Transcripts
1. What can you expect from this class?: Hi. My name is Andrea, I'm a Designer from Brazil. I have been working with digital marketing for eight years now. Through this class, I'll teach you how to make an animated banner using Photoshop. If you are a beginner, it's okay. I'll go through every effect step-by-step. This class is great for freelancers, small business owners, and people who love a new issue. With these skills, you can transform your social media presence and grow your audience engagement with your email newsletters and your website. See you in the 1st lesson.
2. Class project : For this class, you are going to make a banner for your favorite brand. It really helps if you pick a brand that resonates with you and with your style. After choosing your brand, you need to make the brand's manual or guidelines. This will guide you in creating a banner that really suits your brand. While making your banner, you'll need to use at least one effect you'll learn from this class. In the next lesson, we'll talk about how to make a brand's manual.
3. Get to know your brand: Hi everyone. In this lesson, we are going to make a brand manual. What is a brand manual? A brand manual, it's a guideline that shows how a company communicates. It's a rule book that shows the look and few of a company's branding. For this lesson, we're going to make a condensed format of a brand's manual. We'll only need the logo, the submarks, the alternative logos and fonts, color palette, and most importantly, the brand's voice. If you want, you can download these templates on the resource tab. Let's start by putting the logos and the submarks and alternatives logos on their spaces. To change the colors on the color palettes, you need to select the group that's called color palette, open the group. You can select a new color, I'm going to select the Color 1. Click with the left button and go to the "Properties" tab. You have the layers tab and the properties is on the right, click there. On the "Shape Details", you can change the color of the inside and of the outside of the object. I'm going to click on this gray and put my brand's color palette. This is my brand's color palette. Alternative logo, have it here. Next, we're going to put the fonts. The last one we need to fill out, it's the brand's voice. The brand's voice is how a company communicates. Knowing how your brand communicates, knowing your brand's voice can make a difference between a successful campaign and a campaign with no engagement. We can see in this example two different brands and how they express the same thing, but with different voices. Both ModCloth and Anthropologie want to encourage people to subscribe to their email listing, but since their voices are different, the way they asked for this information is different, not only visually, but the way they asked the textual part. My brand's voice is supportive and playful. These concepts need to appear on every visual part of my brand on my online store, my social media post, my email campaigns, everything needs to show the voice of my brand. In this lesson, we got to know our brand better by making this manual. We also learned the importance of knowing a company's voice and how this voice can influence a lot of things on your banner or social media posts. Remember to share your manual on the project tab in this class. In the next lesson, we are going to talk about the purpose of your banner. Do you want to make a subscriber banner or do you want to make a social media post? Do you want something to announce a new product? We're going to talk about that on the next class. See you then.
4. What's your purpose: Hi everyone. In this lesson we are going to talk about what is the purpose of that banner we are going to make. Do you want to make something to get more subscribers for your email listing or do you want to announce a new product? You can make a holiday banner or events banner like Valentine's Day sale or Black Friday, or you want to make something for email campaigns or social media post.
5. Making Animation: First steps: Now we're going to set up our document and start making our first animation. Depending on the type of banner you're going to make, the size can be very different. I'm going to make a post for Instagram. For Instagram, your file size is going to be a square of 1080. I'm going to put 1080, 1080, and the resolution I'm going to use 150 pixels/inch, RGB color mode and create. This is the file size for a Instagram post. If you want to make something for Instagram stories, the file is different in size. You can check all the sizes of the documents on our resource tab. When you're done, we're going to start making our first animation using Photoshop. I'm going to make a banner for Valentine's Day, though we're going to start by using this picture I have here. We are using this gift as a inspiration. I like this kind of effect of the red and the pink. We're going to try to mimic this filter. I'm going to use the paint bucket tool. Then I'm going to choose "Color Dodge." I'm pretty happy with this effect. Next, we're going to add the text to our post. I'm going to use this effect that changes the color of the background text. Here we can see the change for different colors. We're going to make this style. First thing we need to do is to change the color of the layer we want to animate. In this case, I want the Valentine's Day sale layer to change color. So select the layer you have, click with the right button and select "Duplicate Layer." Click "Okay." Now in this new layer, you're going to use the command U or control U. This window, Hue/Saturation, you can change the color of the new layer you created. Just remember to select the colorize option. This way you can change to whatever color you want. When you're happy with the color you chose, just click "Okay," and then you have the new layer in a different color. You can make this how many times you want. Now to make a animation, you need to go to window and timeline. Then can click "Create Frame Animation" here. Now this is the first frame and this number down below is the time, it's going to be shown on the animation. So right now it's at zero seconds. I'm going to move 0.5 seconds. This is the first layer, the Valentine's Day on the white color. Now to create a new layer, you're going to go to here, click this. This layer it's exactly the same as the first one. To make the animation, you need to click on the next layer. Now it's the white color, and now I'm going to put the blue color. Now we have the white. Now you can choose this setting as once, so the animation only goes a single time, or you can choose the forever option that goes in a loop, or the last one is three times. I'm going to choose forever, and play the animation. This is the most simple type of animation you can make. I'm just changing the color of the tags. I'm going to finish this design by changing the position. Since it's Valentine's Day, I'm going to use this handwritten font. Okay, I have an idea. This is not working. Something's missing. I'm going to use this text right here, remove this, [inaudible] and this is going to be a second phase of the animation. So this is going to be the Group 2. In this Group 1, we have this Valentine's Day sale. The second group is going to be the end of the animation. I made in Illustrator this outline for the Valentine's Day sale. Now, the last layer, we are going to use the second group background. I'm going to hide all of this and show the second group. Since this is the end of the animation, I'm going to put one second and it's going to be once. This is what it's going to look like. If you want to change to a number that's different than these options, you can click "Other" and you can type whatever number you want, like 0.3 seconds. If you want to change the duration of a single layer, just click and select whatever number you want. But if you want to change the speed of many layers, you can click on the layer, hold shift, and then you're selecting all of them. You can change the velocity of all those layers. This case I'm going to put 0.5 and the last one, one second. So this effect is pretty simple. You can make a lot of interesting things with it. You can do something like this as well. Just by hiding a layer and putting another layer on top, you can also do something like this. Another way you can use this effect is to create a animated background. For example, we have this pink background and on top of it we have a lot of dots, like a polkadot pattern. On top of that, you can take this layer, duplicate it, and then use the Control T or Command T, and you can flip vertical. So just flip this and then you have two different layers. To make a animated background, you just go to window, timeline. The first frame is the first polkadot pattern we made, and the second layer is going to be this, the second pattern. I wanted the effect to be very fast, so 0.2 seconds. Let's hit "Play." This way only the background changes and the texts just keep still. This one is for Instagram stories. We have the background color and the pictures of the clothing keeps moving and also this yellow square. In this lesson, we learned how to make this powerful effect by showing a layer and then hiding it. We also saw different ways you can use this effect. You can do a lot of different things, it's just going to depend on your creativity. I'm really excited to see what you can do. So please remember to share your work on the class project so everyone in the class can see your great work. In the next lesson, we are going to explore different ways we can show movement using Photoshop and frame animation. So, see you then.
6. Making Animation: Stop Motion: In this lesson, we are going to learn how to make an animation using photos. Before we start, you'll need a couple of photographs of some products. If you have any doubt on how to photograph your products, there are a lot of wonderful classes here on Skillshare to teach you a lot of tips on how to photograph at home and with your iPhone. When you have everything ready, let's get started. Here are some tips on how to photograph your product. Use artificial lighting. If you use natural lighting, and suddenly the weather changes, it will affect your light situation. The lighting should be consistent in every frame, just use a lamp. I use a clip online on these photos and they work just fine. Keep your background simple and focus on your animation should be your object, the backroom should be really clean and simple. Don't move your camera, use a tripod or a phone stand and be careful if your bump into your tripod, you need to start all over again. Take your time with your photos otherwise, you need to spend the time you did dedicate to your photos adding Photoshop. Make small movements. If your objects takes big steps, it's going to look weird when you're animating. Now, I have my pictures right here. I photograph these Russian nesting dolls that I have on my shelf now to make the animation. This is the first frame. We need to make it a little bit longer than the other frame, I'm going to put one second, and the next one, we can start by putting at 0.5 seconds, the reaction is faster. This is what it's going to look like. This type of animation will only work if your backroom and lighting is really stable. Otherwise, you need to add it frame by frame, it's going to take a lot of work, make sure your photographs are perfect, and some little things you will need to add it in Photoshop. This is what the picture really look like and this is with the edit. In this lesson, we learned how to make a stop motion animation using photos, and we learned the most important thing is a high-quality photo, not only resolution-wise but with a clean background and a stable camera, because otherwise, it's going to be really difficult, you'll need to edit every picture you take and is really time-consuming. I'm really excited to see what you can do in stop motion. Remember to post on the class project app, so everyone in the class can see. In the next lesson, we're going to learn how to export our files in a way that we don't lose quality, or it turns out really heavy, and we can post on our social media or on our website. If you have any doubts on which format you should choose for your GIFs or your videos. Please check the next lesson.
7. How to Export your File: In this class, we'll learn different ways to make animations, sometimes mixing photos or other elements. These mixing of media can make a really heavy file size. The bigger the file size, the slower your uploading time. This can be really frustrating for your subscriber or your viewer, because the image would take a long time to upload, to appear. In this lesson we are going to talk about how to export your file in a way that you don't lose quality and it's not a file that's too big. Check on the resource tab, our file size guide for gifs. First things first, how do you export your file? To export your file, you need to go to, "File", "Export", "Save for Web Legacy". If you want to make a video, instead of going to "Save for Web Legacy", you need to go to "Render Video". When you're making your gif, there are some things you need to consider because it can affect the weight of a file. For example, if you can choose a transition between one frame to another frame of animation, cutting is the best way to guarantee a smaller file size than fading. To make this fading transition, you need to change the opacity of multiple layers so it can give that smooth effect. The more layers you have in your file, the bigger your file size. Another thing that can make your file really heavy is the amount of colors you have in your animation. In this case here, we have one layer that is a photo, and another layer that it's one color with the white text. A photograph always has a lot of complex colors, and that really makes your file heavy. When you are deciding your design, keep your color palettes simple. When you are exporting your file, remember to keep this option on adaptive and the transparency box checked. This will guarantee a smaller file size. Now, about this dither, if you have something really complex, you need to go to 128. If something simple, you can go to 64. The higher your dither percentage, the bigger the file size. Just keep in mind, you need to balance this quality with the size you can use. The higher the lossy is going to really interfere with the quality of your image. Try to leave it at 20-40 percent. This way you don't need to change all the scenes, you just change the lossy. In this lesson, we learned how to export your file in a way that you don't lose resolution, so you can post in your social media, or in your website, or your email, and you won't lose all the hard work you put into making your animation. Remember, to share your projects on the class project step. This way, everyone in the class can see your great work. I'm really looking forward to see what you can make with this techniques we explore this class.
8. Conclusion: Congratulations, you made it to the end of this class. We learned a lot along the way about making animations and getting to know your brand better or your client's brand better. We also learned great ways to guarantee your project's quality, either by choosing the correct file size, or by making some choices during the animation process so you have a animation with great quality and resolution. I hope you feel inspired to add animations to your banners, since animations and videos, in general, have a higher view rate than just a simple post or a still image. If you want some feedback on your work, please remember to share your class project. This way, I can give you some tips. I'm really excited to see what you can do with these different techniques we learn during this class. This is my first class here at Skill share. If you like it, please leave a review and follow me here at Skillshare. Thank you so much for joining this class. See you next time.
Andréa Anzai, Designer & Illustrator
