Breath life and even more creativity into your designs with Canva animation; a versatile creative tool from Canva Pro.
With Canva animation, you can instantly whip up an amazing animation in minutes with just a few clicks.
In this article, I cover the basics of Canva animation and how you can start creating stunning social posts, presentations, creatives, and more with it.
Before we get started, if you don’t have a Canva account yet, you can set up a free Canva account.
What is Canva Animation?
Canva Animation is one of the suites of design tools available on Canva Pro.
Canva Animation enables you to create animated visuals for your brand and online presence instantly.
You can animate not just images but text, stickers, illustrations, icons, and other graphic elements as well.
Best of all, you don’t have to learn animation or techie skills to turn your static visuals into animations with this tool. Just drag and drop and let your imagination roam free.
And if you’re on a team, you can share and get inputs and updates with Canva Collaborate (Only $12.99/month for up to 5 team members).
You can download your Canva animation as GIF, directly share with your Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media pages, or schedule them for later.
If you’re unsure what a GIF is, GIFs are Graphics Interchange Format. A GIF is a graphic that displays movement and animation.
Creating GIFs is a great way to catch your fan’s attention and encourage them to engage with your brand online.
GIFs are shared 2 times more than JPEGs and PNGs online so don’t hesitate to jump on this trend if you haven’t already.
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How to Make Canva Animation
It’s pretty simple to make a Canva animation and I will share the step-by-step process in this guide plus a few tips and tricks to make your graphics nicer.
Step 1 – Create Design
Head over to your Canva account to create a new design or open an existing design. There are thousands of Canva templates to choose from.
For this example, I’m creating a simple 4-page Canva animation using The Writer Entrepreneur’s ethos.
Step 2 – Animate Design
Click the “animate” button at the top of the page. An option will open up to choose an animation style.
There are 16 animation styles available. Hover each one to see an example of the animation style.
You can choose 1 animation style for the entire design or different animation styles for each page of the design.
For this tutorial, I’m going with “Tumble” animation style for all pages.
Scroll to the bottom of the animation section and click on the button “Apply to all pages,” to apply the tumble animation style to all the pages.
Step 3 – Customize Canva Animation Speed
Once the design and animation style is complete, you will see the total duration of the Canva animation at the top of the page.
In this tutorial, the duration is 20 seconds. That’s 5 seconds per page. Since it’s only a few lines of text, 5 seconds per page is too much so I’m going to reduce it to 3 seconds per page.
Select each page with your cursor to set individual times for each page. By the end of this, the animation has dropped down to 12 seconds.
Step 4 – Download Canva Animation
Click the “Download” button in the top right corner of the page and choose file type, which is GIF for this tutorial.
A downloading button will appear at the bottom of the page. This will take a few seconds then Canva will give you an option to download the GIF file.
Your gorgeous GIF is ready!
Upload to your website, social media accounts, send to clients or friends, use it for online ads, and more.
How you upload the GIF will differ from platform to platform so check the specifics for that platform.
Below is the Canva animation I created for this tutorial. Simple and easy, yes?
5 Top Tips for Using Canva Animation
- Keep it simple. Don’t create complicated designs with an overload of images and text.
- Don’t add too many pages to the GIF or you might start losing your audience. 5 – 10 pages is a good number.
- Do you want the elements on each page to display animations as one group instead of individually? Highlight that page and group all the elements before you animate.
- Using the same GIF for multiple purposes and need different sizes? You can use the Magic Resize tool to resize any of your GIFs as many times as required.
- Be mindful of the GIF size if using on a website. If it’s too big, it will slow down your website.
How to Make Canva Animations Slower
To make Canva animations slower, head over to the top of the page where you’ll see a stopwatch icon. Next to the clock is the number of current seconds.
Hover your mouse over the stopwatch to reveal a timer with the option to slow down the animations or increase animation times for each page.
You can also change the animation style to something more subtle like Breathe or Photo Zoom, which gives a slower effect.
How To Add Canva Animation to WordPress
If you upload a GIF incorrectly to WordPress, it will display as a static image and won’t work.
To upload correctly, go over to the new post or page you want to add the GIF to and click on Add Media.
Upload the downloaded GIF from your computer to WordPress. After uploading, scroll down to Attachment Display Settings and select Full Size.
Insert the GIF into the post or page and your Canva animation will start playing immediately.
If the Canva animation is too big, head back to Canva, resize the design, and download the GIF again.
You won’t lose any customizations when you resize the design but you might need to adjust images, text, or elements a bit depending on the new size.
Is Canva Animation Free?
You can access only a few Canva animation styles for free but with a Canva Pro account, you’ll get access to the whole suite of animation styles.
You can also download your Canva animation for free if you use free images and elements in the GIF.
If you use pro elements and images, there will be charges. It’s much more economical to create with a Canva Pro account.
I do a comparison between Canva Free and Canva Pro in How to Sign Up for Canva Pro?
If you have any questions about using Canva animation, drop them in the comments section below.
Anna gave up her 9 – 5 to implement her life plan after paying off over $40,000 in debt. She started The Writer Entrepreneur to share her journey and encourage other people to pay off debt and pursue their life plans. She has been featured on HuffPost, YouQueen & Fitnancials among others. Learn more about Anna HERE.
This post may contain affiliate links which means I will make a small commission if you purchase through those links. Read full disclosure HERE.