How to Create Stop Motion Animation Effect in Canva

I’m going to show you how to create a stop motion animation in Canva. Stop motion is basically almost like a normal video except it has a very low frame rate. A stop motion video usually has less than 10 frames per second, which makes the movement a bit jaggy, and that is the style of the animation. You’ve probably seen that a lot in animation on television.

Here’s how I put one together in Canva.

Create Stop Motion Animation Effect in Canva

Prepare your frames

I started with a video I downloaded. I extracted a few photos or snapshots from the video to my computer. In my example I prepared six frames.

Upload the images to your project

Upload those photos to your Canva project and wait until all of them finish uploading.

Arrange each frame on separate pages

• Insert the first picture into the canvas and set it as the background so it fills the page.
• Add a new page and insert the second image. Set it as the background.
• Repeat this process until all frames are included in the project.

Set the timing for the stop motion effect

To make each frame appear for just a split second, apply a short duration to all pages.

• Open Thumbnail view.
• Click on any slide, then press Ctrl+A (or Command+A on Mac) to select all.
• Click Edit timing.
• Reduce the duration to less than 1 second. 0.2 or 0.3 seconds should be enough.
• Play the animation to see the result.

Notes on image quality

What I made here is not perfect because I got the snapshots from a video, which adds blur. Using real photos usually has less blur, and the result is going to be a lot better. This is just the basic concept of how you can apply the stop motion animation effect using Canva.

Final Thoughts

Stop motion in Canva comes down to preparing a series of frames, placing each on its own page as a background, and shortening the duration on all pages so the frames play quickly. Keep your frames sharp by shooting photos directly, and you’ll get a cleaner, more convincing result.