Creating Stickers with Motion

Motion makes it easy to create great-looking, animated stickers for iMessage. Start by downloading free project templates, which you can customize with your own text and graphics. Or use Motion to create your own stickers from scratch. Learn more about stickers for iMessage

System Requirements

  • Mac with macOS 10.10.4 or later
  • Motion v5.2.3 or later

Create a sticker project

NOTE: Before starting your own project, you can view sample stickers created in Motion by downloading free project templates that showcase different sticker styles. Each style comes in three sizes — small, medium and large.

Follow these steps to create a new sticker project in Motion from scratch:

  1. Launch Motion
  2. Create a new Motion project by choosing File > New
  3. In the middle of the Project Browser, click Motion Project
  4. On the right side of the Project Browser, select the following options:
    • Preset > Custom
    • Field Order > None
    • Aspect Ratio > Square
    • Frame Rate > 15 fps
    • Duration > 2 seconds
    • Enter the Resolution that matches your sticker size, as displayed in the table below
  5. Click Open in the lower right corner
Size Frame Dimensions
Small 300 x 300
Medium 408 x 408
Large 618 x 618

Add an image

  1. Click the File Browser tab at the top left of the Motion interface.
  2. Navigate to your clip, image, artwork, or sequence. Select it, then click Import.
  3. After you add your clip, you can animate it using the built-in effects in Motion, known as behaviors.

Add a behavior

Behaviors are designed to give you a fast and flexible way to apply automatic animation to your scene. You can even combine multiple behaviors to create more complex effects.

  1. Click the Library tab at the top left of the Motion interface.
  2. Click the behaviors category. Available behaviors are categorized by function.
  3. Click Basic Motion then select Grow/Shrink. A preview of the behavior with a summary of its function is displayed above.
  4. Drag and drop the behavior to an object in the Layers list to apply it.

Add text

  1. In the toolbar, click the Text tool (or press T).
  2. Click in the Canvas.
  3. Type your text then press Escape.
  4. Click the Inspector then click the Text tab. You can choose a font type, size, alignment, and more.

Export your sticker

  1. Choose Share > Export Image Sequence.
  2. From the Export menu, choose PNG Image.
  3. From the Duration menu, choose Entire Project.
  4. Click Next, then navigate to a location on your drive and click Save.

Learn More

To learn more about using Motion, visit Motion Help.

Additional training resources are available on the Motion Resources page.