With Procreate you can animate drawings on your iPad. You can export your animation as a mp4 video or as a GIF. We will show you how it works.
Create an animation with Procreate: Here’s how
You can create an animation with Procreate in just a few steps.
- Draw all immobile objects in your project
First, draw the parts of the image that you don’t want to move in your animation. Then reduce everything to one layer.
- Activate the Animation Assist
Tap Actions (wrench icon) at the top left and activate the Animation Assist under Canvas. A menu appears at the bottom. Here you can see the layers that will later make up your animation. The layer of your immobile objects can already be seen at the bottom as the first frame.
- Define immobile objects as your background
Define your image as a background so that moving parts will appear over your image later. To do this, tap on the corresponding frame in the Animation Bar to open the Frame Options. Activate the Background button. Your background will then be highlighted with a blue frame in the Animation Bar.
- Adjust your settings
Under Settings, you can adjust, how many frames per second should be displayed later in the animation. You can also choose whether your animation should play in a loop, back and forth (Ping-Pong) or just once from start to finish (One Shot).
- Add frames to your animation
Tap Add Frame to create a new layer. Here you can draw objects that will move later, for example falling snowflakes. Repeat the whole thing on another layer. You will have to paint the falling snowflakes in such a way that movement will come into the picture later, for example by drawing, moving or adding objects from top to bottom or left to right.
Play and export your animation
You can also test and play back your animation while painting with Procreate. Once you’re finished with your animation, you can export it to your iPad or another online storage.
- Tap Play in the bottom menu bar on the left. Your animation will play. This way you can see where you might need to improve.
- For example, if you want to create a GIF sticker, activate Loop in the settings. If you want your animation to play only once, activate One Shot.
- Once you are satisfied with your animation, you can export your work. To do so, go to Actions in the top, left menu panel and tap Share.
- Procreate lets you choose between Animated GIF, Animated PNG, and Animated MP4 formats for animated images.
- If you want to create an animated GIF file with Procreate, note that it can only display 256 colors. If you have used a lot of color tones, you should minimize the number of colors when exporting.
- To do this, go to Actions > Share > Animated GIF. Activate the button at Dithtering. Then tap on Export.
