Procreate Animation: Creating GIFs for Instagram Stories

1. Introduction: Hey, everyone. My name is Amaya, I'm an artist and a video creator. In this class, I'm going to be showing you how to create GIFs for Instagram Stories using Procreate's Animation Assist feature. Procreate's new animation tools make creating GIFs a super-simple and fun process. We will be using Giphy to upload the GIFs we create, which is an online database where users can search for it and share animated GIFs and stickers. In this class, you will learn how to create suitable GIFs for Instagram stories. Add simple motion to your artwork, the basics of animation in Procreate, export your animations upload to Giphy, and user GIFs in Instagram Stories. Even if you're new to drawing or using Procreate, you will find these simple steps easy to follow and apply to your own work. On Giphy, you will have the option to apply for an artist's channel, which will actually make your GIFs searchable on Instagram, meaning anyone can find the GIFs that you've created and use them in their own stories. If you are an artist looking to share your work with more people, I will be showing the process of applying for an artist's channel on Giphy. This is not necessary if you are only looking to use your GIFs for personal use. Don't worry, I will be showing you how you can use your GIFs in your own Instagram Stories without needing an artist's channel. 2. What is GIPHY?: Again, Giphy is an online database and search engine where you can share and search for animated GIFs and stickers. We are creating GIFs in this class, but on Giphy they are called stickers. Essentially, is just a GIF with a transparent background. On Giphy, stickers are sorted separately from GIFs, and they have their own API as well. This API powers the experience for stickers on multiple different apps, one of them being Instagram. Because this class is about creating these GIFs or stickers for Instagram, we will be following the best practices for creating stickers. You can create your own account and upload your own GIFs and stickers, and as I mentioned, in the intro you can also apply for an artist channel. This way you are able to show your work via Giphy's search and API network, and you also have access to daily analytics and search insights. Again, with an artist channel, this will make your GIFs searchable on Instagram, as well as other platforms that support Giphy. If this is something that you are interested in, I will be sharing all of the information later on in the class. In the next lesson, I will give you an overview of the best practices for creating stickers. 3. Sticker Best Practices: I'm briefly going to go over the sticker specs that are suitable to upload to GIPHY. It is recommended to use whatever resolution makes your sticker look best. GIPHY automatically resizes uploads for uses in different apps and platforms. A tip is to use multiples of four for the width and height of your Canvas. The size that I use is 4,000 by 4,000 pixels. If you aren't using the artwork for anything else, then you don't have to make it that big, 2,000 by 2,000 pixels is fine. Stickers need to fit the Canvas. If they are exported with too much empty space in the frame, they will look very small when they are uploaded on GIPHY. At least 20 percent of the first frame needs to be transparent for it to register as a sticker and stickers must also be exported with no background. Since these stickers are going to be viewed at a very small size, you don't want them to be too detailed. Here are a few tips for stickers that do well on Instagram stories: they should be easy to use in conversation, appeal to a wide audience, be universal and easy to understand, and engaging so stickers that say swipe up or link in bio. Now that we've gone over all of that, let's get into the basics of animation on Procreate. 4. Basics of Animation on Procreate: Let's get into the basics of animation on Procreate. In this class we will be using the Animation Assist tool in Procreate. This tool offers features like onion skinning and simply back a visual timeline, and the ability to edit and manage both individual frames and the animation as a whole. Activating Animation Assist. To turn Animation Assist on, tap the wrench icon in the top left corner. This will open the actions menu. Then tap on "Canvas" and switch on Animation Assist. All your existing layers will display as frames in the timeline. The timeline represents every frame of your animation as a thumbnail. It's similar to the layers panel, but turned sideways. There are a few ways you can navigate through the timeline. Tap a frame to jump to it, drag the timeline back and forth, or flick the timeline for a rapid scroll. Keep in mind that your currently selected frame will be underlined in blue. Tap "Play" to preview your animation. You can stop the playback by tapping your Canvas, the timeline, or tapping "Pause." Tap "Add Frame" to instantly add a blank frame, next to your current frame in the timeline. You can bring up frame specific options by tapping on any frame. This menu will give you a variety of settings that apply to individual frames. You can duplicate, delete, or adjust the hold duration on a frame. The whole duration setting allows you to create a pause and movement. In animation, a hold creates a moment of stillness by playing the same drawing over multiple frames. The timeline will display this hold as a series of grayed-out frames. If your hold lasts for five frames, you will see five grayed-out frames in the timeline. You can get rid of the hold by dragging the slider back to none. Tap "Duplicate" to create a copy of the selected frame in the timeline. To get rid of a frame, tap "Delete." Either option can be undone immediately after with a two-finger tap. The foreground option locks a frame into place as a consistent foreground element, that will appear over the top of every other frame in your animation. Move any frame to the rightmost position to set it as the foreground. Only the rightmost frame can be assigned as a foreground, and you can only have one foreground at a time. To revert it back to a normal frame, tap the "Foreground" toggle again. The background toggle, locks the frame into place as a consistent background element, that will appear underneath every other frame in your animation. Only the leftmost frame can be assigned as the background, and you can only have one at a time. Move any frame to the leftmost position to set it as the background. Tap the "Background" toggle again to revert it back to a normal frame. To bring up the settings menu, tap "Settings" on the right-hand side of the Animation Assist toolbar. This menu controls the settings for the overall animation and the Animation Assist interface. You can use frames per second to speed up and slow down existing frames you have. Slowdown any animation by either slowing down the frame rate, or by adding more in-between frames to your animation. The onion skinning options shows semi-transparent copies of the drawings on either side of your current frame. Frames that are right beside your current frame will be shown as almost solid. Frames that are further away from it, will get progressively more transparent. To set the number of frames shown in onion skinning, drag the onion skin frame slider. You can set it to none, showing only your current frame, or you can push it up to 12 surrounding frames. To set the transparency of the frames shown in onion skinning, drag the onion skin opacity slider. You can set the opacity to zero percent, making the other frames invisible, or set it all the way to 100 percent, making the surrounding frames almost completely solid. By default, your current frame appears as solid on top of the surrounding frames. Toggle the color secondary frames switch. When this is on, the frames that are ahead of your current frame will appear in green, and the ones behind will appear in red. The three options at the top of the settings panel, offer different ways to play through your animation frames. With the loop option, the frames of your animation will play all the way through from start to finish, then immediately loop back to the start and play through again. This cycle will repeat continuously. With the ping-pong setting, the frames of your animation will play all the way through from start to finish, then from finish to start, then repeat the process again. The setting is good for looping movements that reverse back on themselves. With the one shot setting, the frames of your animation will play all the way through from start to finish, once, and then stop. The setting is good for a simple narrative animation that tells a story with a beginning and an end. Tap the wrench icon in the top left corner and click "Share." Under the share layers section of the share menu, you'll find three formats ideal for exploring animation and each format offers different benefits. GIF is the most common and versatile format for web animations. This is the option we'll be using to export the GIFs made in class. You will see a few options when exploiting an animated GIF. The only option you will be turning on is the transparent background. When this is turned on, an Alpha threshold slider will appear. This setting converts semi-transparent areas of the active layer into completely transparent or completely opaque areas, based on a threshold you set using the slider. You only need to adjust the slider if you are not using a solid brush. If you are using a solid brush, meaning it has no texture, you can leave the slider at zero percent. If you use a textured brush, you can then adjust the slider to your liking. Although I recommend keeping it at 50 percent or lower, to preserve the quality of your animation. That was just the basics of animation in Procreate. In the following lessons, we will begin working on GIFs that are suitable for Instagram Stories. 5. Simple Text Gif: To begin, we're starting off with a very simple GIF. This is just going to be one word. You can use whatever word you want, of course. I'm going to be using the round brush. Basically with this GIF, each letter will be a different color, and that will be the animation. The colors will be changing with every frame. I am just alternating between blue, pink, and yellow. Remember to fill up your canvas as much as you can. Once you have your word written out, then you can turn on animation assist. Add a frame. Now since I ended with yellow, I'm going to start with yellow. Draw over those previous letters and again change the colors. Once you've done that, you can add another frame and do the same thing. You can change the opacity depending on if you want to see the previous layers or not. I am adding another frame and doing this again so that I have five frames in total. Bringing the frames per second down to around four. You can adjust the speed however you like it. But I am happy with this. Once you are done with your GIF, click on Share. Turn on the transparent background. Since I used a solid brush, I don't have to worry about the alpha threshold, and go ahead and export. 6. Sunflower Gif: For this GIF, I will be animating this sunflower drawing that I have. So if you have a drying that is similar to this, that you just want to give some movement to, then this is how I will be animating it. Bring your drawing and fit it to the Canvas and turn on Animation Assist and turn down the opacity of your drawing. The brush that I'm using is the script brush and all I'm doing is drawing over the previous drawing. The stem is going to remain in the same place, but the leaves and the petals are going to shift a little bit. Once I have outlined the green, I'm going to fill that in. Now switching over to yellow to outline the petals of the flower and I'm shifting them downwards just a little bit. Once I have that outlined, I'm going to drag and drop the color in. Now we have our second frame, and you can start to see the movement between these two frames. Now add a frame and do the same thing but this time you are going to shift everything else down a little bit more. You'll repeat this until you have about five frames. You can do less or more frames depending on how you want your drawing to move. Now I'm going to hit "Play" and see what this looks like so far, adjust the frames per second. I'll leave it at about five and this is what it looks like currently. I am switching this to Ping-Pong so that it goes out and back in, but of course, depending on what your drawing is you can use either of those settings. I'm just going to add one more frame and then I will be done with this GIF. Once you have your frames all drawn and you can play it, and if you are happy with how that looks, you can go ahead and click on "Share", "Animated GIF", turned on the Transparent background, and export it. 7. Plant Gif: The next GIF is going to be similar to the previous one. The brush that I'm using is this 6B pencil, and as you can see, I have the drawing already done. So once animation assist is on, add a frame, and what I'm going to be doing is drawing the outline of the leaves, by shifting them over a little bit to the left, to make it look like the plant is moving. Of course stay in the same spot, so I'm just drawing right over that, and dropping the color in. Now I'm lowering the opacity of that so that I can see the previous layer. Turning on Alpha Lock so that I can see the details on the previous layer and draw those over the leaves. Once I've done that, I'm turning the opacity back up and fixing the areas I drew over. Now when I play it, you can see the movement in the plant. To make this a little bit easier, I'm going to just duplicate the first layer, drag it all the way to the end. Duplicate the second, and drag it to the end, so that we have less frames to draw. I'm just going to switch the setting over to Ping-Pong. Now I'll share it as an Animated GIF. Turn on the transparent background, and since I used a 6B pencil, which is texture you can see it when I adjust the Alpha Lock threshold, you can see what that does. So I'm just going to leave it in the middle and "Export". 8. Swipe Up Gif: The next one is a swipe up GIF. If you were to use this in your Instagram story and you had a link, then you could use this. What I'm doing is adding text and typing, swipe up, selecting that, and then I'm changing the font. Make sure to make it as big as you can to fill up as much of the canvas. I'm just changing the color to the first color that I want to use. Since I am going to have the GIF going up, so that it's in a swipe up motion. I am then placing the first text at the bottom. Now, create a new layer and lower the opacity of the text layer. For this, I'm using the 6B pencil. Now all you have to do is trace over the text layer. But make sure that you are on the new layer that you have above it. I'm leaving my text as just an outline. Now what I'm doing is deleting the previous text layer because we don't need that. Turn on Animation Assist. I'm going to duplicate this layer. To create that upward motion, I'm going to drag it up just a little bit so that it's still overlapping the previous layer. Now I'm going to click on this layer and turn Alpha Lock on so that I can change the color. I'm going to change over to a bigger brush so that I can draw over it completely, and draw over it to change the color. Now I'm duplicating this layer. Again, I'm going to drag it up slightly about the same amount as before. Then click on that layer, turn on Alpha Lock. Again, I'm going to change the color and you repeat this until you get to the top of the canvas. This is what it looks like. I'm going to turn down the Frames Per Second to about six. I'm actually changing a few of the colors because a few of them are too light. See as Animated GIF. Turn on the Transparent background and export. 9. Subscribe Button Gif : This next GIF is a button. You're going to start with the base of a button. You can do this whatever shape you want. I've gone for a rectangle. I'm going to duplicate this and make it a little bit smaller so that this will be the actual button part that you will push down, and that's going to be the animation. I'm going to center this and place it. But we are going to need to do a few things to make it look like it is a button being pressed. Make sure that you are on the top layer and use the selection tool to draw around the top of that. Click on "Copy and paste" so that it creates a new layer, and this is what it will look like. You don't have to worry about the bottom being very smooth. We're going to fix that, now that we have the very top of this separated from the rest when we use it to create the animation, it will look like it's being pressed down. To start off, we're going to place it all the way at the base. Basically what the button will look like when it's fully pressed down, we're going to place the layer at the bottom. We're going to erase the top half of the second layer that is peeking through behind that. Now that you have erased to that little bit of it, we're going to switch over to the third layer, which is the very top this part, and smooth out the bottom edge of that, just so that it doesn't end up picking through when we create our animation. Now you should have three layers, and it should look something a little bit like this. Now I'm going to add text and I'm using subscribe. You can use subscribe, follow like anything like that. But I'm going to use subscribe. I'm going to select it, click on "Warp" and Advanced Mesh. I'm just doing this to adjust the perspective a little bit. Merging that down with the top layer. Now we have the top of the button, the middle section, and then the base. I'm going to merge the middle section down with the base so that we now have two layers. Now we can go ahead and click on "Canvas and Animation Assist." We're going to set to the first layer as the background so that we just have the top of the button separate, and we're going to duplicate that. With each layer that we create, we're going to drag it down slightly. Now, duplicate that layer, and then bring it down slightly again until you have reached the bottom. I'm bringing the frames per second down to about four. I'm going to duplicate the first frame and bring that all the way to the end, so that when the button is pressed down, it immediately goes back up. I'm going to hold that last frame for about three seconds, but you can't set it to whatever you prefer. Save it as an animated GIF. Turn on the transparent background and export. 10. Multiple Sunflower Gif: This next GIF is another super simple one, so these are just rotating sunflowers. These sunflowers were drawings that I had already done. So I'm going to turn on Animation Assist. I'm going to duplicate this layer and draw around one of the sunflowers and I'm just going to rotate it a little bit. Draw on the next flower and rotate it a little bit as well. Then do this to the last sunflower. Now I'm going to duplicate this layer and do the same thing. So since you can see the previous layer a little bit when you have Animation Assist on, you can see how much you need to move every time. Now I have five frames, I'm going to bring the frames per second down to six and play that. I am happy with that, although I'm going to switch this over to ping-pong, so it goes back and forth rather than looping. I duplicated the last frame though, and moved them over a little bit more and just so that they would have a little bit more movement. If you want there to be more movement or less movement, it's all up to you. But I am happy with this, so I'm going to go ahead and export it. 11. Polaroid Camera Gif : Next up is this Polaroid. I had this Polaroid camera drawn already and I'm just fitting it to the Canvas, but leaving space at the top for the Polaroid. Now I am making a new layer and I'm just using a white color for the frame of the Polaroid, that is what I am starting to draw right here. Just to make things a little bit easier, I'm duplicating this, and then just making it a little bit smaller to create the frame of the Polaroid. I'm merging those two layers together and then I'm going to fill this in. Also for this whole drawing, I used the 6B pencil. Now that that's done, I am creating a new layer and dragging that beneath it. This is going to be the actual photo part. I'm just filling up the background with a random color and I'm going to bring in some of my sample drawings, merging those two areas together and now here you can see I have the drawings. I'm just placing that in the center and then I will merge that so that the photo is all on one layer. You will end up with two players, the camera and the photo. Now we can turn on animation assist. We are going to turn off the photo for now because we will be working with the camera and drawing the flash. I'm going to duplicate the camera layer and drawing a small flash. This will gradually get a little bit bigger. Duplicate this. I'm going to lower the opacity a little bit just so that I can see the previous flash to make it a little bit bigger and repeat this. But also for this GIF, we are going to be using a few more layers than we normally do. Depending on the iPad that you have, you will be limited, which is what happened to me, I ran out of layers. I had to delete some of the flashes. You will see that later on. But I ended up making it work. I will show you when that happens. This is going to be a little bit confusing. Basically what I'm doing here is reversing the flash. I'm duplicating the second to last layer and bringing that to the end. Third to last bringing that to the end. Then fourth to last and bringing that to the end so that the flash goes out and then back in. Now when I play it, this is what it looks like. We can turn on the Polaroid layer now, and I'm going to duplicate just the camera. Now I will bring it down the Polaroid to where it is just peeking through the top. I am bringing that layer underneath the camera and I'm also going to duplicate it so that we always have an extra camera and Polaroid. Because we will be using those copies to merge and then they'll need extras to be able to continue. Go ahead and merge the camera and the Polaroid and here is where you can see me deleting some of the flash frames. I am duplicating the camera and Polaroid again so that we have two sets and then bring that beneath the camera and merge those two layers. Now duplicate the camera and the Polaroid again. Now bring the Polaroid up a little bit again and then bring that to below the camera and merge those two layers. Duplicate the camera and the Polaroid. Bring the Polaroid beneath the camera, raise the Polaroid up a little bit, and merge those two layers. Then the extras you can just delete because that was the last one and this is what the final GIF looks like. Got a little bit confusing, I know, but I hope that I explained it well. There we go. 12. Link in Bio Gif: Now onto a link in bio GIF. For this one, since we are working with the text, I'm going to add text and type in link in bio. Of course, this can be anything that you want it to be. But I am going to double tap on that and changing the color, also changing it to a font that I want. Anytime that you want to adjust text, just double tap on it until all of the words are highlighted and then you can edit it. Now I've resized this to how I want. I'm going to turn the opacity down on that. The brush that I'm using is the script brush. Creating a new layer, and I'm going to trace over the text layer, but make sure that it is a little bit different. This is what is going to be the animation, is the difference in each text layer. I'm going to turn the opacity back up on the text layer, once I have drawn in the second layer. What I'm going to do is duplicate the text layer and bring that down. Then duplicate the text layer again and bring that down so that I have three of those text layers, and I'm going to merge them. You might need to resize to fill the canvas up as much as you can. That's what I'm doing now. I'm going to Alpha lock that so that I can change the color. Bring the opacity down a little bit, create a new layer. Now using the same color, I'm going to go over the second row. I'm going to turn the opacity back up on the text layer, change the color, and fill in the text layer with that. Now, I'm going to turn the opacity back down and create a new layer. Again, draw over that. I'm turning the opacity back up on that text layer and then we can merge all three of the drawn layers, after I adjust to the first one because I didn't do that before. Now we have two layers. The first one is the one that we drew, and then the second one are the text layers. You can see what the animation will look like. Now turn on Animation Assist. I'm going to duplicate the first layer, bring it over to the end, duplicate the second layer, bring it to the end. Turn the Frames Per Second on a little bit. When we play it, this is what it looks like. Then just duplicate a few more frames so that it's a little bit longer. There we go. You can go ahead and export as an animated GIF. Turn on the transparent background and you're good to go. 13. Simple Text Gif: Now on to a more simple GIF to create. But this is just a simple text GIF. The brush that I used for this is the script brush. I just wrote out the word Monday. The days of the week GIFs are commonly used on Instagram. I thought I would include this. I have six colors. What I'm doing is turning the opacity down of that first layer. All I'm doing is going over the previous letters, but switching the colors. Now I am turning the opacity back up on the first layer. I turn on the Animation Assist, which you don't need to have on. You can do it either way. You can have it on or off as you're drawing it. It doesn't matter. I am just repeating this again. After seeing that play, I'm going to add another layer and do that one more time just so that it goes through all the colors. Once you have as many layers as you want, make sure that the opacity is turned up on all of them. Then turn on Animation Assist, and this is what it looks like. If you're happy with how that looks, then go to animated GIF. Turn on the Transparent background and export. 14. Loading Screen Gif: GIF Number 10 is this little loading screen. What I did first is sketched out the basic outline. There's this loading bar, and basically what this GIF is going to be is the bar filling up. But once you have the basic outline and the bar that you are going to fill up, turn on animation assist and set this frame as the background and then add a frame. Now we are going to start filling up the loading bar. On the first frame I am going to draw out a little section at the beginning and fill that in. Once you have that first section filled in, duplicate that frame and then add another section and fill that in as well. Repeat this until the loading bar is full. Now this is what it looks like when I play it. I am going to turn the frames per second down to about three, and think I like that. Now what I'm going to do is hold that last frame for about two seconds. Now I'm going to go back to the first frame and uncheck the background just for a second, just so that we can duplicate it so that there is just a little bit of a gap. Now when we play it, this is what it looks like. You can adjust the speed however fast or slow you want the loading bar to fill up. But I'm happy with this so I'm going to share as an animated GIF. Turn on the transparent background and export. 15. Upload to GIPHY: Now we're going to upload our GIFs. Go to giphy.com and click the "Upload" button at the top. Here you'll have the option to log in or create an account. Once you're signed in, on the upload page, you can either browse your files or drag and drop your GIFs. Here's where you can add tags that are relevant to your GIF. You can type in tags one-by-one, or use commas to enter multiple at once. Click the "Plus" sign or hit ''Enter'' after each tag. When adding tags, you need to make sure that they are relevant to the GIF. Add specifics such as the subject, catchphrases, colors, and themes. For the GIFs that are made specifically for Instagram, like the ''Swipe up'' or ''Link-in-bio'' ones, I added Instagram as one of the tags as well as my name. This way, anyone looking for my GIFs can easily find them by searching my name. Once you've entered your tags, hit ''Upload'' and wait for it to be complete. To see all your GIFs, click on your profile to the left, and this will bring you to your channel. 16. Use Your Gifs on Instagram Stories: Now I'm going to show you how to use your GIFs or stickers in your Instagram stories. On the GIPHY app, go to your profile and click on uploads. Find the GIF you want to use and then tap on it to copy. Then go into your Instagram story, and if you have your photo already open, then you will see that GIF pop-up and just tap on that to bring it in. You can also just tap in and tap again to paste the GIF. Now, you can place it wherever you want and also resize it. If you want to add more GIFs to this, go back to GIPHY, copy another one and then paste it here and that is it. Here are a few examples of some stories I made using a few of the other GIFs. 17. Apply for an Artist Channel: As I mentioned in the intro of this class, I will be sharing the process of applying for an artist channel on GIPHY. The first step, if you haven't already, is to create an account. Make sure to fill in your email, your display name, this will show on your accounts. You can add social media links that best represent your work and make sure that you upload a profile photo. GIPHY looks for channels that have at least 5-10 pieces of original animated and noncommercial artwork already available. You can of course, upload more gifts if you have them. I had around 21 uploads in my applied for an artist channel. Go to GIPHY Support and click on the button that says "Giphy For Brands and Artists." Click the link that says "Apply For An Artist Channel" and then click "Here", and it will take you to the application. I can't see the application anymore since I already have an artist channel. But once you submit it, you should get an email confirming that they have received your application. I have heard from others that it could take a week to a few months to be accepted. It just depends on how many applications they are receiving. But mine was accepted exactly a week after I applied. Once you officially have an artist channel, you will be able to see your gifts if you search your name on Instagram. You can also see analytics on your GIPHY Dashboard. That is the process of applying for an artist channel on GIPHY. 18. Class Project & Thank You!: For the class project, create your own GIF to use in your Instagram story. Go over to the class project section of the class to upload your GIF. If you have an artist channel on Giphy, you can include a link to it if you would like to share your work. I really hope that you enjoyed this class. If you have any questions at all, be sure to ask me in the Discussions page and you can follow me if you would like to be updated on my future classes. [MUSIC].