How To Make Motion Graphics: A Beginner’s Guide

What Are Motion Graphics?

Motion graphics are graphic designs in motion. Motion graphics involve animating vector images or illustrations like text, shapes, and logos, often for commercial or personal use. Brands and individuals use motion graphics to deliver messages or teach information, unlike 2D and 3D animation, which are used for storytelling and narrative purposes. Motion graphics typically involve movement such as sliding, bouncing, or fading and are often used in advertisements, promotional content, and explainer videos. 

With voiceovers, music tracks, and sound design, motion graphics can evoke emotion, persuade viewers to take action, and uplevel a simple video project.

Essential Tools You Need to Get Started

Before we get started on how to make motion graphics, make sure you have the following tools:

Creating Vector Images: Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is the go-to software for crafting vector graphics. Although it’s costly, Adobe Illustrator pays off in the long run. This advanced program allows animators and creatives to create beautiful illustrations that they can seamlessly import into an online animation tool such as Adobe After Effects.

Animation Software: Adobe After Effects

Adobe After Effects is a fan favorite among animators of all skill levels, from seasoned professionals to complete beginners. This software features keyframing, masking, and 3D compositing, providing an all-inclusive animation experience for creatives. If you’re just starting, it’s important to note that Adobe After Effects has a steep learning curve. However, with practice and hard work, you’ll become a pro in no time!

Music and Sound Effects: Epidemic Sound or Artlist

Whether you hire a sound designer or implement sound effects yourself, adding music and sound to your animation makes it ten times better. Platforms like Artlist, Epidemic Sound, SoundBible, and Metamorphosis offer extensive libraries of engaging sound effects and dynamic music tracks.

How to Create Motion Graphics in 3 Phases

After you’ve assembled your tools, it’s time to create a motion graphic! Here are the 3 general phases you’ll follow when making motion graphics: 

Phase 1: Planning the Production and Crafting a Storyboard

Every motion graphic needs a script, whether it includes dialogue or not. Even if your motion graphic is at most 30 seconds long, scriptwriting is vital for the rest of the creative process. Include the overall story direction of your production and begin brainstorming when you’d like to add in motion graphics. When writing out the script, ask yourself these questions:

• Who is my target audience?
• What do I want the viewers to do after watching the video? (e.g., buy a product, learn about my brand, attend a local event)
• How do I want to make my audience feel?

Remember to keep your script simple and let the motion graphics do the talking! Consider utilizing animation techniques to add on-screen text or communicate solely through visuals. For enhancement purposes, you can also add a voiceover to narrate to viewers what’s happening in the video. 

Once you’ve crafted a script, it’s time to move onto the pre-production step known as storyboarding, when your animation ideas begin to take form and the final product comes into view. In storyboarding, you can create boxes that detail every scene as thoroughly as possible. Think of it as a comic strip for your video production. Draw each frame, describing what motion graphics appear when and the actions they take in every scene. It is helpful to write out how you’d like the motion graphics to move and demonstrate it through visuals. The more detailed your storyboard is, the easier it will be to create the motion graphics. During this phase, collaborate with the producers, art directors, and animators to hone in on how you’d like the video project to play out. 

Phase 2: Creating the Vector Images

With a clear storyline in mind, it’s time to create vector images for your motion graphics. We recommend designing visuals in high-powered software such as Adobe Illustrator, ensuring you get the best results. You can use any drawing tool in Adobe Illustrator to draw shapes or outlines. Once you’ve sketched the shape, you can use the anchor point tool to refine and adjust curves and angles. You can also color and spice up the graphic with the fill and stroke brushes. To preserve the vector’s quality, save the illustration in .ai, .svg, or .eps.

If you’re not familiar with Adobe Illustrator, here are a few tips you can reference back to when designing your vector graphics: 

• Create your image in layers and keep track of the layers as you work, ensuring that your design is editable and can be easily animated. 
• Use simple lines and shapes. The secret to a high-quality motion graphic is a crisp and clean vector image. As you improve your skills, your graphics will follow suit. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to start with simple designs and work your way up from there.
• Try out the variety of brush strokes and effects. These additions can add unique textures and life-like stylization to your vector image.
• Practice using Adobe Illustrator’s color palette and gradients in the design process. With these tools, you can create the illusion of shadows and depth in otherwise flat vector images. 

Though learning vector image design is tedious, it’s well worth the creative illustrations you can make. With practice, time, and dedication, you’ll be well on your way to a professional designer!

Phase 3: Animating and Refining the Graphics

Now it’s time to make your vector graphics come to life! Import your designs into animation software such as Adobe After Effects, and organize your project by labeling and structuring layers for an efficient workflow.

When creating motion graphics, keyframes are the primary tool you’ll need to get familiar with. Animators use keyframes to set parameters for effects, movement, sound, and other qualities, changing them over time. A keyframe is an anchor point for actions, and each marker has a starting and ending point. Differing keyframes include motions such as ease in or ease out, linear movement, or hold in or hold out. For example, suppose you set a linear keyframe as the first position and an ease-in keyframe as the second. In that case, the vector image will begin in a linear action and cautiously slowly until it reaches the next position.

Understanding how keyframes work is the building block to making motion graphics. For more advanced animations, you can also use keyframes to adjust your graphic’s different layers’ opacity, scale, position, and rotation. As you play around with keyframes, stay in line with your original storyboard to ensure that future music and sound effects align with the motion graphic. After Effects also offers a variety of edits (e.g., blur, glow, camera shake) that you can use to differentiate your motion graphic further.

After you’re satisfied with the final product, the last step is to export your motion graphic. Make sure to choose a format appropriate for how you’ll be sharing your animation, whether on social media or a website.

2 FAQs About Motion Graphics

Here are 2 common questions you may be asking about motion graphics:

How do I become a motion graphic designer?

To become a motion graphic designer, you’ll first need to understand basic design principles, including layout, typography, and color theory. Earning a bachelor’s degree in a creative field (e.g., graphic design, computer graphics, art) can be helpful, but it’s not required to become a professional motion graphic designer. 

If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, take online courses and learn everything you can about motion graphic design. Once you’ve mastered the basics of animation software and designing vector images, start building a portfolio and receiving new clients. Depending on your preferences, you can become a freelance motion graphic designer or seek a full-time job.

How can I learn motion graphics? 

There are various options to choose from when it comes to learning motion graphics. The paramount subjects you need to dive into are the 12 principles of animation. They are as follows: 

• Stretch and squash
• Anticipation
• Staging
• Straight ahead and post to post
• Follow-through and overlapping action
• Arcs
• Secondary action
• Exaggeration
• Timing
• Solid drawing
• Appeal
• Ease in and ease out

You can learn these principles through reading design books, taking online courses, and connecting with seasoned motion graphic designers. The best way to learn motion graphics is to practice, practice, practice. Online platforms such as Skillshare and Udemy offer affordable motion graphic courses that teach animation principles and help you get familiar with numerous software programs. While you learn, start building a visual library of photos, GIFs, videos, music, and other elements from which you can study and pull inspiration. This visual library will help you find your unique design style as you learn and grow in skills!

Learning the basics of motion graphics can take a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on how dedicated you are to online courses and practicing. However, it can take an extended amount of time to become an expert in motion graphic design due to more elaborate animation techniques that are harder to master. 

Hire Professional Animators For Engaging Motion Graphic Videos

If you’ve tried out motion graphics yourself and feel stuck, or if your team is having difficulty finalizing the end animation, you may need to consider hiring the pros. Avalanche Studios is a creative studio based in northern Utah that specializes in full-service video production services. From storyboarding sessions to post-production, our award-winning team will be with you every step of the way. We’ll add motion graphics and animation to enhance your creative project and keep viewers on the edge of their seats! Request a quote from Avalanche Studios, and we’ll get started on adding motion graphics to your animated production!