It's common to design social media assets in Adobe Illustrator. But what if I said it's also possible to take those static social post images and add animation in just a few steps?
Follow along in this tutorial and learn how to create three Instagram post layouts in Illustrator and import them into Adobe Animate. Here, I'll go over how to create a 12-second video reel that can be shared on in an Instagram post to promote an upcoming event or sale.
In this lesson, we'll be creating three post designs for a fictional Cryptocurrency exchange platform called CoinQuest.
As always, you can find all the assets from this tutorial available for download here.
Creating a new document
Go to File > New or click on the New File button on the Illustrator home screen.
In the Units dropdown, set it to Pixels.
In the Width field, type 1080 px.
In the Height field, type 1080 px.
Set the Artboards to 3.
Click Create.
A very important step when designing the Instagram posts is creating a total of 14 layers – many of which will have content that will be animated when imported to Animate. Do this at the very beginning even before adding anything to the artboards.
The Layers should be named and ordered as follows:
These Layers will carry over to Adobe Animate and make the animation process much easier.
Once you have completed designing Illustrator, save and close the document and let's import the artboards separately into Animate.
First, let's create a new document.
Creating a New Document in Animate
Click on Create New or go to File > New
In the Width field, type in 1080 and in the Height field, also type in 1080
Set the Frame Rate to 30.00
Set the Platform Type to HTML5 Canvas
Importing Artboards to Stage
In the new Animate document, click on File > Import > Import to Stage.
Locate the Illustrator file on your computer and click Open.
In the Import to Stage options, click the Collapse All icon (arrows pointing up) to help see which layers are selected.
In the Artboard dropdown, choose Artboard 1 and double check that all layers marked 1 at the end are selected for imported. Conversely, if any remaining layers not marked 1 are selected, be sure to uncheck.
Click Import.
In the Timeline panel and above the Layers click on the folder icon to create a New Folder.
Rename the Folder IG Post 1 and drag all the layers into this folder.
Repeat the same step for Artboards 2 and 3.
Here's a visual slide of the steps explained above:
Now that the Artboards have been imported to the canvas, it's time to add the animation.
Before doing so, let's set the entire animation time to 12 seconds. This can be done by clicking on the first empty frame at the 12 second mark in Layer 1, going to Layer 3 and while holding Shift, clicking the the last empty frame then pressing F5 on your keyboard to add empty keyframes.
It's also important to convert everything element that will be animated into a symbol. I won't list this step below, but to do this, right-click the object and select Covert to Symbol. The type for everything in this project can remain as "Graphic".
Animating IG Post 1
Click on the Main_Title_1 layer and place the playhead at the very first frame.
Press f6 or click on the Insert Keyframe icon in the Timeline tools.
Move the playhead to Frame 15 and insert another Keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main title outside of the canvas, to the left.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on Main Details, move the playhead to Frame 20 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to Frame 35 and insert another Keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the details outside of the canvas, to the left.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on Main Image layer, move the playhead to Frame 40 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to the 55 frame mark and insert another keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main image outside of the canvas, to the right.
Right-click anywhere between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on the Main Shape layer, move the playhead to Frame 40 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to the 55 frame mark and insert another keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main image outside of the canvas, from the bottom.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Move the playhead to Frame 100 and insert keyframes to every layer in that position.
Move the playhead to Frame 105 and insert keyframes to every layer in that position.
Select all the keyframes in Frame 105 and with the Selection Tool, move the the entire slide outside of the canvas to the left.
One thing to note is aside from Main Title, you will need to delete the layers before every first keyframe we created. For example, click on Main Details and delete the frames between 0 and 20. To do this, click on the first frame, hold Shift and click the last frame and press Delete or Backspace on your keyboard.
Do this for every instance that an animation was created to a layer.
Animating IG Post 2
Click on the Main Title 2 layer and place the playhead at the 4 second mark.
Press f6 or click on the Insert Keyframe icon in the Timeline tools.
Move the playhead to Frame 135 frame mark and insert another Keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main title outside of the canvas, to the left.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on Main Details 2, move the playhead to Frame 140 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to Frame 155 and insert another Keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the details outside of the canvas, to the left.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on Main Image 2 layer, move the playhead to Frame 165 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to the 180 frame mark and insert another keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main image outside of the canvas, from the bottom.
Right-click anywhere between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Move the playhead to Frame 210 and insert keyframes to every layer in that position.
Move the playhead to Frame 215 and insert keyframes to every layer in that position.
Select all the keyframes in Frame 215 and with the Selection Tool, move the the entire slide outside of the canvas to the right.
Animating IG Post 3
Click on the Main Title 3 layer and place the playhead at 8 second mark.
Press f6 or click on the Insert Keyframe icon in the Timeline tools.
Move the playhead to Frame 255 and insert another Keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main title outside of the canvas, to the left.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on Main Details 3, move the playhead to Frame 260 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to Frame 275 and insert another Keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the details outside of the canvas, to the left.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on Main Image 3 layer, move the playhead to Frame 280 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to the 295 frame mark and insert another keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main image outside of the canvas, from the bottom.
Right-click anywhere between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
Click on the Main Shape layer, move the playhead to Frame 280 and insert a Keyframe.
Move the playhead to the 295 frame mark and insert another keyframe.
Click on the first frame in the sequence and with the Selection Tool, move the main image outside of the canvas, to the right.
Right-click anywhere in between those two keyframes and add a Classic Tween.
That was a lot steps to follow, which is why it's important to play back and preview everything to make sure the animation makes sense and how it was intended to play out.
As a final step, it's time to export as an MP4 video.
Exporting as Video/Media
Go to File > Export > Video/Media.
In the Export Media window, select Entire Movie and set the Format to H.264.
Choose an Output folder to save the video.
Click Export.