Animation Essentials | Bringing Your Still Images to Life with Alight Motion

Alight Motion is the best choice for you who want to create stunning motion graphics and animations. The app is considered the first professional motion graphic editor and video editor for your Android. This is also considered the best animation editor to have with you. Moreover, if you want to add life to your favorite image, this is the best thing you can try. Here through this, you can get a quick idea of adding life to still images with Alight Motion Animations more simply and easily.

alight motion essentials

Still image animation

Still image animation is the method of animating your favorite image to tell the story you want in a simple way. This brings your image to life with just a few simple steps. There are so many apps that can help you in this process. But one of the most famous apps to use for this is Alight Motion. It includes almost all the advanced and powerful features to bring life to your still image. Still image animation adds a motion illusion to your image making it very attractive. If you love to create professional and attractive ads and social media content try this feature now. Also, this is the best for detailed storytelling.

Some of the still image animation approaches are as follows:

Frame-by-frame animation: This technique lets you add specific animation designs to specific points along your image in the editing timeline. You can make necessary changes to these points by changing some of the features like rotation, scale, position, etc. Alight Motion has the ability to incorporate necessary animation styles to make it more engaging. This ultimately creates a smooth still image animation.

Tweening:  This allows you to set keyframes at the beginning and end of the image. Then the app will automatically set the intermediate frames in between and will create a superb still image animation. Tweening can add different sizes, colors, and positions to your image at specific points.

Effects and filters: This is also another component that helps you to make your animating image a more eye-catching one. Use different filters and effects moderately by adding a visual feel to your animation.

Layering and composition: Just like a layered cake, layered anime will let you taste diverse flavors. These techniques are more suitable to use if you are interested in creating a complex image animation.

Essential animating tools in Alight Motion

alight motion features

There are some tools to use if you want to create an amazing still image animation. Some of the essential tools to use are below.

Keyframes

Keyframes are just like different stops before the destination of a trip. Here these key frames allow you to mark some specific points along the image on the timeline. Then you can change some features of the image at these points to create a beautiful animation.

Transform properties

After marking your stop points here you can change the properties like the position of the image on your screen, size of the image, and opacity, and also let you rotate the image as per your wish.

Change the position: Transform properties let you select the exact position of the image at specific points on the screen. Allows you to move the image to the desired position more precisely.

Size of the image: Here you can zoom in or zoom out the image at the defined keyframes. These will help you to emphasize more on some of the details of the image.

Rotate the image: Rotate your image in the direction you want either in a clockwise or anticlockwise way.

Change the opacity:  Let you change the transparency or the opacity of the image from invisible to fully opaque.

Tweening

Tweening is the technique of fine-tuning your animation. After you define the start and end keyframes the app does the rest. This tweening property can create intermediate frames automatically. Tweening helps you maintain the smooth transition between the frames to create magical animations very easily and simply. Tweening allows you to change the image movement, and image sizes and also to do color corrections. Make the elements inside the image move here and there or zoom in or out for more funny effects and change the image color from day to night with these tweening features of the Alight Motion.

Common animation techniques for still images

Here are some of the common animation techniques you can use to make your animation a stunning one.

Breathing Life: Subtle Movements

If you want to add more realism to your image animation this is one of the superb features to use. By adding these subtle movements indeed you can create a magical animation just with one picture.

Breathing movements: Here you can animate the chest movements of the persons to add more realism to the animation.

Blinking: This lets you adjust the blinking of the characters to the natural frequency.

Subtle objects sway:  Making trees, flowers, and other objects sway subtly to add more life to the anime is very easy here.

For fine-tuning these movements you can use the keyframes animation techniques in Alight Motion.

  • First, you have to define the starting and ending points of the image using keyframes.
  • Then, you can adjust the duration and the timing of the movement to make it look more real and natural.

Creating Depth with Parallax Effect

The parallax effect simply creates depth in the animation by adjusting different elements of the image in different layers. Here you can make the front elements move faster or slower than the background elements. This feature also helps a lot in adding more life to the anime you are creating.  

Using Alight Motion for creating Parallax Effect

  • First, you have to duplicate the image you are going to use into different layers in the editing timeline.
  • After that, you can adjust the speed of these layers to create a parallax effect. This process is simpler and quicker with Alight Motion.

Adding Dynamic Transitions

Transitions are used to link different scenes together to create a smooth flow between the frames. Hence, adding dynamic transition is needed if you want to maintain the smooth flow of the still image animation.

Choose the correct transition style that goes hand in hand with your animation style. You can use numerous transition styles like zoom, wipes, fades, etc. Wipes styles help in sliding one scene over the other. If you want to reveal a new scene then you can go for zoom-in or out choices. Using fade style lets you dissolve one scene to the other. Using the correct transition style can make a huge difference to your animation. Hence, be wise when selecting your transition style.

Tips and Tricks for Effective Animation

Planning and Storyboarding

Before going directly to animating it is best to plan your animation by taking some time. Planning surely gives you the best result. For this, you can use the storyboarding feature in Alight Motion to make this a simple process.

Sketch out your animation scene by scene. Here you can decide the anime flow, timing, transitions, keyframe positions to use and so many other elements. Also, you can concentrate and emphasize more on important points in your still image animation.

Timing and pacing

Timing and pacing features surely play a crucial role in attractiveness and the effectiveness of your animation.

Focus more on the timing of the transitions and the other movements. A faster animation surely will showcase different emotions than a slower animation. Hence it is a must to focus more on the timing of the movements if you want to send your message effectively.

Experimenting with different pacing patterns will help you to choose the best pacing for your anime. Maintain the rhythm of the anime up to a standard with these features.

Adding sound effects and music

This is also another nice feature to try when animating your still images. Select the most suitable sounds and music to fit your mood and feel. Using these sounds and pieces of music will surely add more life to your animation without a doubt.

Conclusion

Alight Motion is one of the best video editing apps you can try if you want to create professional and attractive still image animations. The features like keyframe animation, tweening, transitions, etc included in the app let you create stunning and amazing animations in an easier and simpler way. If you want to showcase your creativity to the world then Alight Motion is the ultimate friend to have on your Android.  

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