Adobe Animate - All You Need to Know in 2021

If you are an animation lover, chances are you are already familiar with Adobe Animate. However, if you have never used it, you’re missing out on an opportunity to work on a feature-rich, versatile design tool.

Design and animation tools are constantly evolving, with new features designers enjoy more creative freedom. And when it comes to expressing creativity as a designer, Adobe has so much to offer.

In this article, I’m going to discuss the core features of Adobe, how you can use them in an efficient manner, and what kind of convenience they add for large enterprises creating mobile applications, creatives, animations, etc.

Core Features of Adobe Animate

It’s impossible to discuss all the features of this tool and what benefits they entail. I’m going to highlight a few, so you can explore and learn new ways to avail yourself of the available resources.

Adobe Animate Camera

Unlike other animation software, Adobe Animate CC has virtual camera functionality. This enables users to simulate the camera's movement and give their animations a realistic view.

In other words, you can pan, zoom, and rotate your animations with ease. And the more flexibility and freedom you get, the better you are able to express your creativity.

Vector Brushes

Adobe Animate offers vector brushes. There are options with the use of a brush, like the size, color, and smoothness you desire. Also, you can use pressure and velocity influence parameters so you can execute your design idea with utmost perfection.

With Fresco Live Brushes, you can draw more expressive characters that blend and bloom as if they are real. Simple frame-by-frame animations enable your character to blink, talk, and walk.

These options make Adobe Animate a great choice for users who wish to create 2D vector graphics using shapes, patterns, curves, etc.

Export Format

Adobe Animate is quite a versatile tool, it lets you see your animations from desktop to mobile device. The tool follows web standards for exporting animation and you don’t need to install a flash player plug-in to see your animations.

One can also generate a keyframes-based sprite-sheet and use the CSS to animate them. There’s an option to include code right inside your projects, or, you can add actions without coding.

Besides that, you can export your animations to HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, Flash/Adobe AIR, and custom platforms like SVG.

Audio Syncing

An audio syncing feature is part of Adobe that allows users to sync audio in their animations. With this feature, you can keep the audio recording and animation development parallel.

Font

When creating banners or creatives for social media, fonts are given immense importance. Adobe offers integration of Typekit where you get countless premium web fonts.

These web fonts are available for HTML5 canvas documents in the tool from where you can pick your favorite one. But first, you will need to buy a

subscription plan.

These are just the basic features. If you dig deep and explore their uses, the sky will be the limit for you while creating characters and animations.

What’s New in Adobe Animate?

All features become a norm after some time. Designers crave more to increase their pace of work. And that’s why the Adobe team keeps innovating and testing.

• Some of the new features in Adobe Animate include:
• Now you can edit multiple frames at a time
• Designers can customize the insert keyframe
• You can click any layer and highlight it with color
• The new version allows you to pan the timeline via the hand tool

Now you can choose to start opacity, decrease by, range, modes, and controls onion skin display with the Advanced Setting option

How Adobe is Helping Creative Agencies?

So far we have discussed the general features of this tool. It’s time to be more specific -- what’s in it for mobile app developers, tech firms, and advertising agencies?

Prototyping

Very few online tools offer as many features as Adobe Animate when it comes to prototyping. A prototype is like the final version of the app, how the front-end would look like, how users will navigate, how many pages will be in the app, etc.

In fact, the tool is so widely used for this purpose now that platforms like Lynda are offering mobile animation prototype courses specifically on Adobe Animate.

Game Development

Adobe is a great tool to use if you have a game idea in mind. You can create interactive web and mobile content for games using its powerful illustrations and animation features.

Adobe lets you do all your asset design and coding inside the app.

Creative Designing

Creative visuals are the soul of social media marketing -- irrespective of the platform. Adobe brings a plethora of options to design banners, graphics, and even animations to entertain the audience on instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn.

Illustrations & Characters

According to Statistics, the current estimated worth of the global animation market is 259 billion U.S. dollars. This is due to the fact that animations are not only limited to websites and cartoons.

Even brands create animated videos on religious festivals and Hallmark holidays to entertain their audience. Such animations are also used to spread awareness regarding pandemics, global warming, climate change, etc.

Increased demand and the ability to create such animations faster with Adobe are helping design agencies to scale up their business and drive more revenue.

Summary

Adobe is a complete design and animation tool.

Developers can create UI prototypes with it.

Designers can create social media creatives with their advanced features.

Adobe is playing a huge role in game development.

Adobe is also useful in creating game environments, design start screens, and integrate audio in the game.

Adobe has features to create animations and sync audio without using any third-party tool for this purpose.

P.S. Digital Gravity is a renowned web design company in Dubai where we use this tool to create awesome designs in the form of banners, UX/UI, and prototypes for our clients. If you need one for your business, get in touch!

debora john