Want to learn how to animate in DaVinci Resolve? Whether you’re adding animated characters to your YouTube videos, creating smooth transitions, or simply making your edits more engaging, learning the basics of animation is the best place to start.

In this tutorial, our founder, Finzar, walks you through creating smooth character animations from scratch, using keyframes, motion blur, and DaVinci Resolve’s Fusion workspace. And don’t worry if you’ve never used Fusion before – this tutorial is designed for beginners! So buckle in, and hit play on the video above!

Getting Started With Character Animation

First, you’ll need a character PNG with a transparent background. For this tutorial, we’re using two different Finzar character images, which we’ll animate onto the screen, transition between, and then animate off again. (A couple of PNG characters are included in our Animation presets pack!)

Start by dragging your PNGs onto the DaVinci Resolve timeline and adjusting their duration and scale. You can then add a simple Cross Dissolve between the two images to create a smooth character transition.

Quick tip: Make sure your characters’ heads are aligned in both PNGs. This makes the transition look much more natural!

Creating Smooth Animations With Fusion

Now for the fun part: bringing your character to life!

DaVinci Resolve’s Fusion workspace gives you much more control over your animations, including the ability to add motion blur.

By adding a Transform effect between your character PNG and the MediaOut node, you can animate the character’s position using keyframes.

For example, to make your character slide up onto the screen, simply create two keyframes on the Y Position control: one with the character off-screen and another with the character in its final position. You now have a basic slide animation!

Making Your Animations Look Professional

The secret to great-looking animations isn’t just movement – it’s how that movement starts and stops. Using DaVinci Resolve’s Spline Editor, you can smooth your keyframes and adjust their curves to create more natural motion.

Rather than having your character move at a constant speed, you can make it slide onto the screen quickly before gradually slowing to a stop.

Combine this with motion blur, and even the simplest animations can look significantly more polished.

Adding Camera Shake and Extra Movement

Want to take your animations even further? Adding a subtle camera shake can help your characters feel more dynamic.

One useful trick is to combine multiple character PNGs into a single Fusion Clip before applying the shake. This keeps the movement consistent across your character transitions.

You can create these effects yourself or use pre-built camera shake presets to save time.

Animate Faster With Storezar Presets

Once you’ve learned the fundamentals of animation, you can start experimenting with more complex effects.

If you’d rather spend less time building the same animations from scratch, our DaVinci Resolve preset packs include ready-made character animations, camera shakes, and other effects that you can drag and drop straight into your projects.

From simple slides to backflips and more elaborate movements, they’re designed to make animating in DaVinci Resolve quicker and easier.