Mei Lin Lee-Stahr| Last Updated: [Spring 2025]
This tutorial will cover the basics of Adobe Animate and its interface.
Adobe Animate is an industry standard for complex 2D animation. Its tools are geared towards frame-by-frame animation, as well as keyframe storyboarding. It’s a great tool to use for creating animated shorts and projects that may involve characters and multiple moving parts.
However, as it has a steep learning curve. If you are interested in creating simple motion graphics, After Effects is a better option.
Additionally, most professional animators who use the Adobe Suite will have a workflow that spans across Animate, Premiere, and After Effects, all for one project. This makes the creative process convenient for creators and animators.
What this tutorial WILL cover:
Navigating the Adobe Animate interface
Basic tools that are unique to Animate and how to use them
What this tutorial WILL NOT cover:
What every tool does (tools that are common in Adobe and other drawing/animating software will not be covered)
2D animation basics
With that being said, if your end goal is to learn advanced 2D animation, this is a great place to start! This tutorial will cover the basics of the user interface and the tools to set you up for success on your next project.
As of March 2025, you must actively register your UCSC account with Adobe. If you cannot access your Adobe Account, go here to activate it: https://its.ucsc.edu/software/graphics-and-design/adobe-creative-cloud/ (Scroll down to “Getting Started” and then click on “Students”).
Getting Started:
When you open Animate, it should take you to this screen.
Like with any other Adobe software, click on “New File” to create an entirely new file.
If you’re unsure about which format to use, Full HD 1080 x 1920p at 24 frames per second, ActionScript 3.0 is the standard.
After you have created your file, you will get to this screen:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Animate will always open a file with the canvas at 100% zoom, and most likely, your monitor screen will be smaller than that resolution, so before you begin working, you must double click the hand icon on the left side toolbar to be able to see your entire canvas.
Now that we have your canvas properly sized, let’s get into what everything does.
The toolbar on the left-hand side is going to be all of your drawing, shape, and color tools. These are almost all standard across all Adobe Applications. The ones that you should pay the most attention to are: The Selection vs. Subselection tool, the fluid vs. classic brush tools and the shape tools.
The very first icon is the “selection” tool or the “Subselection” tool. The main difference here is that the “selection” tool allows you to select and manipulate the whole shape, while the “subselection” tool allows you to manipulate individual edges and corners of any said shape. You can toggle between these modes by pressing “v” or “a” on your keyboard.
Under this is the transform tool. It can give you more rigid transformations that the subselection tool cannot give you.
Next, the classic brush tool versus the fluid brush tool is that the fluid brush tool is more similar to one found on drawing applications like Adobe Fresco. It gives a similar amount of control to a pen and paper, which can be useful for hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation. You can edit pressure sensitivity on the right-hand side of the screen.
Now, at the bottom of your screen is your timeline. This is where the actual animation happens.
This button controls the frames. You can add a blank keyframe, a keyframe, a frame or apply Auto Keyframe. The arrows next to this button will toggle one frame forward and one backward respectively.
This is your onion skin button. It displays some previous and upcoming frames to make animation easier.
This will edit multiple frames at once:
This will center your frame on the visible timeline:
These are your playback buttons:
We will now be going over how to make a basic keyframe with a ball.
Start with a circle on your canvas. This will automatically create a keyframe.
Next, generate a keyframe. Once the keyframe is created, move the circle to the right a little.
Make sure onion skinning is on so you can see where you previously placed your ball.
Then keep adding keyframes and moving the ball until it reaches the other side of the canvas. Be sure to pay attention to spacing to ensure that your animation is smooth. When you are done it should look something like this. *The light purple dots are onion skins showing where each keyframe is.*
Click play to watch your animation. If you click on individual keyframes in the timeline, you can go back to edit each of them if you feel dissatisfied with the position/scale/etc.
Now let's say you have mapped out the timing of your animation, but you want to add some squash and stretch to make this ball more animated. You can do this by using the transform tool to manipulate the shape of the dot. Make sure you pay attention to volume when editing the shapes.
The final animation should look like this.
Next, export your animation. In the top right corner of the screen, there is a button that looks like this:
When you click this a menu will pop up. It will ask if you want to “Social Share” or “Publish” your animation. “Social Share” will direct you to YouTube or Twitter and format it properly, but for most projects, you just want to click “Publish.” This will allow you to export your animation as an .mp4 or .gif.
And if you want even more export controls, you can go File>Export.
Now you know all the basics! You are officially prepared to begin an Animate project. Since this tutorial was just the bare bones, here are some tutorials if you are interested in looking further.
The Adobe Animate CC Crash Course (Beginner Friendly!)
Character Rigging in Adobe Animate and After Effects | Tutorial
How to Keyframe Like a Pro! (Animation process for any software)
How to Start Animating Your Characters : 4 Principles
Also, here are some fun yet simple things I have made in Animate as exercises:
The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.
The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum.
Santa Cruz, CA