5 Ways to Make an Animated GIF in Procreate

hi I'm Lisa Bardot and today I'm gonna teach you five ways to make awesome animated gifs gifs gifs however you like to say it in procreate procreate recently added a feature that allows you to export your layers as an animated gif this opens up the entire base of procreate artists to the wonderful world of animation I cannot get enough of making these animations in procreate and I think you're going to love what you can create as well you can use animation to give your work that little extra something something or to express something in ways a static image simply cannot this tutorial will show you five easy methods to start making your own animations today if you're new to procreate I'd recommend watching my intro to procreate tutorial to learn all the basics let's get started here's how animation works in procreate each visible layer or layer group of your artwork becomes a frame in your animation the first frame in the animation is the bottom most layer and progresses upwards procreate takes the frames and compiles them into a special file format called a gif or Jif that loops these frames indefinitely for example here's a rocketship animation I made in my layers panel I've labeled each layer as a numbered frame you can do a quick preview of each frame using procreates new isolate layer function tap and hold on the visibility checkbox to turn off visibility on all other layers now go through and tap and hold on each layer to get a preview of the animation frames tap and hold the layer that is visible to turn all the layers back on procreate will ignore all invisible layers when making a gift so please be sure that the layers are turned on if you want them included in your animation to export your animated gif open the Actions menu tap share and tap animated gif here you can adjust your frames per second which basically makes your animation slower or faster you can also choose to make the background transparent or not finally select your desired file quality I don't really like using the web ready function because it really downgrades the quality a lot plus I've already optimized my canvas for the jiff format which I'll talk about in a moment so I'll use full resolution then tap save image to save it to your camera roll another tip the more frames you create for your animation the smoother the movements will look here is a version of the rocketship animation made with 8 frames and then another one I made with 14 frames the first thing to do when starting your animation is to set up a canvas that's optimized for video and sharing on the web these are the canvas sizes I like to use that allowed me to create sharp high-res art while not overloading the gift format with too many pixels I'll talk more about this at the end of the video when I talk about sharing your animation on the web I have all these sizes saved in my procreate as canvas templates okay now I'd like to show you five different methods that you can use to create animations in procreate method number one is the easiest something I like to call Wiggly animation on a new canvas grab your favorite brush and write something the brush I'm using is called drag it out its from the wash and dry watercolor toolkit that I just released when you're done create a new layer above the layer you just made and then reduce the first layers opacity to about 50% and then on the new layer simply trace over the lettering that you just made now turn off that layer and create another new layer and trace over the lettering again repeat this process one more time and now we have a total of four layers now make sure all the layers are turned on and the opacity of that first layers turn back all the way up now we're ready to export this window gives you a tiny preview of your animation which is a nice way for you to check and see how everything is looking or if you need to go back and make edits I think this looks good so I'm going to choose full resolution and save the image you just made some fun Wiggly text you can also use this same method on illustrations as well not just lettering let's draw a banana the brushes I'm using for this banana are also from the wash and dry watercolor toolkit for the yellow I'm using one called hot concrete and for the black using one called whisker I'm going to go ahead and create a new layer reduce the opacity of my first layer and then draw the banana again I can't really see that line in the middle of the banana anymore so I'm just going to reduce the opacity of the layer that I'm working on so that I can make sure everything lines up so go ahead and repeat this process so that we have three layers total I think this Wiggly animation looks best when you have three four five layers it gives you a little more variation in that kind of Wiggly motion turn all our layers back on and a pasady to 100% and we're ready to export here we go banana looks pretty good let's go ahead and save it there you go a wiggly jiggly banana method number two is something I like to call animation by erasin so for this technique I'm going to draw a donut on my canvas to draw this I'm using brushes from my gouache paint box if you're using multiple layers to draw your artwork like I am be sure to merge them before you start working on your animation to start making our animation frames duplicate your artwork layer turn off the visibility of the previous layer and grab your eraser tool and I'm just going to erase a way kind of a bite mark of this donut and then I'm just gonna grab my paintbrush and draw just like a couple little dots those are like crumbs duplicate the layer again turn off the previous layer and then erase some more draw on some more little crumbs to duplicate erase another couple bites drawn some crumbs repeat repeat repeat keep going until you have eaten the entire doughnut I mean until it's all gone I'm going to add a couple more frames of the whole donut by duplicating the bottom most layer two times when you're all done make sure to turn on all your layers and then go to export and you can see a little preview of the animation and save it kind of makes you want a doughnut huh method number three will show you how to make an animation using the liquify tool let's make a silly animation using this arm I drew before we begin I want to show you another useful animation tool create a new layer and fill it completely with white then reduce the opacity to about 50% we'll use this layer to create what's called an onion skin this allows you to utilize a reduced opacity version of your previous frame to guide you in creating the next frame of your animation okay duplicate the arm layer and place it above the onion skin layer all three layers should be visible now let's go into the liquify tool which can be found in the adjustments menu we're going to use the push function of liquify and just kind of push the artwork down just a little bit we're gonna make kind of a bendy arm that's gonna wobble up and down now duplicate that topmost arm layer and we can also turn off that very first frame because we really only want the current frame and the previous frame visible as well as the onion skin and place your onion skin in between those top two layers now we can go into the liquify menu again and push it down a little bit further maybe increase the size of our brush to keep pushing down more of the arm and then we'll repeat that again duplicating the layer moving the onion skin turning off that previous layer and then using liquify to just bend it down a little bit more and let's do it one more time so now we have a total of five frames so the next thing I want to do is reverse the movement so it can wobble back to straight so to do that I'm actually just going to duplicate all of my layers and put them into reverse order so it's gonna go down and then it's going to go back up to straight and now that I'm back to straight I'm going to do the opposite movement and I want to bend the arm upwards so I'm going to turn off all the layers except for the top three and then I'll go into liquify and I'll start pushing it upwards and I'll create a few frames like that and then I want to reverse that movement back to a straight arm again because creating a looped animation is really crucial when it comes to these animated gifts the way the format works is it takes all your frames and plays them in an indefinite loop so having an animation that loops naturally makes for a really good-looking gif so we'll do the same we'll reverse those last few layers and reverse the order of them put them up at the top and now if we look at the first layer and the last layer we'll see that they'll naturally form a loop and we can verify this by going over to the shares animated gif function and procreate we'll get our little preview and we'll see that wobbles very naturally as much as a wobbly arm can be natural I guess so the next method will show you how to make motion that goes across your canvas using a guide on my canvas I've drawn a paper airplane above that layer create a new layer and draw a dark line across the canvas this line will be the path of motion that the airplane is going to take as it goes across the canvas go ahead and reduce the opacity of that guide layer now we can start setting up the frames of the animation I want the paper airplane to come into the frame so I'm gonna move it all the way over to the side but not so far that it crops off any of the image now I'm going to duplicate it and work backwards with the motion until it's completely out of the frame but these frames are now out of order because we're working from the bottom to the top so I just need to reverse the order of each of those layers now we can start working on our forward movement duplicate the topmost layer and move it a little bit forward and rotate it duplicate again move forward rotate duplicate move duplicate move until the airplane is all the way out of the frame and then at the very end I like to add a couple of empty layers which gives me a little more breathing room in between the animation loops which you'll see in the preview when we go to export it now be sure to turn off visibility of that guide layer because we don't want that to show in our animation so go up to the Actions menu share animated gif and we could see a preview of our paper airplane go ahead and choose full resolution to export and there you go we've got a paper airplane that follows the motion of that line that we drew guides can be really handy I also use them to make this worm animation for this animation I redrew each frame so I drew like 20-something worms for this but I used the motion guide to help me draw the worm and then I also used this guide so that I knew I was getting the length of the worm consistent throughout the animation method number five is isolated movement this technique will show you how to use layer groups to only animate a portion of your artwork I'm going to make an animation of a fire-breathing dragon I want the dragon to be static and the fire to be animated I've drawn my dragon and merged all those layers into one since I know I won't be making any more changes to the dragon now I'll create a new layer for the fire another handy tip is to save colors you'll be using to redraw animation frames in a color palette for easy access I'm saving these three colors I used for the fire select the dragon and fire layers and tap group at the top of the layers menu to make the next frame of animation duplicate the entire group by swiping left and choosing duplicate now select the duplicate fire layer tap it and choose clear from the pop-up menu turn off visibility of the previous layer group I'm not using an onion skin to help draw my next frame because I want those flames to look a little more random as you can see I'm using the colors I saved in my palette once I finish drawing the fire I'll duplicate the layer group turn off the previous group and clear the fire layer then I'll draw in another set of flames repeat this process two more times for a total of five layer groups when you're done be sure that all layer groups and layers within those groups are set to visible go up to the Actions menu share an animated gif and for this one I'm going to increase the frames per second to really make those flames roar I used the same method to animate this woman's hair blowing in the wind and this balloon floating through moving clouds the downside to this method is depending on your hardware of your iPad you may hit your max layer count if this happens you can go back and merge layers in a layer group as long as you're sure you won't need to make edits to them when you're planning your animation you should decide how many components of your artwork will be moving and make sure each of them are on a separate layer for this balloon animation I had a separate layer for all the moving parts as well as a layer for the static ones the sky was static and my animated parts were the clouds the balloon and the string the last thing I'd like to show you is how to share these lovely animations on the web certain social media outlets like Instagram do not support the gif format if you want to post your animated gif in your Instagram feed or stories you must convert it to a video format first there are a number of ways to do this but I'll show you my favorite I use the app gif vid which set me back a dollar tap create and then tap gift to video choose your gifts and then choose the highest resolution my favorite thing about this app is that it allows you to choose the number of animation loops Instagram doesn't allow you to post any video shorter than 3 seconds so this is very useful I set the number of loops to equal 15 seconds this is the perfect length if I decide to post them to my stories as well tap the arrow to generate your video then tap the share icon to save it to your camera roll now you have a video of your animation you can easily share the creation of moving pictures and animation goes back hundreds of years and this tutorial only begins to scratch the surface of what is possible but I hope you've learned some fun new ways to incorporate animation into your work you can find the brushes used in this tutorial including the wash and dry watercolor toolkit and the gouache paint box at our dough brush comm if you're posting your animations to Instagram I would love to see them please use the hashtag Pardo brush thanks and happy art making if you liked this video please subscribe for more awesome tutorials and check out one of my other videos have a great day [Music]

Channel: Bardot Brush

Views: 718,487

Keywords: Procreate, digital art, iPad, iPad drawing, iPad art, lettering, hand lettering, digital drawing, drawing, iPad pro, apple pencil, procreate art, procreate tutorials, painting, illustration, procreate how to, drawing tutorial, how to draw, how to draw on iPad, procreate drawing, how to draw procreate, intro to Procreate, how to use Procreate, animated gif, procreate animated gif, how to make animated gif, animation, iPad animation, procreate animation, animation tutorial

Id: IpfFGtY9eX8

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2019