Create a Motion Graphic and Add Motion Graphics to a Video

Designing a motion graphic is similar to editing a video. You need to have the whole picture in your mind first and then start working on it. Once you have an ideal motion graphic in your mind, draw it frame by frame with your pen.

Running out of inspiration? Watch some videos, pay attention to the motion graphics and get inspired.

Lots of professional tools can be used to create motion graphics, but After Effect is a frequently-used tool. It costs $20.99 per month, but its features are worth the price.

Launch After Effects, create a new project. This will bring up the composition settings window. Choose the width and height, for example, if you are creating a horizontal video, then you should set up the width and height to 1920 * 1080. Press OK.

Go up to the Marquee tool. There are lots of existing shapes that you can choose, for example, rectangle, polygon, star. Pick the shape you like and add it.

You can set the background color as a solid color, or masking the background. Before getting started, you should know that the background is transparent by default.

To set a solid color as the background, go to layer > New > Solid. Choose the background color and confirm. Drag the background to the last layer, otherwise all shapes you created will be buried below the background color.

Select the Text tool. Click on the screen wherever you want to add the text. Type in any text.

There are many ways to make things animated. Let’s take bouncing as an example.

Move the playhead to where you want the animation to start. Click on the right layer, hit P key on the keyboard, this would add a keyframe to the shape. Change the position of the shape. Doing so would automatically add another keyframe to shape. Add as many keyframes as you want.