How to create an Animated Game Infographic Design with GIF

in Hive Learnerslast year

Welcome to this post where i'll be walking you through the process of designing this animated game poster:

full-gif.gif

This design is part of a 10-slide interactive animation game features poster(served on the web) which is to share general info about the game, called Alpacas Dash and their upcoming alpha release.

So Basically, this helps to share more information about the various features of "Alpacas Dash"(as users engage with it), but note that it can be created to be used for different purposes-

For Instance:

  • Products Info
  • Portfolios
  • How-to Tutorials
  • DIY Guides

Let's get started

NB: If you make a mistake at any point, simply press CTRL + z (for Windows) OR CMD + z (on Mac) to go back one Step.

STEP 1; Start in Figma App

Download Figma Officially here

  • Create a New Design File and Change the name Untitled to whatever you want

  • Use the frame tool and Select the Desktop > TV > 1280 X720 Option. This is referred to as the Resolution. It's how your infographic would appear on a PC / Mobile device.

pic-1.png

  • Next, change the fill color on your new frame (after renaming it) to F57228. This is a deep orange color.

  • Now, we want to start tracing out the individual feature partways(they actually look like blobs, so let's call it that)

  • The blobs can be drawn with minimal effort using the Pen tool in Figma. if you haven't done this before, using the tool for the first time will feel strange bcos of the orientation.

  • The fastest way to learn how the pen tool works is by copying and re-tracing with reference images. Feel free to use the Completed Image linked with the post below.

  • After tracing out one blob, you're gonna end up with something similar like in the image below (feel free to adjust your blob by double-clicking it, clicking on a point and switching to move tool)

pic-2.png

  • If by chance, your blob doesn't look like the one below( it's probably missing it's fill color), simply click on the plus icon beside FILL

  • Let's move on, by drawing the remaining FOUR blobs using the Pen tool. This is how mine looks like after doing so!.

pic-3.png

STEP 2: Adding Color and Special Strokes
  • Okay, so now that we're done with the base shapes, let's make them look attractive.

  • Click on the first top-left blob and edit the default stroke by clicking the three-dotted-line beside stroke, then changing; -- stroke-style to Dash AND -- Dash to 6. Then, change the stroke weight to 3. Do this for all blobs (except the center blob).

pic-4.png

  • Time to add Colors: Change the top-left blob to 00A8E3, bottom-left blob to FAE73A. Alternate this for the remaining two blobs. Another way to add colors is to click on an item, select Key I(to activate the color picker), and choose any colors you want.

  • Time to add Effects: In the effects panel, add Inner Shadow and in the Effect Settings, change Blur to 40 AND Color to Black @ 30% Opacity. Repeat for all blobs except the center one.

pic-5.png

  • Let's Face the Center Blob: The Center Blob is relatively similar to the rest but with just ONE Slight Difference. First Remove the Stroke leaving only a Fill Color, Then Add Color of FAE73A, Then add Inner Shadow with Similar Settings as above, Finally -- add another Effect (Drop Shadow) and change it's settings to 50 Blur, Black Color @ 15%. Make sure your blob is centered (by pressing Alt + H).

NB: If you don't understand any settings as I mention them, mess with the icons you see under each Panel, until you find the correct one. Remember to Undo mistakes with CTRL/CMD + Z

  • Time to add Texts: Now, we are gonna add simple texts to specify what each blob contains. Use the Text Tool to create a new font and set the size to 40 under Text Panel. Change the font to Aclonica (a default google font). You can also align the text to the center as in my case. Hence, fill up your blobs with Pathways Text.

  • Add white texts in the blue blobs AND black texts in the yellow blobs.

  • For the center blobs, make your text size about 60, with the under ones about 40. change the colors accordingly here.

pic-6.png

STEP 3: Add Icons and Re-Use Figma's Free Stickers

Welcome to the Step that Makes Figma Community so reliable and Invaluable, re-using templates, documents and graphics created by other users. If I had to create the Icons and Stickers used in the Design by myself, it would take me about three days to complete what took just 1 day.

So Again, Let's Keep Creating;
  • To Show you fully all the steps it took to put this Design together, I'm gonna share links to the community files used in creating this.

  • First, Icons were required for each blob pathway, to provide a visual description AND I kept some cute arrow stickers to illustrate that; the following 4 blobs are the features of this game.

  • both resource can be found in the figma community for free at this links:

3d ICONS - Go Here
Arrow Stickers - Go Here

  • After opening each Figma Community Files, you can find all stickers and Icons used in my Game Infographic Design. All you need to do to Achieve a Similar result is reducing the width and height of the asset. To import assets from another Figma document, you can simply Copy[ctrl/cmd + c] and Paste[ctrl/cmd + v] in your main Docs.

  • This is the Before & After of importing the 3d Icons into my Design file ⬇

pic-7.png

pic-8.png

  • Aside scaling the Icons Width & Height to 60 px, I also created a circle with uniform size of 70 px, for the icons to be place above on.

With addition of the Stickers as the Final Step, the Design is is almost complete.

And this is the final Infographic Design Re-produced:

main.png

What Comes Next: Animating The Design

In the next step, we will be animating this whole design with Path Rotation and Logo Pulse (Fade in & Out), to achieve this ⬇

full-gif.gif

We could even go on to adding Interactivity (which means - a user can interact with the elements), but that involves some extra techniques on how to serve html content on web browsers against simple GIF that can be played anywhere.

But that's gonna be it for now, and I've decided to split this tutorial into two-parts so it's easily digestible for you.

I hope you've enjoyed this and learned a lot from it. 👏

Catch you in my Next Post,

Your Gamer & Builder,
Chel_