How to make countryball videos for YouTube

The production pipeline

Work in this order. Each stage locks decisions for the next one, so you never animate a scene that later gets cut from the script.

1. 1

   Step 1: Pick an idea that fits one sentence

   Popular countryball formats include history retellings, "what if" alternate history, country reactions to news, and comedy sketches about national stereotypes. Whatever you choose, you should be able to describe the video in one sentence. If you can't, it's probably two videos.

   Start short. A finished 60-second video teaches you more than an unfinished 20-minute epic, and short videos also work as YouTube Shorts.

2. 2

   Step 2: Write the script and storyboard

   Write every line of dialogue and every action, then read it out loud with a timer. Cut anything that doesn't move the story or land a joke. For history videos, check facts against more than one reliable source; your comment section will.

   Then sketch each shot as a rough thumbnail drawing: who is on screen, where the camera is and what changes. Stick figures and circles are fine. The storyboard tells you which characters, backgrounds and maps you need to build.

3. 3

   Step 3: Record voices or plan text

   Record dialogue before you animate so you can time movements to it. A cheap USB microphone in a quiet room with soft furnishings beats an expensive one in an echoing kitchen. Audacity is free and handles noise reduction and trimming.

   If you use text instead of voices, set the timing now anyway: give each speech bubble enough time on screen to be read twice.

4. 4

   Step 4: Animate the shots

   Build reusable characters first: rigged balls, a few expressions and props. Then animate shot by shot, following the storyboard. The countryball animation tutorial covers keyframes, easing and squash and stretch, and animating a map covers territorial changes.

   Export each shot separately. It is much easier to fix one shot than to re-render a whole video.

5. 5

   Step 5: Edit and add sound

   Assemble the shots in a video editor, tighten the cuts and add sound effects and music. Sound does a lot of the work in countryball comedy: a well-timed thud or record scratch can make a joke. Keep music quieter than dialogue; viewers forgive rough animation much more than unclear audio.

6. 6

   Step 6: Make the thumbnail and title

   Thumbnails are viewed small. Use one or two big countryballs with strong expressions, high contrast and at most three or four words. The title should promise exactly what the video delivers. Misleading titles might win a click and then lose the viewer within seconds.

Tips for growing a countryball channel

• Finish and publish regularly. A steady schedule you can keep beats bursts of uploads followed by months of silence.
• Make series. Recurring formats and characters give viewers a reason to come back and to binge older videos.
• Use Shorts as a doorway. Short clips cut from longer videos, or quick standalone jokes, can bring new viewers to your main videos.
• Read the analytics. YouTube Studio shows where viewers stop watching. Look at the dips and ask what happened on screen at that moment.
• Set your audience honestly. YouTube asks every creator whether a video is made for kids. Animation alone doesn't make a video "for kids", but you must answer based on your content and audience. Read YouTube's guidance before choosing.
• Be careful with sensitive topics. War, violence and real tragedies can limit ads under YouTube's advertiser-friendly guidelines, and can hurt real people. Cartoon style doesn't change that.

Copyright: music, footage and art

• Music is the most common problem. Popular songs, film scores and game soundtracks are protected, even short clips. YouTube's Content ID finds them automatically, and the rights holder can take the video's revenue, block it in some countries or issue a strike. Use the free YouTube Audio Library, music you've licensed, or music you made yourself, and keep a copy of every licence.
• "No copyright intended" does nothing. Crediting the artist or writing a disclaimer doesn't give you permission to use their work.
• News clips, film footage and other creators' videos need permission or a strong fair use or fair dealing case. Fair use is a legal defence decided case by case, not a rule that makes short clips safe.
• Maps, images and fonts have licences too. Use map data with a clear licence, such as the public domain Natural Earth datasets, and check that fonts allow commercial or video use.
• Don't copy other animators. Tracing another channel's characters or reusing their scenes isn't okay, even in a countryball style that everyone shares. Make your own drawings.

Practice exercise