Creating Smooth UI Animations in Figma: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hi, everyone!

In this post, we’re all about User Interface (UI) design! We’ll be creating an animation in Figma and learning how to customize it for the ultimate user experience (UX).

I’ll be guiding you through the process step-by-step. Read along and enjoy or practice as we go on your own laptop! 

This post is based on one of the classes from my Figma Essentials course. Feel free to look it up at Bring Your Own Laptop, sign up, and learn all there is to know about taking the first steps into UX and UI and designing amazing wireframes and prototypes!

When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on After Effects, Photoshop,Illustrator, Lightroom, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

Let 's jump in!

1.  Drawing Animation Elements

If you are diving into Figma for the first time and planning your first wireframe or prototype, know there are awesome vector design tools to help you create and edit your objects.

We will start by drawing a set of headphones and a cute box for shipping them to our customer.. It’s quick and easy!

If you are already familiar with vector design in Figma, you can scroll down to the next section. 

First, we’ll use the Rectangle tool to draw a first rectangle. Then, we select the Move tool to change its corner radius and match the shape of an earpad. There is a shortcut for changing these corners one by one – hold Command on a Mac or Alt on a PC while dragging the radius handles with the mouse. We can also change their values in the independent corners panel.

This earpad looks acceptable, let’s duplicate it. Yes, there is a cool shortcut for that, too! With the shape selected, we press and hold Option on a Mac or Alt on a PC while dragging it with the Move tool. Next, we flip our duplicated shape horizontally by using the shortcut Shift + H on both Mac and PC.

Pro tip: If you can’t remember where in the menus you can find a specific command or any shortcut, you can search for them with Command + / on a Mac or Control + / on a PC. A search field will pop up for you to type in what you’re looking for. It’s a lifesaver!

Now let’s draw the headband. We draw a circle with the Ellipse tool, holding Shift while dragging to keep it proportional. Next, we switch it from a filled object to a stroke with the shortcut Shift + X on both PC and Mac. We just need an arch, so let’s cut the circle. Quick way to do it: draw a new rectangle and place it over the area we want to remove. Then we select both shapes, make sure the rectangle is on top, move up to the Union Selection button and pick Subtract Selection. Done!

Align the arch with the earpads, select all shapes and group them with Command + G on a Mac or Control + G on a PC and we have drawn a cool set of headphones, our animation’s first element!

Now, for the shipping box. Let’s draw two rectangles, line them up, and group them as shown below. Now that we have two elements, let’s start animating!

2.   Animation in Figma

The first thing to do is duplicate the frame where our elements are nested. You already know this one: click on the frame’s name and drag it while holding Option on a Mac or Alt on a PC. Let’s name it “Animation 2” and select it. With the box layer  on top, we use the Move tool to select our headphones and drag them down until they are completely hidden behind the box.

Let’s change to Prototype mode. Shortcut Shift + E on both PC and Mac and we’re there! Next, we select the first frame and click on the Add Starting Point button in the Prototype panel. The first frame, “Animation”, is now set as the flow’s start. Now let’s connect both frames! Click and hold the handle on the right side of the first frame and drag it until it connects to the “Animation 2” frame.

We now have one noodle joining both frames. This indicates the direction the flow takes. Let’s have a look at some of the Interaction settings and adjust them to customize our animation.

Trigger – this sets the user action that will start the interaction, like tapping a button, or hovering over an image. We can also set a delay time for the interaction to initiate automatically.

• Action – this defines what happens when the user “pulls the trigger”. It ranges from navigating to another frame to opening an overlay, like a pop-up warning box, among others. This is also used for variables.

• Destination – Shows the target frame or object that the user will flow to after the interaction is complete.

Animation – This setting allows us to set the transition style between frames, such as Instant (no animation at all), Slide in or out, and Smart Animate, my favorite of the set.

Easing and Duration – Two separate settings that are tied to each other. Easing sets the animation’s progression pattern, like starting slow and speeding up along the transition as if we’re stepping on a car’s gas pedal or starting fast and ending slow as if we are pushing the brakes. Different patterns may serve different purposes or highlight different steps of the process. Duration sets the animation’s total time, from start to finish, and helps fine tuning Easing for smoother and more natural transitions.

This covers the basic settings you need to start animating right now. You can find out so much more by signing up to both my Figma Essentials and Advanced courses and becoming a Figma Animation Master!

For this example, let’s work with the following Transition settings:

Time to test our animation! All we need to do is click on the Present button, sit back, and relax!

There is more we can do to jazz up the animation so let’s move on!

Timeout #1

Want to know more about animation and how it can make user interaction fun and alive? I encourage you to check out this article Animation in UI.

3.  Adjusting Easing and Duration

For this example, we will keep Easing at In and Out, this gives us a nice acceleration and deceleration Bezier Curve (we’ll get to this one in a second). To edit Duration, we type a new value on the Duration field, next to the Easing drop-down menu. Let’s go for 2000 milliseconds – or 2 seconds if you prefer.

The animation will now run slower and be less stressful for the eyes. You can try some other values and see what speed best fits your animation. 

4.   Easing Presets and Custom Easing

Easing has a series of presets ready to animate your designs. Custom mode allows us to create our own easing Bezier Curves and duration.

In Figma, the Easing Bezier Curve is displayed on a graph and it is set on time (horizontal X axis) and acceleration (vertical Y axis).

It feels a bit complicated but if we skip the mathematical equations, we can summarize these different effects as shown below.

In Custom mode, we can manually adjust time and acceleration value, by clicking and dragging the handles from both x-axis and y-axis. Let’s say we are animating something like an overlay message, and we need it to rush in,  hang in the middle for two or three seconds, and then rush out again. We can select Custom and adjust our handles like this:

5.   Hidden object animation

Another cool feature in Figma: we can hide objects and reveal them as the animation occurs. Let’s see how this is done and add a lid to our shipping box.

• Base Rule #1: repeat the object you want to be animated in both frames.

• Base Rule #2: both objects must have exactly the same name.

To create the lid for our box, we can draw a basic rectangle, give it our brand color, and place it over the box. To add some extra movement to our animation, we will place the lid in the first frame above both headphones and box.

By changing its opacity to 0% in the Fill Panel on the right, we get an invisible object that will magically appear during the animation. Awesome!

Once again, we can preview our work by clicking on the Present button.

One more! We are going to add a tick icon to our shipping box, but we want it to enter the screen from outside the frame. The easy way to do it, after successfully drawing it, of course, is dragging it out into the workspace. But there’s a catch: 

Dragging an object to the workspace outside a frame may isolate it and the animation won’t work.

So, how do we fix it? Easy! We move to the Layers panel on the left of our workspace, select the object and drag it back into its frame. All set!

6.   Adding a third frame and finishing our animation

Let’s finish our animation! We have our headphones inside the box, we have closed and checked our package, and all we need now is to send it away. Let’s go!

First, we duplicate the second frame by selecting it with the Move tool and hitting the shortcut Command + D on a Mac or Control + D on a PC. Next, we move our package outside the frame, making sure that all objects end up inside the “Animation 3” layer in the Layers panel.

Now it’s time to change back to Prototype and connect the second and third frames. We simply repeat the process and set our animations just like in the image below. I’ve customized the Easing to make our box speed away from the screen, you can try different values to fit what you feel is most natural.

Timeout #2

Are you feeling ready to create awesome animations in Figma? Get inspired with these examples of UI animation that are trending in 2024.

7.   Final Touches

To make sure our animation fits the flow from start to finish, I’ve created a first frame and designed a cool “Purchase” button, with a nice drop shadow. Next, I linked the first frame to the second, where the animation starts, and added a noodle connecting back to the first frame for a full circle effect.

And there we have it!

You are now ready to start creating beautiful animations in Figma! 

What 's Next?

Dive deeper into Figma at Bring Your Own Laptop. When you become a BYOL member, you will gain access to my Figma courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up! 

See you in class! – Dan