Animate your first illustration
About five minutes, with any layered Illustrator (.ai), SVG or PDF file.
1. Bring in your artwork, layer by layer
Click Import (or drop the file onto the window). FrameAnvil asks how it comes in: Flat, one picture with its layers merged; Sequence, a new sequence with the layers you made, every picture exactly where you drew it, each group (sublayer) a nested sequence of its own and hidden layers on muted tracks; or Artwork Assistant, to arrange the layers first. If the layers are ready, choose Sequence and start animating.
The Artwork Assistant (also later: Arrange layers… in the message after an import, or the sequence's ✎ Layers button) shows the file's layers, top in front: drag them into a new order, double-click to rename, click the dot to hide one, and use ⧉ Group to make sublayers. ✂ Split into pieces separates a layer into every shape drawn apart, so you can animate a logo's letters on their own even if the file keeps them in one layer. When things in a layer sit on backdrops (a card behind a whole design, a panel behind a group of widgets), each backdrop becomes a piece of its own, drawn whole, and everything on them splits into its shapes, stacked as in the file. Files made in Illustrator open the way its Layers panel does: click the ▸ beside a layer to see its groups and objects (front first, named as in Illustrator), and ▸ again on a group to go further in; anything you don't open comes in as one picture, and each object is drawn whole, exactly as in the file. On the picture, a click picks the outermost group, another click goes one level in, a double-click opens a group. A piece that's still several things (a widget on its glow, say) splits again the same way: select it and click Split. Pick things on the picture as in a vector editor: click one (Ctrl or Shift to add), drag a box over several, double-click to reach into a group; the list opens to what you picked.
Choose Nested to keep each group a sequence of its own (move the group and everything in it follows) or Flat for a track per picture, then Update. You can come back any time (right-click the sequence in the Media panel, Edit artwork layers…): your animation stays.
.ai files need Illustrator's “Create PDF Compatible File” option, which is on by default. SVG files from Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma or Affinity work as they are.
2. Animate it in one click
Click ✦ Animate in the toolbar. Describe the motion (“playful, from the left”) or pick a mood, then Animate: the layers come in one after another, the icon first, then the text. Don't like it? Try another gives a fresh take in the same mood.
3. Or set every move yourself
- Click a layer on the timeline. Its position, scale, rotation and opacity are in the inspector on the right.
- Press ⏱ next to a value to animate it. That sets a keyframe at the playhead.
- Move the playhead, then change the value (or drag the layer in the preview): a second keyframe is added.
- Click the easing button next to the keyframes to choose how it moves: ease in and out, overshoot, elastic, bounce and more.
Each animated value gets its own row on the timeline, so you can drag keyframes to change the timing.
4. Add music and titles, then export
Drop a music file below the layers, and press T for a title at the playhead. When it looks right, click Export: MP4 for video, WebM with transparency to put over other footage, or an animated GIF for the web.
To reuse the animation in a longer video, drag its sequence from the Media panel onto that video's timeline: it becomes a single clip you can trim, move and speed up.