Create an Instagram Carousel in After Effects (+ Free Template)

What’s an Instagram Carousel?

An Instagram carousel is a post that contains up to 10 images or videos. It gives you the power to share multiple types of content in one single post. 

It looks like any other Instagram post, except it, contains more than one slide. People have the option to swipe left and see the different slides of your carousel, which helps you create engaging content for your audience. 

Why are Instagram carousels effective? 

Did you know that Instagram carousels get more engagement than videos and images? 

If you’re active on Instagram, it is hard to miss all the carousels the other creators post every day. In fact, 20% of all Instagram posts are carousels. 

Instagram Carousels are a great way to share your opinion, motivate your audience, or teach a specific skill if you can’t explain everything in one post. 

You need to make sure your Instagram carousels are beautiful and easy to understand, but more importantly- provide value to your audience.

What’s an animated Instagram carousel? 

You probably already know that 91% of the internet traffic is video. When you combine the power of the carousel with the power of video, you get something compelling that can engage your audience and make them become your true fans. 

Animated Carousels are way more engaging than still carousels. Even an easy to create text animation included in your carousel can make a big difference. 

According to idearocket, Videos get 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. This is because videos grab people’s attention and keep it. It is proven that our brains can process visuals better than text. 

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a post that we created on Instagram that doesn’t include any animations: 

And here is one that has animated elements inside it.

But how can you create animated carousels for your social media accounts?

What software to use to create an animated carousel? 

Here are the top 3 software you can use to create animated Instagram carousels:

• Premiere Pro
• Canva
• After Effects 

We use After Effects to create our animated videos, and we’d recommend you use it if you’d like to create your own animated content. 

How to create an animated Instagram carousel In After Effects?

Follow the steps below to create your beautiful carousel in After Effects. 

Step1:

Open After Effects and create a new composition

 Do this by clicking on this icon on your Project Panel: 

Step 2:
Choose the size of your carousels.

We’d recommend you use the square or the portrait size options.

• Square: 1080x1080px
• Portrait: 1080x1350px

Step 3:
Create a composition with the size you’ve chosen.

Step 4:
Decide how many slides you’d like your carousel to have and create a composition for every slide.

Step 5:
Based on the number of slides you decided your animated carousel would have, create a master composition. That would help you have a very clear picture of how your whole carousel looks while you are working on it.

For example, suppose you decided to have 10 slides on your animated carousel ( 10 is the maximum on Instagram) and use the square format size. In that case, the size of your master composition needs to be 10,800×1080. And if you decided to create a portrait carousel, the size needs to be 10,800×1350.

Step 6:
Then, import all your slides ( the compositions you created on step 4) and place them next to each other. Like this:

Note: If you want to create a grid, as we did, place your cursor on the grid on the left side of the screen, hold and drag it to the place you’d like to put it. 

Slide 7: 

Start creating your carousel by adding your awesome content to every composition you created. 

If you feel like this is too hard to do, feel free to download our free template. And if you like that type of content, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter. That way, you would never miss a free template. 

And if you ever have any questions if you’d like to say ‘hi’, don’t hesitate to drop us an email. We’re here to help you. 

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