How to Create Animated GIFs in Illustrator with the GIF Studio Plug-in

Animation is everywhere these days and it can be a powerful tool to get more eyes on your art! If you’ve been wanting to experiment with animation but have been put off by the steep learning curve in programs like Photoshop and After Effects, the new GIF Studio plug-in for Illustrator may be the perfect place to start. GIF Studio enables you to design and export animated GIF files directly from an Illustrator document. The plug-in uses a simple system where each artboard in your document becomes a single frame in your GIF file.  This quick and intuitive way of building animations opens up a world of possibilities for Illustrator users who want to bring their art to life.

Getting Started: Download & Install the Plug-in

You can find the full GIF Studio plug-in as well as a free trial version on Adobe Exchange or through your Creative Cloud desktop app. After installing either version of the plug-in you can access the GIF Studio interface by going to Window > Extensions > GIF Studio. Upon opening the plug-in for the first time you will find a key with short summaries of each of the tools and functions available (Figure 1). Before using the plug-in, organize the components of your artwork and decide which parts of it will be animated and how they will move or change.

Prep Work: Organizing Your Artwork and Planning the Animation

For this demonstration, I will be making a polar bear character wave by adjusting the rotation of the character’s arm. Taking a look at the file setup, you can see that I’ve organized the artwork into two main layers.  First, there is a bottom layer with the background and the main body of the

character which will remain static. Next, there is a top layer with the character’s arm, which I’ve defined as a symbol with the rotation point at the elbow (Figure 2). Tip: Defining the arm as a symbol allows you to easily set the rotation point of the artwork. As a bonus, it will be easier to make any changes to the art once you have multiple copies of it throughout your document. To create symbols from your artwork, select the art you wish to define as a symbol, open the Symbols panel (Window > Symbols), and click the plus icon at the bottom of the panel.

Making Frames: Setting up Multiple Artboards

For the next step, we’ll be creating multiple artboards to represent the frames in our GIF animation. The final animation will be a one-second loop consisting of 12 frames, so we will need a document with 12 artboards. There are two ways to go about this task. You can add artboards to your original art file, or you can start a brand new multi-artboard document and transfer your base art to this new file. I like to keep my base art file and animation files separate to keep things nicely organized, so I create a new document at this point. Choose File > New, and in the New Document dialog box, make the artboard size the same as your base art file (in this case 1080 x 1080 pixels) and keep the color space the same as your original art. Set the width and height of the artboard to 1080 x 1080 pixels and the color mode to RGB. Next, set the number of artboards to 12, and click Create.

You will likely need to rearrange your artboards to fit more comfortably on your screen while editing. You should also adjust the spacing between the artboards so that none of the art overlaps on multiple frames. You can do this from the Artboards panel (Window > Artboards). At the bottom of the panel, click the Rearrange Artboards button. In the dialog box, choose the first option under layout, sorting from left to right, then set the columns to 4, and finally set the spacing to 250px to add padding around your artboards and click OK (Figure 4).

Transferring Art: Copying Your Base Art to the New Document

Like in the original art file, you will want to make two layers in this new multi-artboard animation file. The bottom one is for the static background art, and the top one is for the animated arm symbol. Now, let’s transfer the background art from our original base art file. Switch to your original art file and click in the select column of the Layers panel next to the background layer (Figure 5).

Copy this artwork to your clipboard. Switch to your new animation art file, and choose Edit > Paste on All Artboards. You should now see your background art on every artboard in the new document. Name this layer “Background” and click in the lock column of the Layers panel to lock this layer (Figure 6). Click the Plus icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to add a new layer. Name this layer “Paw Animation” and switch back to your original base art file. Select the top arm symbol that we will be animating, and copy it using Ctrl+C or Command+C, switch again to your multi-artboard animation document, make sure you are on the top layer, and choose Edit > Paste on All Artboards. You should now have a full copy of your original artwork, broken into two layers on every artboard of your new animation document (Figure 7). Tip: Don’t forget to save your work at this point!

Creating Movement: Rotating the Arm Symbol for Animation

Since our background layer is locked, it will be easy to select the character’s arm symbol on each artboard to adjust its rotation value. Make sure your Properties panel is visible in your workspace. On the first artboard, the rotation of the arm symbol should start at 0 degrees. Select the arm symbol on the second artboard. In the Properties panel next to the rotation symbol, click in the box and change the rotation value to 1 Degree (Figure 8).

Add one consecutive degree of rotation to the paw symbol on each frame up through artboard 7. On artboard 7 the rotation of the arm symbol will peak at 6 degrees of rotation, before rotating backward by one degree on subsequent artboards. Finish setting the rotation of the arm symbol for each of the artboards (See rotation value for each artboard in Figure 9).

Final Steps: Set Frame Durations, Test & Export Your GIF

Now, open the GIF Studio interface by choosing Window > Extensions > GIF Studio. Click the first option in the menu, (the downward pointing arrow icon,) to import your artboards as frames into GIF Studio. Wait a moment while your art loads. You should now see the Settings screen in GIF Studio where you can preview your animation’s frames, rearrange frame order, and set the timing for each frame before you export your final animation (Figure 10).

We’ll be setting each frame to 1/12 of a second to create a 1-second looping GIF. One divided by twelve equals 0.083, so we want to set every frame to 0.083 seconds. To adjust the frame timing, click on the first frame of your animation, hold the Shift key, and click on the last frame of the animation. Now click in any of the frame duration fields and type in “.083” and press Enter. You can now click the Play Icon to preview your GIF animation. If you’re happy with the preview you can export your animated GIF file by clicking on the export icon at the bottom right (Figure 11). You can share your saved GIF animation anywhere that you would normally use a GIF file, including social media posts, portfolio sites, and emails. This very simple example is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the possibilities for animating your vector art with GIF studio!