Doodly Beginner Tutorial

How to Control Revealing or Drawing Speed in Doodly

Beginner Tutorial #19

How to Control Revealing or Drawing Speed in Doodly

Shows the functions in Doodly necessary to control drawing speed. Depicts images showing how to control drawing speed in Doodly.

This document will teach about the different controls for controlling speed in Doodly, how to use that to your advantage and talk about the average times for each control.

Note: There are 3 areas that controls speed in Doodly; Delay, Duration and End of Scene Time.

Delay

This setting will tell Doodly to not begin the next asset reveal on the canvas until the time designated in this setting has finished. The time in this setting can be set in tenths of seconds.

Duration

The length of time it takes to reveal the asset on the canvas. Doodly will not look at the next delay until after this setting as completed. This setting can be set in tenths of seconds.

Extra Time at the End

This designates how much time to wait before transitioning the viewer to the next scene. This setting can be set in tenths of seconds.

Note: This name has changed several times. In my opinion, this should be called End of Scene Time.

Average Time

Delay doesn’t have an average because this setting highly depends on the doodle being created but a good rule of thumb for this setting would be:

Note: A rule of thumb doesn’t mean that you must adhere to it but it does help when deciding whether to make a viewer wait 7 seconds looking at a blank canvas.

Duration time depends on the type of asset.
Text: .3s to .4s per 4 to 5 character word. This decreases or increases accordingly along with the number of characters in the words. Doodly does an excellent job of averaging this out really well on its own so typically there is no need to touch the default text duration/speed.

Characters depend upon size. The larger they are the longer the duration length. A good average is between 1.5s to 4s. On occasion 5s may be acceptable and on very rare occasions, longer is acceptable but not suggested.

Props is highly dependent upon the proper being drawn and the size. A Doodly provided single prop may be 1s to 1.5s and sometimes a full 3s for larger props. An entire room may take 12s to reveal completely depending if there is a voiceover accompanying the reveal. An imported image may take 15s to 20s to reveal if we want to provide the appearance an artist is drawing the image or it may take 2 seconds if we want to revealed fast.

Note: Use these 3 controls wisely. Too fast of a doodle will drive your viewers away and too slow will make them bored and leave.

Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to the most common questions regarding this topic.

There are three main options you can adjust to change how fast things appear. These include the delay before an item shows up, the duration it takes to draw the item, and the extra time added before moving to the next scene. All of these can be adjusted in fractions of a second.

The ideal wait time depends entirely on the specific animation you are making. However, a good standard practice is to wait half a second between items. Waiting five seconds or more is generally too long and might make your audience stare at an empty screen.

The software naturally calculates a great default speed for words, so you usually do not need to change it. If you do adjust it, a good range is around three to four tenths of a second for a standard five letter word. This speed should scale up or down based on the word length.

The drawing time relies heavily on the physical size and complexity of the image. Standard characters usually look best when drawn over one and a half to four seconds. Simple props might only need one to three seconds, while a complex full room background could take up to twelve seconds to draw completely.

Balancing the pace of your video is crucial for keeping your audience engaged. If your images appear too quickly, viewers might get overwhelmed and leave. On the other hand, if the drawing process is too slow, people will likely become bored and stop watching.

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Wayne Leiser
Wayne Leiser
Editor & Contributor
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