Canva Animation Tutorial: Easy Steps for Engaging Social Videos

There are some really effective tools within Canva. But the real power and the magic happens when you combine those tools and make use of the whole ecosystem. Today we're going to be bringing together image editing, video tools, animations and transitions elements and text to create a vertical video. Introducing our definitely not completely made up team. One of the keys to success when you're working with videos and animations that are made up of multiple parts, is to make sure that you prepare

the individual elements or groups of elements before you actually start compiling and animating. Now, particularly when the end result is going to be a vertical video like today's video, I often like to have a working document that gives me a little more screen space to prepare those elements, and I can then copy and paste them into that smaller canvas when I'm ready. And so I just use a horizontal video document to gather all my assets, and I can then put them into the vertical video canvas wh

en I'm ready. So let's have a look at what I've prepared so far. This is my working document, where I'm gathering all the elements that I'm going to use. Now, the first is the photographs of my team. So here you have four photographs that I have uploaded of my completely real and not made up team, who also happen to be exceedingly attractive. And all I've done is I've used the image that I uploaded, and then I've gone to edit photo and used background remover to remove the background. And then b

ecause I wanted to add a little bit of depth, I've clicked on the shadow button here, used drop Shadow, and then I've just played around with the settings to get something that gives a bit of depth, but that isn't too dark and doesn't look too weird. And that's what I've done for those top ones. For the bottom ones. All I did was have a circular frame, and I clicked and dragged the image into it and repositioned it. I have actually made a group here because behind each of these I've added a circ

ular shadow just to give it a little bit of depth and make it stand out from the background. And then of course, aligning those and grouping them means that each of these groups acts as a separate or single element, so it's easier to move and animate. I also wanted to include a little bit of information about each of the team members. So I created these four collections of elements. Each box that's behind these elements has an outline which is solid and fully 100% visible, and behind it is a box

with just has a background of 85%. And that's just so that when things are behind it, you can see them through a little bit, but it's got a very strong outline to make it stand out. Text boxes and simple icons here, and then a text box at the bottom where you could add whatever you wanted in. And then I added this little emoji of the heart, just because I thought it added some color and was fun. Now, obviously I've stuck to really simple icons here that are just in one color, but you could go c

razy and add animated icons, whatever you wanted, or anything that represents what you were trying to communicate about your team. It could have something to do with what they actually do as part of your business, or could just be something really personal. Whatever works for your brand. Now, once I've got all of these set up one for each of my team members, I'm then just going to select each of the groups and group them. It's by clicking Group here, or doing Ctrl or Command G to make a group. A

nd that just means again that each of these are essentially an individual element. The way that I move and use them within Canva, which makes them easy to work with, So this is my vertical video document that I've started. I brought in those circular pictures of my team, and I've just staggered them here to make them look a little more interesting. And then I've got an animated element in the background which I searched for. Lottie and Lottie are a format of files that is usable in Canva and on

web, where they're good for rescaling because they are vectors. But you can also recolor them in Canva. So if you search for Lottie and you have a look at the available files or elements, there, they're really good because most of them you can recolor completely and they keep their animation. And I'm going to do a future video on Lottie Files, but it's one way of finding some nice, interesting backgrounds and elements that are easy to recolor. next thing I did was just add in a couple of text bo

xes. I have this serif font here which has a typewriter effect, and underneath that I have a script font which has the wipe effect on it. Just a quick note that's actually intentional, having two different animations on those, because when you're writing in a script font, you don't tend to write each individual word and stop. You tend to write and it flows on. So never use a typewriter animation for a script font. It looks really amateurish and it doesn't make sense. So back to the layout. I've

just done that with a really simple animation, and if I hit play now, you'll see I've added my branding at the bottom and it just plays very simply as an intro slide. Then what I did was I took these four images of the people, and I pasted them onto the next slide and then resized and align them at the top. I also added in this white bar. Now we're going to use that as a kind of signpost to show which person we're talking about. But it's also because that real estate at the top of vertical video

s it's kind of dead space, so you may as well make use of it. Now, once I've repositioned these because I copied and paste them. So they're exactly the same elements from the first slide the match and move animation between them fills in the gaps of movement and size. So this is what they were. And when I used matched and moved, you will see that they just move up and resize really nice and smoothly. And Canva does that for us because we're using the exact same elements. One slide to the next. I

f I click on the actual working space, you'll see I've also put in some guides. I've put in these vertical guides which are there just to help me line up these icons with these pictures, because I'm going to move them around, and I want to make sure I can always realign them so that they're consistent. And then I've got horizontal guides for where these stop, where the bigger version is going to stop, and then another guide just to show me that there's some space here. So nothing should go above

that. The last thing that I've done is I've added in just a simple shape from Canva, and I've just used this kind of pill shape in white, and we're actually going to use that as part of the kind of device to show who's talking. And so on this slide, I'm going to hide it essentially by having white on white and you can't see it's there. And then in the next slide we're going to pull it down and allow Machin move to do its thing. So if I just copy and paste this entire slide now you'll see at the

bottom here it is pasted with and move in it already. And what I'm going to do is I am first of all going to move that white shape down. So it acts almost as a pointer. And then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to enlarge this group with zoom in it and reposition it using those guides. And then you can see it's behind that shape now, which is what I don't want. So I'm going to go to position and I am going to just move the white shape behind all the elements so that it's easier going forw

ard. Now again, because we're working with the exact same element and we're just resizing and positioning it. Mentioned move will fill in the gaps for us. So if I grab the playhead at the bottom here, this little triangle and just move it left slowly, you'll see that the animation is actually created for us. Essentially, it goes from this very short slide where we just reposition them, and then the picture of similarly enlarges and that white element moves down. now we've used that to highlight

who is going to be talked about on this slide. I'm going to make this slide a little longer so that we've got some space to play with. And then I'm going to go back to my working document. And I'm going to bring in the elements I want to use. So the first is the photograph with the transparent background. I'm going to paste that in. And then I'm going to enlarge it, drag it to the bottom and just make it really large and a little bit off the page. And just play around until I'm happy with where

it is and how it looks. Next I'm just going to go back to the working slides, and I'm going to copy this group of information. Go back to this slide and paste that in. And then I can resize that because it's a group. And I'm going to place it just to the side of a photograph. And that's essentially how it's going to look. And we're going to create one of those for each of the people in our team. Now, as I mentioned before, there are a lot of ways to do this, but if you follow a certain workflow,

it makes it easier for you to create these animations. The first is obviously to include and copy and paste in the right text and elements like we were doing in the working document. The next thing you want to do is to set up the individual slides like this. But you don't want to do the animation on each individual slide or element, yet you want to do that at the end. Because if you do it now and you change the timing, it could then become difficult to copy and paste that slide going forward. S

o we're going to just put the elements on and we'll come back to the final animations. So that way it's easier to create. so for our next slide we want to profile Jamal. So I'm going to copy and paste this slide so that we're using the exact same elements. I'm going to remove this photograph. And her group of information. And I'm going to resize her photo back to the small size. And then using my guides I'm going to position essentially again I'm going to then use the little white line which is

the signposting. And I'm going to move it across to be behind Jamal. And then I'm going to enlarge Jamal's photograph to be consistent with the size it was now, because we've got to match and move between these slides again. Canva will add in the animations for us. So as I slide this along at the bottom in the timeline, you'll see these photo goes smaller again. The white line moves across. And now we're profiling Jamal. And then we're going to go back to our working document. Copy and paste Jam

al's boxes of information as well as Jamal's photographs. And just get those to a place where we are happy with the way that they look. If you want to make sure that you're consistent with the sizes of these boxes, you can always add in a couple of other guidelines by clicking on the ruler and clicking and dragging them down. So now you can see I've got the guide at the top and bottom, and I can make sure that this fits in to the same proportions, so that actually it's all at least consistent. N

ext, let's grab Jamal's image with the transparent background. And we're going to paste that into the document. And we're going to enlarge it. Now you'll see here him and his shadow are actually in front of that box with all the elements in. but I actually want them behind that. So I'm going to go to position and just click and drag that layer behind the elements or the group that we've pasted with his information in. I'm going to move it over a little bit. And you can see because we had the box

transparent, you can still see he's behind that box, which adds a nice bit of depth to the design. So those are our first two slides. And now we're just going to repeat that for the next two people for Kevin and for Shay. Now, before we put the finishing touches to the design animation for this, one of the things that we talk about inside my Canva OS course is creating a workflow or a process for how you work in Canva, to make sure that you don't forget anything and to make sure it's less overw

helming, particularly when you're working with a lot of different elements and animating for video. And in fact, for this enrollment, I am adding a whole load of resources to the Canva OS course to help. Specifically with creating video and animation, including checklists that will help guide you through this process that you can use any time you're creating to make sure that it frees you up to be more creative and worry less about all the details and the process. If that sounds like something y

ou would be interested in learning, please head to the link in the description or on the screen right now, and sign up for the waiting list for Canva OS. The course is opening for enrollment next week, and if you're on that list, I will be sending out an email to let you know about an early bird discount that's going to be available for two weeks only for people who are interested in uplifting their Canva skills, and also their whole creative process. Okay, so let's get back to this animation. A

couple of things that I want to add. Now, obviously, I need to animate these individual elements on the slide, I also want to highlight the person that's being talked about a little bit more. what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into the Canva elements, and I'm going to type in gradient shape. And what I'm looking for is something in the graphics that has a kind of soft edge to it And I want to find something that's in a kind of yellow orange color. So what I'm going to do is go to the filte

rs and I'm going to just put in orange. okay. So that's kind of perfect. This element here I'm going to click on and make it appear in the document. And you'll see it's got a blurred edge but it's got orange yellow and a little bit of pink. And I kind of love that color. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to scale it down, and I'm going to put it so that it just peeks out the bottom of that picture, so that when I send it to the back behind it, it actually looks like it's got a bit of

a glow to it. And so that's another element I'm going to add into each slide. now when it comes to animating the slides, the matching move animation or transition between slides has done some of the hard work for us. You'll see moving from the slide to the I'll slide, the top moves and the picture replaces, and so do all the details that we copied and pasted in. But I want a little more movement on these slides. I want this image to just kind of very subtly pop up the image of simile. I want it

to kind of move up gently. And so what I'm going to do is go to animate and I'm going to choose rise, and I'm going to slow it down a little bit. And I actually only want that to come in once this top element has moved. So what I'm going to do is just click on the three dots and go to show timing. And then at the bottom here I'm going to click and drag on the left of that image. And I'm going to just click along so that we can see at the top how that circle animates. And once it appears that it

is stationary, that's when I want the big picture to rise up. Next, I want to also add an animation to this group of information and details. So I'm going to click on that group. And I think what I want to do is add the same animation. So I'm just going to add a rise. And again I actually only want that to happen once the picture is in. So if I click on show timing I can do the same thing. Click and drag on the left hand side until after the picture has popped up. And then the text can come in

with information about the person. And that seems like it will be enough for me. So if I scrub along and just see how it ends, you'll see that they should also fade out. The next thing that we want to do is that little glowing circle that we've added in. I just want that to fade in behind that circular graphic, and I want that to come in again once the graphic has actually stopped resizing. So we'll just add that in there. So let's watch through again. From the beginning we have our intro slide.

They move to the top and then that single one is highlighted and the information about the individual person comes in. Now all we're going to do next is literally repeat this exact same process on the other three slides. Because now that we have the content in, it's all about just refining the animation and the timing. Now that that's done for each of the slides, let's have a look as we play through how the animations all work. And if there's anything else we need to refine the timing on. And o

f course, at the end I had to add a little bit of branding. I really hope this has been helpful. If you were interested in learning more of these, please have a look at the rest of the videos on my YouTube channel and otherwise. If you'd like to learn from me directly, sign up for my Canva O.S course when it opens for enrollment next week. It's going to be brilliant and the feedback has been so fantastic so far. Thank you so much for being here. Have a fabulous week.