How to Animate in Procreate? Your Ultimate Guide

Digital animation is everywhere, from the big screen to your own camera roll. Several animation software platforms focus on a particular niche, and Procreate is a leader for the iPad and iOS.

Once you have a sense of the basic tools and settings, learning how to animate in Procreate is relatively straightforward. This article will take you through those essentials and provide the primary steps for creating your first animation.

Is Procreate Good for Animation?

While Procreate is less robust than other leading digital animation programs, it’s still considered excellent for animation in general. Even if you’re not using it for highly complex full-length features, you’ll find Procreate ideal for smaller-scale personal and professional projects, such as animating Instagram photos.

Procreate comes with animation-specific features to make the process smooth and intuitive. The Animation Assist Tool is especially helpful for learning to animate with Procreate as a beginner with visual aids and support for an enjoyable animation experience.

3 Procreate Essentials for Animation

Procreate comes with a clean, user-friendly interface and is designed to ease you into your workflow. You’ll begin your projects from a blank canvas, where you can navigate to a range of tools for illustrating and animating.

Familiarize yourself with the essential Procreate animation tools to quickly bring movement to your favorite illustrations:

Layers: Procreate uses a system of layers to let you separate elements of your animation from each other. Layers may be rearranged, duplicated and deleted to order the movement exactly as you like.

Toolbar: Procreate’s toolbar lets you quickly navigate to the primary tools for illustration and animation. Use it to select your brushes and erasers, manage layers and alter individual objects.

Animation Assist: When you turn Animation Assist on in the “Actions” tab, you’ll have a toolbar appear at the bottom of your screen. Then you can use visual aids of Onion Skin and Timelines to work on movement precision and transition smoothness.

Understanding Procreate Animation Settings

You’ll use Procreate’s animation settings to adjust how your animations move and at what speed, and how the frames interact with each other.

Set How Animations Play

This has to do with the order of your frames and how many times they follow that pattern.

Loop: Looping animations will repeat over and over, playing from beginning to end.
Ping-Pong: Mimicking a ping pong ball, these animations play from beginning to end, then from end to beginning, repeating the back and forth as long as viewers watch.
One Shot: Keep it simple by setting videos to play only once, from beginning to end.

Set How Frames Appear During Work

Working with multiple frames can be tedious, but adjusting how many you see at once and how they appear simplifies your animation work, including the speed you set.

Frames Per Second: Determine how fast or slow your frames, and your final animation, move.
Blend Primary Frame: Turn this on during work to be able to see the previous frame while you work on the next one.
Onion Skin Frames: Use this to see as many frames as you want at one time, which helps you anticipate what layers do throughout the animation.
Onion Skin Colors and Opacity: Color code the frames you’re onion skinning to stay more organized as you work. Tweaking opacity is another way to distinct one frame from another.

How to Animate in Procreate in 5 Easy Steps

Animating in Procreate is fun and easy, even if you’re new to digital animation. The intuitive interface and extensive brush and color options mean that learning how to make an animation in Procreate leaves plenty of room for creativity and self-expression.

1. Create a Canvas

Tap the “+” in the top right corner of Procreate, and choose the size you want for your canvas.

2. Enable Animation Assist

In the “Actions” drop-down menu (under the wrench icon), click “Animation Assist” and notice the animation bar that appears at the bottom of your canvas.

3. Draw Your Keyframes

Choose your brush, choose your color and draw the essential keyframes for your animation, using your storyboard as a guide. These contain the basic poses and positions of your main elements, and you can add in details as you go.

4. Preview the Animation and Refine Details

At any point, you can preview your work by hitting “Play” in your toolbar. Watch the speed and overall smoothness. The more frames you include, the smoother the movements and transitions will look. If you prefer a grittier style, fewer frames will help you achieve that. This is where Onion Skin and other features will come in handy.

Under the “Actions” wrench icon, go to the “Share” submenu. Select your export format to be an animated GIF, PNG, HEVC or MP4. Procreate animations tend to work best as animated GIFs. You’ll then have some other setting options to choose from before saving it to your camera roll and sharing as you wish.

How to Add Music to Procreate Animation

At the time of this writing, you cannot add music or other sounds directly to Procreate animations. However, after you finish and export the project, you can use a separate app to incorporate music. Examples of apps you’d use include Apple’s iMovie and YouTube Studio.

Create Animations Easily and Quickly With Procreate

Procreate is a digital illustration and animation platform for the iPad and iOS, and designed to work well for beginners and seasoned creatives alike. If you have a basic understanding of the essential tools and settings, you can quickly turn your illustrations into animations or even create new animations from scratch. You can even animate your TikTok persona.

Skillshare is your source for a range of classes on using Procreate for personal and professional projects. Whether you’re a beginner or advanced animator, animation in Procreate is accessible with a bit of guidance and inspiration. In fact, Skillshare maintains a Procreate Hub with tips, tricks and even downloadable brushes from your teachers. Become an expert while doing what you love!

Written By

Katie Mitchell

Katie lives in Michigan with her husband, kids and pets. She enjoys cooking, travel and live music.