In this Motion tutorial, we will create the first part of a YouTube Channel trailer. This trailer will have a simple animated logo for a craft company. It can be used alone as a logo intro or added to the start or end of a product trailer.

1. Start a new Motion^R project at 1920 x 1080 resolution.
   
   At this point, we have one Group layer in the Layers pane. We will add a simple gradient background from the Content folder.
   
   
2. Select the Group layer and rename it to “BG” for background. Go to Library - Content folder - Backgrounds folder. I am using a very subtle background called Gradient Stage 11. Select the background of your choice and click the Apply button at the top of the Library pane.
   
   The background is too small. Let’s increase the scale to cover the entire Canvas.
   
   
3. In the Properties tab in the Inspector, use the Scale slider to increase the background to 200%. Lock the BG layer in the Layers pane.
   
   I have already created the company logo in Photoshop^R. Because the business is a craft and hobby business, the logo has the popular chalkboard style. We can import this .psd file into our project.
   
   
4. Click File - Import to import the .psd graphic. Motion will put the image centered on the Canvas. Rename the new Group layer containing the imported image to “Logo”.
   
   We will create an animation that will move the logo image from outside/above the top of the Canvas to the center.
   
   
5. We want the first animation to begin with the Logo image above the top of the Canvas. With the Playhead at the beginning of the Timeline, let’s move the graphic to that position. You might want to set the Zoom Level to 25%, to get a better view.
   
   
6. Select the Logo layer in the Layers pane. Go to Library - Behaviors - Basic Motion and add the Move behavior to the logo.
   
   We want the animation to last for 60 frames or 2 seconds.
   
   
7. Resize the Move layer (purple) in the Timeline to 2 seconds duration.
   
   
8. Let’s add the easing for this Move animation. In the Behaviors tab of the Inspector, set the Speed menu to Decelerate. This will cause the logo image to slow slightly just before stopping.
   
   
9. Test the animation and you should see the logo image move downward and stop at the center of the Canvas.
   
   

In the next tutorial, we will add another simple animation, which will be a scroll drawn under the name on the graphic. We will use one of the prebuilt animations in the Motion Library called Ornaments to create the second animation.

Finished Project

Apple, Motion, iBooks Author, GarageBand, TextEdit, Pages, iMovie and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. BellaOnline is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Screenshots used by permission.