As 2022 enters the year’s final quarter, we can look back on the animation trends of 2022 and look ahead to the hot, incoming animation trends of 2023. Animation is constantly evolving – it’s a style of art and a way to express a company, service, product, or brand – making it a perfect marketing solution.

What defines the animation trends for each year? The ever-shifting public trends in changing fashion, music styles, and nostalgia help raise certain types to the top and bring in new creativity. As a creative field, the animation industry is constantly changing and open to new ideas. What style do you like? Do you prefer hyper-realistic CGI or classic vintage animation? Or what about 2D or flat business animations? Whatever your preference, let’s look at the trends we see from 2022 and into 2023.

Here are some of the top trends we see and predict will continue to dominate graphic and animation design in 2023. We’ll include a short explanation from this article for the trends below:

1. 3D Forever
“This 3D trend is focused on cute round shapes with vivid contrasting colors, making them look like clay figures come to life. The result is amazing for videos and movies dedicated to children’s entertainment.”

2. Hyper-Realistic CGI
“When you blur the line between reality and animation you can create something more: hyperrealism. This is exactly the type of animation in AAA video games cinematics that makes people say ‘It looks more real than if it was real’.”

3. Psychedelic and Surrealistic Animation
“The twisted, melting and distorted aesthetics of the 1960s made a great comeback in every graphic design field. Naturally, they look even more trippy and mind-bending in motion. This trend rises like a counterculture to reflect the chaos of today and draw strength from within. The animated videos wake up our carefree spirit with incredible lucid visuals and entrancing design.”

4. Flat Style Characters
“The flat style is not just a trend, but a default for marketing-related animations, especially explainer videos. The style works great for visualizing complex ideas in a simple and comprehensive way. Flat graphics are much easier to animate and look very professional as most people already associate them with the “corporate art style”.”

5. Mascot Characters
“Second, only to flat-style, custom brand mascots rise in full force for marketing videos, explainer videos, and advertising. The mascots are specially designed to work well with the overall app design and interact with the micro UI animations.”

6. Outline Animation
“The simplicity of the graphics allows the imagination to go wild. It’s amazing what simple lines can accomplish in animation. In fact, outline animations offer endless possibilities from creating subtle and classy animations to more fun and goofy ones. This style has become a trend to its extremely diverse range of design styles so expect to see it a lot, especially in web/mobile apps and explainer videos.”

7. Kinetic Typography
“When you get used to hearing that a picture is worth a thousand words, it certainly gets interesting when you see the exact opposite. Kinetic typography is where words are the images, mimicking concepts and working like visuals. This trend is all about creativity with fonts and turning reading into an exciting interactive experience. Its popularity started mainly with lyrics and music videos, but now it’s everywhere.”

8. Old School Animation
“Modern tributes to retro animations will always be trendy. The difference is creators find new and more modern approaches to convey the nostalgic feeling of frame-by-frame pencil-drawn animation.”

9. Experimental and Indie
“Mixing different styles and creating something new and unconventional has always been tied to the indie scene. Fortunately, in these chaotic times, the borders between indie and mainstream start to shrink and we can see the rising of creative experimental animations everywhere. Artists don’t hold back on exaggerating shapes and unleash beautiful artistic weirdness into the wild.”

10. Lo-Fi
“What started as anime study girls and rainy days with infinitely looping backgrounds for music compilations, is now a modern fragmented animation that purposefully lacks detail, and looks gloomy and imperfect. The animation seeks to convey nostalgia, romantic melancholy, chill, and stillness.”

We love the Hyper-realistic CGI and flat style animation styles for industrial companies. These two animation styles are perfect for industrial marketing and product explainer videos. For industrial companies, these two styles present endless options. It is the most comprehensive marketing option available for services and products that may be hard to display otherwise.

Are you interested in learning more about the perfect style for your company? We can talk all day about animations to best suit your marketing needs – give us a call today.