today, that same frame-by-frame approach can also be done digitally.
This style gives animators a high level of artistic control. It can feel handcrafted, expressive, nostalgic, cinematic, or highly stylized depending on the creative direction.
Traditional 2D animation is a strong fit when:
- You want a more artistic or handcrafted visual style
- The story depends heavily on emotion, character, or expression
- The brand wants something that feels warm, custom, or highly distinctive
- The animation needs fluid, detailed movement that does not feel overly mechanical
Because it requires more custom illustration and frame-by-frame planning, traditional animation can be more time-intensive than some digital production methods. But when the goal is emotional storytelling or a truly custom look, it can be a powerful choice.
Digital 2D Animation
Digital 2D animation uses software to create, manipulate, and animate visual elements. Instead of redrawing every single frame by hand, animators can use digital tools, vector-based artwork, keyframes, rigs, and motion paths to create movement more efficiently.
This is the style many businesses use for explainer videos, product videos, corporate videos, app demos, training content, and digital campaigns. It is flexible, polished, and highly adaptable across different formats.
Digital 2D animation is a strong fit when:
- You need to explain a product, process, service, or platform
- You want a clean, modern, brandable visual style
- You need graphics, icons, data, or UI elements to move clearly on screen
- You want the option to repurpose the animation into shorter cutdowns, social clips, ads, or sales assets
- You may need future updates to the video as products, messaging, or features change
Modern digital animation can still be highly creative. It simply gives teams more tools to adjust visuals, streamline production, and build content that works across multiple channels.
Common 2D Animation Styles
Isometric Animation
Isometric animation is a style of illustration designed on a defined plane to create the illusion of three-dimensional space. Drawing from the Greek term meaning "equal measure," isometric art uses a consistent perspective to show height, width, and depth without becoming full 3D animation.
This style is especially useful for showing systems, spaces, workflows, platforms, buildings, or technical environments. It can help viewers see how different pieces fit together without overwhelming them with too much realism.
For businesses, isometric animation works well when you need to explain a process, platform, infrastructure, product ecosystem, or service model in a visually organized way.
Kinetic Typography
Kinetic typography is animated text. Words move, shift, build, disappear, emphasize key points, and help carry the message visually.
This style can support an entire video or appear as short animated moments within a larger piece. It is often paired with voiceover, music, icons, or motion graphics to make the information easier to follow.
Kinetic typography is useful for short-form advertising, promotional content, social videos, event openers, internal announcements, and videos that need to make a message feel energetic and clear without relying on characters or live action.
Mixed Media
Mixed media animation combines multiple visual techniques into one piece. It might include motion graphics, stock photography, live-action footage, illustration, typography, product screenshots, icons, textures, or even other animation styles.
This collage-style approach is helpful when a video needs both human relatability and technical explanation. For example, a healthcare video might combine real people, animated icons, and abstract graphics. A SaaS video might combine UI footage, photography, and motion graphics to make a digital product feel more grounded.
Mixed media is a strong choice when a brand wants something visually layered, flexible, and a little unexpected.
Rotoscope
Rotoscope animation is created by tracing over live-action footage frame by frame. The result keeps the natural movement of real people or objects while adding an illustrated, dramatic, or stylized visual effect.
This technique has a long history in animation. Early rotoscoping was extremely time-consuming because artists had to trace footage manually. Today, digital tools and AI-assisted workflows can help create similar effects more efficiently.
Rotoscope animation is useful when you want movement to feel realistic but still visually distinct. It can be a great fit for emotionally driven stories, social impact campaigns, brand films, or videos where human expression matters but a fully live-action look is not the right fit.
Character Animation
Character animation brings illustrated people, animals, mascots, or objects to life through movement, expression, and personality. Unlike more abstract motion graphics, this style uses characters to create an emotional connection and guide the viewer through a story, process, or idea.
Character animation can be simple and icon-like, or highly detailed with facial expressions, body movement, and scene interaction. The style can be playful, polished, educational, emotional, or brand-specific depending on the audience and message.
Character animation is especially useful when a video needs to explain a human experience, show customer pain points, simplify a complicated process, or make a brand feel more relatable. By giving the audience someone to follow, character animation helps turn information into a story that feels clear, memorable, and easy to connect with.
Motion Graphics
Motion graphics use clean, computer-generated illustrations, shapes, icons, text, and visual transitions to communicate ideas through movement. This style is especially useful for business videos because it can turn abstract concepts, data, workflows, products, or services into visuals that are easy to understand and follow.
Often used in commercials, explainer videos, corporate videos, and digital campaigns, motion graphics help simplify complex topics without relying on live-action footage or character-driven storytelling. They can be polished, flexible, and highly brandable, making them a strong choice for companies that need to explain what they do, show how something works, or guide viewers through information in a clear and engaging way.
Motion graphics can also include several related animation styles, such as isometric animation and kinetic typography, and are often combined with stock footage, photography, or other animation techniques to create mixed media animation.
When Should Businesses Use 2D Animation?
2D animation is especially useful when live action cannot easily show what needs to be explained. That might be a software workflow, a technical process, an internal system, a customer journey, or an idea that does not physically exist yet.
Businesses often use 2D animation for:
- Explainer videos: Break down a product, service, or process in a simple visual format.
- Product demos: Show how a platform, app, or tool works without relying only on screen recordings.
- Sales enablement: Give sales teams a clear, polished way to explain value during outreach, meetings, or follow-up.
- Training videos: Help employees, customers, or partners understand procedures, policies, systems, or workflows.
- Brand awareness campaigns: Use a distinctive visual style to make the brand easier to recognize and remember.
- Paid social and digital ads: Turn one animated concept into shorter cutdowns for LinkedIn, YouTube, display, paid social, or retargeting.
- Internal communications: Make company updates, process changes, or complex initiatives easier for teams to understand.
- Healthcare, finance, SaaS, and technical education: Explain sensitive, regulated, or complicated topics in a clearer and more approachable way.
The biggest advantage is control. With animation, you are not limited by locations, actors, physical products, weather, production schedules, or what can be filmed in real life. You can build exactly what the audience needs to see.
The Future of 2D: Innovation in Animation
2D animation has come a long way from hand-drawn frames and optical toys. Today, animators use digital software, motion design tools, AI-assisted workflows, and hybrid production techniques to create animated content faster and more flexibly than ever before.
Modern 2D animation can include frame-by-frame illustration, rigged characters, vector graphics, motion graphics, typography, product screenshots, live-action footage, sound design, and visual effects. Some projects lean into a handcrafted look. Others are clean, corporate, and highly polished. Many blend multiple styles.
The future of 2D animation is not about replacing creativity with technology. It is about giving creative teams more ways to build smart, flexible, and effective visual content.
For businesses, that means 2D animation can be used in more places than ever: websites, ads, sales decks, product launches, employee training, event screens, social campaigns, customer onboarding, and more.
A Glimpse Inside the 2D Animation Process
A strong 2D animation depends on good planning. Before anything moves on screen, the team needs to align on the message, audience, visual style, pacing, and action the viewer should take.
Most professional 2D animation projects move through three major stages: pre-production, production, and post-production. The exact process can vary depending on the style and complexity of the video, but these are the core steps.
1. Strategy and Concept
Before scripting begins, the team needs to understand the goal of the video. What does the audience need to understand? What problem are they trying to solve? Where will the video be used? What should the viewer do after watching?
This stage helps define the creative direction and keeps the animation tied to a real communication goal. For business videos, this is especially important. A beautiful animation is only useful if it helps the message land.
2. Scripting
The script provides the structure for the entire animation. It outlines the story, message, voiceover, scene direction, pacing, and key visual moments.
A strong animation script does more than explain the topic. It decides what information matters most, what can be simplified, and how the story should build from beginning to end.
For explainer videos, sales videos, product videos, and training content, the script is where clarity is won or lost.
3. Styleframes
Styleframes show what the animation will look like before full production begins. They may include sample scenes, characters, colors, typography, icons, backgrounds, or visual treatments.
This is where the creative team explores the look and feel of the piece. Should it feel playful or premium? Simple or detailed? Human and character-driven, or clean and graphic? Bright and energetic, or calm and professional?
Styleframes help everyone align before the project moves into full animation. They also reduce the risk of major visual changes later in the process.
4. Storyboards
Storyboards map out the animation scene by scene. They show what happens visually and how each moment supports the script.
A storyboard acts as the blueprint for the video. It helps the team plan composition, transitions, character actions, camera movement, text placement, and visual flow before animation begins.
This step is especially useful for spotting issues early. If a scene feels confusing in the storyboard, it will likely feel confusing in the finished video too.
5. Animation
Animation is where the still visuals come to life. Characters move, text builds, icons shift, scenes transition, products animate, and the story starts to feel like a finished video.
Depending on the style, animators may use frame-by-frame techniques, digital rigs, keyframes, tweening, motion paths, or a combination of methods. The goal is to make the movement feel smooth, intentional, and connected to the message.
This stage is not just about making things move. It is about using movement to guide attention, clarify meaning, and keep the viewer engaged.
6. Post-Production
Post-production is where the animation is polished and finalized. This can include editing, timing adjustments, sound design, music, voiceover, color refinement, visual effects, captions, and final formatting.
Sound is especially important. Music, effects, and voiceover can shape the emotional tone of the video and make the final piece feel more complete.
Once the final animation is rendered, it can be prepared for the right channels, such as a website, landing page, social platform, ad campaign, presentation, event, or internal training portal.
Bringing 2D Animation to Life
2D animation has come a long way from flipbooks and hand-drawn frames, but its core strength is still the same: it helps people understand and connect with a story through movement.
For businesses, that makes 2D animation a powerful tool for explaining complex ideas, introducing products, training teams, building brand awareness, and creating content that can be adapted across multiple channels.
Whether the right fit is character animation, motion graphics, kinetic typography, isometric animation, rotoscope, or mixed media, the best style depends on the message, audience, and action you want the viewer to take.
At Levitate, we help companies turn ideas into clear, engaging animated videos built around real communication goals. Tell us about your project, and we will help you find the right animation approach for your story, audience, and budget.
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