Design your way

Digital illustrations applied on websites, landing pages, mobile screens, and emails present the booming trend. Both motion graphics and animations are art forms in which objects or characters are given movement.

It’s the art of taking a static image and bringing it to life. It’s always impressive when there is a use of good animated illustration. Some websites go above and beyond with beautiful pictures to make their websites stand out from the rest.

When it comes to engagement, videos, animations, and other motion infographics capture more attention than images.

The internet is a place where you can find endless sources of visual inspiration for your animation. To add advanced design effects to your projects and fully master the art of animation and design, check out these examples of awesome animated illustrations.

Enjoy a wide range of designs, details, colors, and drawings from these animated illustration examples.

Tips For Creating An Animated illustration

Animation source

Animated illustrations are a means to create a film from multiple still pictures. The pictures are mounted one by one and then played quickly to offer a fantasy movement. The animation can be done with motion tween or frame by frame.

It doesn’t matter if you have the simplest forms of animation in your portfolio. Regardless of their complexity, spirits are an excellent way to stand out. You can learn simple skills in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. That way, you will become closer to creating a portfolio you can brag with.

What are animated illustrations?

We can define animated illustrations as the motion of still images and figures. Designers use animation to tell a short story. Simply put, it is a visual enhancement to text.

An animated illustration explains and elaborates topics and processes in a way they are simple to understand. This is a perfect solution for explaining abstract subjects that are hard to imagine.

Reference and Research

The animated illustrations are also known as “the state of being alive.” We see the movement of humans, animals, and inanimate objects like vehicles. That’s why our minds are carefully adapted to our daily lives’ natural and organic appearances.

If something is off the way it moves, it might look bizarre. When starting with animation, reference and study of motion is a must.

Specific Construction and GIFs

If you haven’t animated your work before, making a simple GIF is possibly the best way to start and can be very successful if you can shift some background elements or animate a wave of hair.

This can be easily accomplished in After Effects, depending on your work style, by incorporating any moving elements you have separately produced. An example of this is After Effects’ use to add a slight bit of motion to individual leaves on a tree.

You need to know precisely what you will have to animate when you make the illustration if you want to make a GIF that tells a story. You have to think of your GIF as a little movie with a storyline. Images should have a particular construction to be animated, which for all forms of animations is equivalent. When adding motion, think about what is being applied to the composition. Think about how the plot should change and not only travel for the sake of it. It is beneficial to draw a storyboard, no matter how quick and short.

Typically, animated illustrations are loops, where precisely the first and last frames are the same. It can’t last too long for this sort of animation – it’s just a part of the website or app.

Always go step by step

In making one, there are more steps to take than in the case of animated drawings. First, gather all the materials that appear in the film, displays, pictures, and graphics. You need to build them and keep them aligned with other elements if there are missing elements. You may need a storyboard – a series of sketches that display the mainframes or scenes, usually with some instructions and dialogue.

Start only with the main action and never work simultaneously on several tasks because you will get confused. Try, step-by-step, to animate complex scenes. To make it powerful, you don’t have to animate all the objects on the screen. A simple motion may often be more than enough.

Save time with Layers

Remember, anything that moves will need to be on a separate layer. If you have a character you want to move somehow, the limbs should be made on different layers in Photoshop.

It could be even Illustrator (or any program you use) before taking it into After Effects. This will be a huge time saver.

Consider which parts of it would need to be monitored in After Effects after you construct your graphic. You can find that you want ownership of all things or that holding those components together may be more useful. You’ll need to split them into their layers until you’ve determined what you want to manage.

Ensure the layers are maintained in the order you built them so that the right components are on top. Please give them a name when pulling the pieces into their layers. This allows you to be coordinated and watch them all. Bonus: as you switch your job to After Impact, these names will pass in.

Collaborate at the start if possible

Simple flat shapes and colors are, of course, easy to animate and are a good starting point if you haven’t animated illustrations before. Your greatest buddy is the internet. Someone’s already tried it and is pleased to share how you did it. Even if you don’t just want it, you can use and grow some small snippets.

Some styles would inevitably be more comfortable to transfer. But, if you practice on them and can work with decent animators, there is no excuse why you cannot animate a style.

There is no magical solution, trick, secret, a technique to be able to animate unexpectedly. It takes time and patience, as with something artistic. Patience too much.

There are multiple animation increments, from quick motion inside a simple picture to brief GIFs and loops, then switching to short story-telling bits. Don’t be afraid to ask for inspiration or advice. Please make sure you react after you’ve figured it out.