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This video is an easy tutorial demonstrating how to create an animated profile picture using Canva. It likely provides step-by-step instructions, showcasing specific features within Canva for designing and animating profile pictures. The tutorial aims to empower users with the skills to produce a dynamic and visually appealing animated profile picture for their online presence, emphasizing the simplicity of the process through Canva's user-friendly tools.
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0:00
In this video, I'm going to teach you how to create your very own animated profile picture
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That's right, a profile picture that moves. And I'll show you how to use that profile picture on different platforms like Gmail or TikTok
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Let's go! What is up guys? Ronnie here. Welcome back to the channel
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This is the best place for you to learn about Canva and all sorts of creative tools
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Today, I'm coming at you with a step-by-step tutorial to create your animated profile picture
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So without further ado, let's jump into Canva. I have 10 steps for you to create your moving picture
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Okay, so this is my Canva home screen. And the first step is to simply select the right format
0:46
So you are going to go for a one-by-one aspect ratio. Let's go for the traditional Instagram post
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So for that, I'm just going to start from the social media button right here
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Click on that and then go for Instagram post. You see 1080 by 1080
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That's exactly what we want. Step number two is to decide on what background you will be using for your profile picture
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Me, I like to stay consistent with my personal brand and also the visual identity I have created for that brand
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If you know me, you know that the bright yellow is my main, my dominant color
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But I also like to play around with gradients. And I'm thinking for this profile picture that a nice radial gradient
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so radial meaning the light kind of diffuses from the middle of the gradient
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would look nice as the background of my profile picture. And I have one particular gradient in mind
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and that is the gradient that is on the thumbnail of my Canva Master Course
1:49
which is my best-selling course on Udemy. So I want to stay consistent with that
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I want people to associate me with that course. And to reinforce that, I want to use the same background
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This is kind of like a subliminal message, but still, I think it's a good move
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So let's go fetch that background. I'm going to use the project button here to navigate through my different Canva folders
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because I know I have already created that thumbnail with Canva. So it shouldn't be too hard to go find the thumbnail
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and then bring it to this design, and then get rid of everything else. So in my case, this should be under my folders
2:26
And from here, I have one which is called Roy's Courses, right here, Canva Master Course
2:32
And here it is. This is the thumbnail of my course. I'm going to click on this
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You'll see all the different versions. So probably something you've never seen before
2:40
because only this one is the official thumbnail. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to simply get rid of everything else
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You see, getting rid of that, getting rid of the color here. And this is the gradient that I want to use
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OK, so the only thing I need to do is to stretch it so that it covers the entire one by one photo
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So there we go. I have my radiant gradient for my background
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And of course, you can pick any solid color. You can create a gradient
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You can use texture or you can use patterns for your background
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It's really up to you. But the only thing I would suggest is that you stay consistent
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with the visual identity you have chosen for your brand. OK, so now we need a visual for our profile picture
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So most definitely, I would recommend you use a photo of your face, right
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It's your profile picture. Unless you want to use a logo or something else in that range of ideas
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I personally like to use my face on my profile picture. So I'm going to go to this folder right here that I have
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with a bunch of different photos and select one that I want to be using for my profile picture
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I'm going to be using this photo right here. I think my expression is pretty cool and I have a nice haircut on this photo
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So let's use this one. For this next step right here, I'm going to need a Canva Pro feature
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called Background Remover. If you're not a Pro user, don't worry, don't freak out
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You can still achieve a similar result without having to upgrade to Canva Pro
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You can use a website called remove.bg to basically remove the background of your photo
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So that would work. If you are an iPhone user, you can also achieve that result
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by long pressing on your photo and then copying that photo. It will kind of like extract you from the background and paste that into Canva
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There are different ways you can today get rid of the background of an image
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without paying for Canva Pro. Now, that isn't to say that Canva Pro isn't awesome
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Trust me, Canva Pro is well worth the price. I'm going to leave a link in the description of this video
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for those of you who want to give it a try. We have this 45 days free trial, that is 15 additional days
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than what you would get on the Canva website, for you to try Canva Pro
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This is our affiliate link. It will be right there in the description of the video
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Now, of course, you don't have to go with the exact same style of photo
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that I'm going to be using. Maybe you are fine with just some of the elements
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that are in the free Canva library. You don't need Canva Pro to achieve your animated photo
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But for me, for this specific idea or concept that I have in mind
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I'm going to be using the background remover. So let's go. I'm clicking on that photo, click on edit image
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and then background remover. Canva is going to work its magic and just simply get rid of the background
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So there you go. I have no more background. Do not click on anything right here
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Or at least if you want to follow the exact same technique
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that I'm going to be using in this tutorial. Because what I want to do is to really isolate that head
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from the rest of my body. So I'm going to be using the erase button right here
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I'm going to click on erase. And you should see your cursor change into this eraser right here
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You can also change the size of your brush. So I'm going to be going for the biggest brush available
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I'm just going to clean around my photo without going too close to my face right now
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And now I'm going to resize that brush to make it much smaller
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and work on the details right here. I can zoom in to actually see what I'm doing here
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And this is probably the hardest part of the tutorial. So you need to kind of contour your face
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without messing up too much. That's a high precision job. But the better you do this, the better the result
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So here I messed up a bit. So I need to correct that. Okay, not too bad
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And now moving up here. Now if you screw up at this stage
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okay, you can always use the command Z functionality. You see like this to undo a specific part that you just messed up
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Okay, so I just wanted to show you that. So I'm going to go and do this again right here
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And it's okay. You see I messed up here. Command Z and I do it again
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There you go. Okay, so it is not perfect. Like I took a little bit too much here
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So I could probably restore a little bit. Okay, I'm pretty happy about this
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I'm just going to go ahead and click on the done button right here. Don't forget to click on done
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Otherwise you will lose all of that work. And last step to complete this background removal is to click on apply right here
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So Canva should just take a second, process that photo, and then you should be good to go
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I've seen Canva reacting and there we go. This is the result
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I can resize this. I'm just going to make this frame around the photo just kind of like the right size
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All right, I've moved my background here a bit. So in order to avoid the background here moving
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position it correctly and I'm going to lock it. So now I can move this image around and the background will not move because it has been locked
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You see the little padlock icon right here is closed. All right, let's move on to the next step
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My next step would be to add an outline around my face so that we can hide the
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imperfection of the detouring but also make as if this head was popping on the page
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So in order to do this, first, I'm going to resize this to make it bigger
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Okay, I want this to be quite big here in the middle because at the end of the day
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this is what you will see in a very small profile picture, profile bubble
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Okay, so I don't want it to be bigger than the safe zone
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but I want it to be considerably bigger on the profile picture
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All right, so this is what it looks like at this stage. I'm going to make sure I click on the photo to select it and then go to edit image
9:24
And now I want to find the shadows, okay, the shadow effect right here
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Click on it and what you want to select is the glow shadow
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Okay, click on glow and then click on the little slider button right here to access the settings of your shadow
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Now, I like to use a 12 point size shadow. You see the shadow here around my face
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So that's what I'm working on right now. Transparency, I like to keep it to 85
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So not very transparent. It's not completely solid. And for the last slider right here, the blur, if you go all the way to zero
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your line is going to be straight, like no blur. It's going to be completely plain, I would say
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And if you go all the way to 20, you'd have the largest blur, the largest diffusion around that outline
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I'm going to go for something in the middle, maybe six. Yeah, six looks nice
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It gives me that nice popping effect that I was looking for. So once I'm happy with this, I'm just going to click on apply
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So there we go. We have the base for our profile picture. Now let's work on animating this photo
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The way we are going to animate this photo is to simply duplicate the page
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and start adding some movement to my face. So let's go ahead and do this
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The first thing you will need to make sure of is that you have your thumbnail view here activated
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So it might be that your document looks like this. Just click on the little arrow right here to expand the thumbnail area right here at the bottom
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Next is you are going to select your page number one, and then you are going to duplicate that
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So you can go with the three little dots, duplicate page, or you could simply command C or control C, control V to create a third page
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I'm going to delete the third one for now and just going to concentrate on page number two
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So the thing here, I want to have this little head movement like so, kind of like the Indian head shake that I've never mastered myself
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So I'm going to use Canva to try to recreate that. And then I'm going to add some other kind of motion to the animation
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But let's start with the head shake. So for that, selecting page number two, selecting my image
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and I'm simply going to rotate my head to one side. So maybe minus eight degrees on this side
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Okay, so next, what I'm going to do, I'm going to come back to normal position and tilt the other way
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So normal position will be page one. So if I select page one, control C, then I move to page two and paste, control V
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Now I'm back to normal, okay, normal position. Now duplicating this one once more, page four, page four should be eight degrees on the other side
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So there you go, like so. And then I'm just going to repeat this process, adding frames
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So now back to the middle, like so. And then I can basically copy page two to five
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So I select them all. You see, select page two, hold my shift key, click on page five
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And now I have two, three, four, five selected, command C to copy them
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I go to page five because I want to paste them after page five, command V
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And now this is what I have. If I quickly go through them, I have one
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So this is my animation so far. Okay, so this is a good start
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I want to have this head shaking thing going on, but now I want to take it a step further
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I want to go full circle here and rotate my head entirely, like a 360 degrees right here
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in one direction, and then probably the other direction. And that would be the end of the animation
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So in order to create this, we are going to use the same process of copying my page
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and then slightly rotating. And I believe we can create the entire rotation
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So that would be 360 degrees in 10 pages. So we will need to move or to rotate my face by 36 degrees on each page
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just like starting from the previous position and then adding 36 degrees to the rotation
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All right, so let's quickly do that. Okay, so this is the first page right here
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So I'm going to select page number nine and command C, command V
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There we go. So there. I'm going to be using my good old calculator to add 36 degrees to everything I'm doing here
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So just simply using the calculator. So the first 36 degrees are going to be easy, just moving
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And you see in black here, I have the number of degrees. So go to 36, like so
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And then you copy page 10. And then from here, you add 36 degrees
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So 36 plus 36, 72 degrees. So I need to go to my 72
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There you go. Adding 36 to that, that's going to be 108
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But make sure you copy your page first. Then you go to 108
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Oops, not 7. Make sure you are exactly at 108 plus 36
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That would be 144. Copy the page. Come here, 144. Like so
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Copy the page. Plus 36, that would be 180. So just the middle
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And we are already at halfway here. Okay, so this is good
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And now, copy my page again. And now you see, if I move in this direction, I'm back to the same number
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So it doesn't go like over 180, it goes back down from here
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So I know the number is already 144. All right, so I should have 10 images between 9 and 19
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And we do indeed. Now, what I'm going to do is to simply make the head rotate in the other way
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So for that, I'm going to start with 18, then 17, 16
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I'm going to go the other way around. So another trick, another keyboard shortcut I'm going to show you, if you hold your Option
15:48
key on Mac, you can add a shortcut. On Mac, you can also duplicate
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If you hold it down and grab a photo and move it, you can duplicate that photo, that page
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So I'm going to do that with 17. Just make sure you bring your pages at the right position right here
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So 22, now 15. There we go. So I believe we have 29 pages and that should be the entire animation
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So let's click on page 1. So let's use our keyboard arrows and just go left, left, left to just move from one
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page to the other and see what the animation looks like. Starting with the Indian head shake and then the rotation one way and then the other way around
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All right, this looks cool. What do you think? All right, we have covered the hardest part of the tutorial, which was to create the stop animation
16:52
Let's tweak this to make it a little bit more exciting by adding some animations on
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the first and last frame. I'm going to click on page number 1 right here
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Click on my face and click on animate. I want something like that, like the pop thingy going on
17:09
This is pretty cool. You can choose any of these animations, maybe stomp
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Yes, stomp looks good. I'm going to make sure I animate this on enter only
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This is important, otherwise it would look a little bit weird. So on enter
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Okay, now I have this. I don't want this to last 5 seconds
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Not at all. I want this to be maybe 1 second. Okay, 1 second
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Next, if I click on page 2 or page 3 or whatever page, you will notice that the length that
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the animation stays on that specific page is also 5 seconds, which is way too long
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I want all of the other pages right here to be the shortest time possible
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Okay, so if you drag the slider all the way to the left, you will see that 0.1 second
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is actually the shortest time you can stay on one specific page
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So I'm going to do that. Go for 0.1 second and also apply to all pages
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Okay, like so. And now you see that page 1 also has 0.1 second
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So I need to go back and change it back to 1 second
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Okay, I think this will be good. Now, the last thing I want to do is to go fetch the last page, this one right here
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and to also animate it. Okay, I'm going to click on animate, go for stomp, and this time I'm going to make it
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on exit. The last thing I need to do from this last page right here, if I click on the little
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thumbnail here, is to change the duration from 0.1 second to 1 second
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Okay, I believe this is all good. My total length of the animation is 4.7 seconds
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So I'm going to go ahead and click on that play button. Okay, that looks cool
18:59
I like that at the end, my face disappeared. Let's play that again. Okay, this looks good to me
19:10
I'm going to close the preview right here and I think we are good to go
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Our animation is ready. Now we have to download it in the right format so we can upload it
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The first place where I want to upload this and absolutely try it out is Gmail
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Okay, so for Gmail, I did a little bit of research. You need to export that animation in the GIF format
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So let's go ahead and do this by going to the share button right here, download
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I'm going to change MP4 video for GIF. Make sure this is all my pages, size
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I don't think we need to mess with this for now and I'm just going to hit download
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All right, my file has downloaded. It's right here. I should have given it a name
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So I'm going to change this right now by renaming my document right here
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I'm going to call this animated Gmail profile photo. Profile photo. Okay, all right
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Let's move over to Gmail and see how we can upload this photo
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All right, guys, we are in my Gmail account. Obviously, I don't want everyone to see my private life
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So I've blurred out pretty much everything here. But I want you to pay attention to this little profile picture right here in the corner
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So you're going to click on this and in order to change it, very simple
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you need to click on that little icon right here, the camera icon
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So click on that and you will replace by clicking on change right here
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And here I'm going to select from my computer, upload from my computer
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This should be in my download. So this is the one right here, the GIF one
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So it's going to upload into Gmail. And there we go. My profile picture is ready
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It looks great already. Look at this. Beautiful. So save as profile picture
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And there we go. I think we are good to go here
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Look at this. The profile picture is ready. It could take a day or two to see the changes across all your Google services
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OK, I got it. So I am not completely sure it will be immediately available across my emails
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But it looks like it's already here. See, if I click on the profile picture, it shows my new animated photo
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Now, let me try to send myself an email and see how it looks like from my phone
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because this is where the magic should be happening. So let me just do that quickly
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So, yeah, looks beautiful. From here, we can see the little profile picture I just uploaded
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I sent myself a test email so that you can see how it looks in there
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It looks great. It really catches my attention. So this is what I wanted to show you in this tutorial
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And don't go anywhere. I have one last step for you. And that is to upload that same moving profile picture on TikTok
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I did a bit of research and I found out that in order to have a moving profile picture on TikTok
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you need to have it in the MP4 video. And your video needs to be between 3 and 6 seconds long
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which is great because our video is 4.7 seconds long. So all I need to do is to download this animation from Canva again
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but this time in the MP4 format. So let's go ahead and do this by clicking on download
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I'm going to click the GIF here and choose MP4 video. All pages
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That sounds good. I'm going to download this again, but this time in a video format
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All right, my MP4 file is ready. It's downloaded. It's right here
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What I'm going to do is to airdrop this to my phone, so I can continue to set up this new profile picture on TikTok from my phone
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And by all means, if you have an Android phone, you can transfer that file to your phone
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or you can maybe use the Canva app to download the same video into your phone directly
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It's really up to you. There are plenty of options. All right, guys, I have my video on my phone and I want to upload this to TikTok
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Now, the first thing I recommend you do, especially if you are an iPhone user, is that you go into your settings
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you find TikTok, the app TikTok, and you allow TikTok to access your photos or a couple of your photos
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On iPhone, you can decide which photos a specific app will have access to
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So I need to give TikTok access to this photo if I want to be able to use it
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So for that, I'm going to go to my settings right here and scroll down all the way to the T's and find TikTok
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Tapping on this, tapping on photos, selected photos. So allow photo access to what
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To all your photos, to none or selected photos. I chose selected photos and you can edit which selected photos
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So I need, you see the second one right here, five seconds. This is what I need to give TikTok access to
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So click on done. All good. Now I can get out of here and go to my TikTok profile
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So this is my TikTok profile. I'm going to refresh quickly. And in order to change your profile picture, simply tap on edit profile, change video
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And now I can select that video, which is my moving profile picture and save
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And TikTok should be saving your video. And now you have edited your profile
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It is updated and there you go. It looks great on TikTok. You can go out there and make some damage
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And that's it, guys. I hope you liked this video. Give us a like if you did or subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so yet
24:52
I'm going to leave you with this other video right here to create something else very awesome
24:58
with Canva
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