Have you experienced design-envy when you see the brands you admire [and competitors] adding awesome animated GIFs and stickers to their Instagram Stories and Reels? Show
If you’ve wondered how they do it, and how to start the process for your own brand, we’re here to show you exactly how to do it, step by step. And with our hacks, you can start using them immediately – no GIPHY account required! These are the skills that we’ll detail for creating frame-by-frame animation, with our GIF maker:
WHY YOU SHOULD CREATE BRANDED GIFS FOR INSTAGRAM STORIES [AND REELS!]There are a bunch of benefits for creating GIFs of your own. From increasing brand awareness, through to having more creative assets on hand to customise your stories as you post. They’re fun, inject personality into your brand, add movement to your story without tricky or time consuming video editing, and did we mention… super fun and a little bit addictive?! Animated GIFs can be added to Instagram Stories in a couple of different formats; generally known as Animated GIFs or Animated GIF Stickers. Animated GIFs:These are the GIFs that have a flat, opaque background, and look like these examples where the edges are square, and each pixel contains a color. Animated GIF Stickers:Stickers on the other hand, contain transparent pixel areas. This means that when you add them on top of any content in your Instagram Stories or Reels, the text or graphic elements that you create will appear without the boxy effect around them, just like the ones you add from the Giphy sticker integration within Instagram! [Scroll down to learn how we created each of these effects!] How to make an animated GIF Sticker in EasilCreating a GIF is a frame by frame animation adjustment style in Easil. You have full control over what colors you want to change, updating text and so on, just as you would in any standard design. Creating your GIF DesignIf you’re new to designing, we always recommend starting with a design template.
Try these quick & easy animation styles to give your GIFs some movementYou only need a little bit of movement or variation of color between your pages (or frames) to make a super-cool GIF. Try out some of these techniques on your graphic or text elements, to create GIPHY-worthy GIFs! Stacking text effectHow to create this effect:
Moving Element + Text Change effect
This simple 2 frame animation can be completed in less than a minute!
POPPING STICKER EFFECT
This is another type of animation that works well with just 2 frames to start off with!
ROTATING TEXT EFFECT STICKERRotation can be applied to any graphic element in your sticker to create a striking effect. In ours, we opted to use circular text. Just because, who doesn’t love curved text?! Our design example combines a couple of techniques – the rotation of the text, and we also added a color change to the graphic element on every second frame, to create a flashing effect. Avoid adding any more effects than this to prevent eye-soreness..
If you’re looking for more creative ideas and inspiration for creating GIFs, check out our previous articles:
Using your GIFs in Stories, without a GIPHY Account [iPhone required!]
For Android users, there are some additional steps required, and can be hit and miss with working as an animation in stories unfortunately.
With this method you can share your files with your clients, team-mates and who-ever else you need to, providing them with a quick and easy option to brand stories. How to apply for a GIPHY account for your GIFsCreating a Brand or Artist account on Giphy requires that you go through an Approval process. After you create an account, you’ll find an option to ‘Join as an Artist or Brand’ at the bottom of the page. Complete the details, ensuring you use a top-level-domain email address, and then (if you haven’t already), get to work with filling your account with some stand-out creative stickers and GIFs! When creating for GIPHY, your designs will need to be a bit more generic than they would be just for your brand. GIPHY is searching for content that many people want to use, so you’ll need to do your best to avoid using brand logos and promotional content as much as possible. This is another great reason to create your library of GIFs on your own phone – it’s 100% in your control! The GIFs in your account will not be searchable in Instagram Stories/Reels and other Giphy partners until your account is approved. We’ve heard the process ranges from a couple of days, to several weeks. If you don’t hear from them within that timeframe, send a follow up request to support, but do ensure that your account has quality, sharable content included before you do this! How to add your GIFs to TenorTenor is the GIF library owned by Google and is the largest GIF platform on the internet, and allows you to share your GIFs directly from the Tenor GIF Keyboard. Use them on LinkedIn Messaging, Facebook comments, on your website, and more. It’s easy to setup an account by selecting a user name plus valid email address, and agreeing to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. From there, all you need to do is click on the Upload button at the top right of the screen, and then drag and drop your GIF file in, add tags for search, and then finalise upload. Your GIF will be available to share on various social networks with the buttons displayed, as well as via Share URL and Embed code. OVER TO YOUAre you ready to start building a GIF library for your brand, or for your clients? We’d love to see what you create! Tag us @teameasil in Stories, Reels or posts when you’ve used these tips! Can I upload my own GIFs to Instagram?Just upload your GIF in the best quality, edit on the spot, add all the necessary captions, and you're done! You can also use GIPHY for Instagram GIFs on your phone: Download the GIPHY app. Find the GIF you like.
How do you make GIFs like Instagram?Simply take a photo or video, tap the Sticker button and open the GIF option. Next, search for your GIF stickers by typing out one or more of the tags you used. This should pull up one or more of your GIFs. And voilà, your GIF stickers are all ready to go!
How do I make my own GIF?Visit giphy.com/create/gifmaker to get started. Choose Photo or GIF to add by dragging and dropping, clicking the blue search button to browse your files, or entering image URLs to add files to your slideshow. Drag and drop images to change the order of your images to change the way they will appear in your slideshow.
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