How to Make Videos Like Kurzgesagt (with AI)

If you want to learn how to make videos like Kurzgesagt, start with the scale: the studio says a single video takes roughly 1,200 hours of work, from research to music. You can't match that alone, but you can copy what matters most, which is the structure, the research habits and a consistent look. Here is the style, how the studio works, the manual route, and a faster AI route for illustrated science explainers.

What is the Kurzgesagt animation style?

Flat vector illustration in bold, saturated color, with simple rounded characters, glowing highlights and clean labels, kept in constant motion over one calm narrator and an original score. The studio describes its own look as vector and pixel-based illustration plus infographics, animated in 2D with 3D elements where a scene needs them.

Why it works: flat shapes strip a subject down to what matters, color tells you what belongs together, and labels answer "what am I looking at?" before you ask. The characters do the rest. The studio's own pitch is that you should feel for its mitochondria, and a cell with a face is easier to care about than a diagram.

The birds are the best lesson in that table. Founder Philipp Dettmer told Forbes he isn't an illustrator: he drew birds with big white eyes because the simple shapes were quick to make, and they looked funny to him. They became the studio's mascot. The look started as a shortcut, and yours can too.

How does Kurzgesagt make its videos?

Slowly, with a large team and a research-first pipeline. The studio's 2020 video on its own process puts a single video at roughly 1,200 hours, and Forbes reported in 2024 that the team had grown to 70 people. The studio's website lays out five phases:

1. Research. Books and primary sources such as research papers, checked with experts in the field. On complex topics the team usually works with two or three experts, going back and forth on the script until both sides are satisfied. Every video gets a sources document, linked in the description.
2. Script. About a dozen drafts to turn the facts into a story, plus an internal feedback round on clarity.
3. Illustration. Visual metaphors are worked out in sketches before the vector art is drawn.
4. Voiceover and animation. Steve Taylor records the narration, and his read sets the timing for the animation team.
5. Music and sound. Epic Mountain composes a soundtrack for each video.

The tools are standard ones. Kurzgesagt's own Skillshare class, taught by one of its senior motion designers, animates the studio's Illustrator artwork in Adobe After Effects.

For scale, 1,200 hours is about 30 working weeks for one full-time person. That is why a solo creator needs a different target.

What can a solo creator realistically copy?

The structure, the research habits and a consistent look. Hand-animated motion and a custom score are the expensive parts, and the ones to skip at first.

Proof that a solo start can work comes from Kurzgesagt itself. Dettmer told Forbes he didn't know how to animate and had never written a script when he made his first video, on evolution, as a university project. It took months. After graduating he made two more over five or six months, and one of them went viral.

It is also the playbook for a faceless science channel: your research and your voice on screen, never your face.

How do you write a science explainer script?

Start from one question, build to one surprising fact, and end on what it means for us. Kurzgesagt says the aim of every script is a new perspective that viewers take in without noticing they are being taught. A structure that fits the style:

1. Hook. The question, or a startling claim, in the first 15 seconds.
2. Baseline. What most people believe, in a sentence or two.
3. Zoom. The mechanism, the scale or the history, one idea per scene.
4. Turn. The fact that changes the picture.
5. Answer. Close the question you opened.
6. Perspective. What it means for us, ideally with a reason for hope.

Let the question set the length. Most of Kurzgesagt's recent uploads run 9 to 16 minutes, and its December 2025 film on human history runs just over an hour. Narration usually runs at about 150 words a minute, so a 10-minute script is roughly 1,500 words.

Write for the ear: short sentences, one number at a time, and a comparison for every big number. "A trillion" means little. "A trillion seconds is about 31,700 years" lands.

How do you make a science explainer video by hand?

Pick a question, research it, write and record, then design and animate to the voice. Adobe Illustrator and After Effects are the standard pair for this look, and Blender covers any 3D.

1. Pick one question

"Why is the sky dark at night?" beats "the universe." A question gives the video a finish line.

2. Research from primary sources

Start broad, then read the papers the summaries cite. Ask someone who works in the field to check the script, and build your sources doc as you go.

3. Write, cut and record

Draft, cut, and draft again until every sentence earns its place. Record in one sitting so your tone stays even from start to finish.

4. Design a style frame

Fix your palette, character shapes and label style in a few test frames before you draw the whole video.

5. Animate to the voice

Lay the recording on the timeline and animate to it, the way Kurzgesagt's animators take their timing from the narration.

6. Add sound and publish your sources

Add licensed music and sound effects, and link your sources doc in the description.

Can AI make Kurzgesagt-style videos?

Partly. An AI explainer video generator can turn your narration into illustrated science scenes in a clean, consistent style, fast, and the same approach covers other explainer formats such as whiteboard animation. It can't do your research, write your script or produce Kurzgesagt's hand-crafted motion. Kurzgesagt has also taken a public stand: in October 2025 it released a video arguing that AI-generated content is flooding the internet, and it said its own videos will always be made by people.

Take that seriously, because YouTube does. What gets called AI slop is content with no research, no point of view and no editing, published in bulk. YouTube's monetization rules exclude mass-produced, templated AI content and allow AI-assisted work that tells a real story.

So use AI for the production, not the thinking. Your research, your script and your voice make the channel worth watching; AI handles the drawing and the edit.

Make it in Viducer

Viducer is a long-form AI video generator for YouTube. It makes fully edited, subtitled videos, usually in about an hour: animated videos up to 60 minutes long in 11 looks, or documentaries built from real footage. Science explainers use the animated side, Animatica, the AI animated video generator. Be clear on what that is: each scene is a still, AI-drawn picture cut in time with your narration, not Kurzgesagt-level motion animation. It is the fast way to publish well-researched explainers in one consistent illustrated style.

1. Research, write and record

Write in chapters with one idea per scene, then record. Use your own voice, a narrator or an AI voice from any text-to-speech tool, uploaded as MP3, WAV, M4A or another common audio or video file, up to 50 MB. Transcription is free. Viducer doesn't write scripts or make voices today; see voiceover to video.

2. Pick a look

Three of the 11 ready-made looks suit science explainers:

• Field Guide: clean vector cartoon with a strong infographic layer of label pills, cutaway diagrams and arrows, in a cool, restrained palette. The closest register for science and how-things-work.
• Cutaway: flat, hand-drawn cartoon with simple figures and spare, legible backgrounds, made for engineering and systems.
• Cinematic Illustration: polished, semi-realistic illustration with soft shading and atmosphere, for immersive, story-led topics.

Want brighter color? Paste a YouTube link to copy a video's visual style, meaning its colors, line work and framing, or upload up to four reference pictures of your own art. Copy the style only, and never ask for Kurzgesagt's birds, logo or title design.

3. Approve the plan

Viducer's AI crew, a Director, an Art director, a Scene writer and an Editor, plans the chapters, characters and places. It draws a reference picture of each main character and place first and uses them in every scene, so your mascot looks the same throughout. You see the plan and the exact cost before anything is drawn.

4. Choose the pace

Fast, Medium or Slow sets how often the picture changes. Fast suits quick runs of facts; Slow suits big ideas like deep time or the size of space.

5. Edit and export

The finished video opens in a timeline editor, where you retime scenes, style the captions and add music and sound effects. Describe a change to any scene, such as "show the Earth next to the Sun for scale," and only that scene is redrawn. Exports are free. Everything runs on Viducer's servers, so you can close the tab, and a failed render refunds automatically.

Long explainers fit too: animated videos run up to 60 minutes; see the 1-hour AI video generator. Plans start at $49 a month.

What can't you copy from Kurzgesagt?

Its birds and other characters, its name and logo, its title design, its music and narration, and its videos. Kurzgesagt's FAQ says its videos may not be uploaded or translated onto other channels, and it asks fans to report stolen content. Copy the method and build your own identity: your mascot, your palette, your voice.

YouTube's reused-content rule backs this up: repurposing other people's videos without significant original commentary or changes doesn't earn. For the details, read can AI videos be monetized on YouTube. For a comedy-history take on the same playbook, see how to make videos like OverSimplified.