Happy birthday, belated birthday, Mom, Dad, the twins, and every milestone age from 1 to 100. “Level up! Happy birthday, player one” is in the Pixel theme, naturally.
GIF CARDS FOR
EVERYTHING!
Six hundred and sixty animated cards for every birthday, holiday, “sorry” and “omw” you will ever send. Change the words, export a GIF, text it. The cake bobs, the confetti falls, and the loop never jumps.
The Happy Birthday card in its Confetti theme, open in Animate and zoomed on the 480 by 480 card. Space plays the four-second loop: the cake bobs above the words while confetti falls and turns around them, and the loop runs on into its second pass without a jump.
BLING!
THE PITCH
A card for the text you are about to send
Nobody mails a card any more. We text. And the GIF keyboard is a slot machine: you type “happy birthday”, you get a sitcom character from 2009, and you send it anyway because the meeting starts in two minutes.
So we drew the cards ourselves. Every occasion we could think of, said every way we could think of, in sixteen looks. They are not stock GIFs. Each one is a PopCraft file with real text and real keyframes, so you can change “Mom” to “Mum”, swap the colours, and export your own GIF in a few seconds. Then it is yours, and it says what you meant.
660
cards, all official templates
217
occasions on seven shelves
16
themes, from Neon to Elegant
4s
a loop, 480×480 at 30 fps
IN THE WILD
Where they end up
This is the job. A square card, sitting in a thread between two blue bubbles, saying the thing. It has to read at thumbnail size, it has to look good on a white or a dark background, and it has to make sense even if the app only shows its first frame.
That is why the words sit on their own paper in a band in the middle, and nothing is drawn behind them. The scenery keeps to the margins: confetti above and below, a sun under the horizon, a neon tube round the edge. The build refuses a card whose words run into the scenery.
(The thread is a drawing of how cards look in a chat. The cards in it are real ones: “Happy Birthday, Mom!” in Confetti, “Go get ’em!” in Kinetic type and “Diploma acquired” in Pixel. Jules is not real. Sam got the card.)
J
Jules
Today 9:02
wait is it mom’s birthday TODAY
yes. you have until lunch.
ok sending something right now
🎂 ✦ ◆ ●Happy Birthday, Mom!● ◆ ✦ 🎂
ok that’s actually cute
▬ ☘ ▬GO GET ’EM!▬ ☘ ▬
also good luck at the interview
★ ★ ★DIPLOMA ACQUIRED★ ★ ★
Today 9:06
wrong one. that was for Sam 😅
PRESS SPACE
Every card is an animation you can open
Open any card and you are in Animate, with its timeline under the canvas. Space plays the four seconds. The sprites hop, the words arrive, and the loop comes round again. Nothing here is a video file: it is keyframes, behaviours and cues on ordinary layers.
That matters when you want to change something. Want the confetti slower? It is a behaviour with a rate. Want the words to land later? Drag the key. It is the same timeline as the rest of the motion studio.
The Happy Halloween card in its Pixel theme, open in Animate and zoomed on the card. Space plays it: pixel sprites hop along the top and bottom between checkered bars while the words arrive, then the loop starts again.
WORDS FIRST
Type is fitted to the words
“Hip hip hooray!” and “Wishing you a year as wonderful as you are” do not want the same type size. Every card is built with its type fitted to its own words: the build starts big and steps down until the message sits in its band with no word broken.
Kinetic type cards go the other way and make the words the whole show: bars slide across, a clover turns in the corner, and “GO GET ’EM!” punches in. They are one of the two themes where the words arrive rather than wait on frame one.
The Good luck card in its Kinetic type theme, open in Animate and zoomed on the card. Space plays it: bars slide across the top and bottom, the clover turns in the corner and the words punch in, and it loops back to the start.
SIXTEEN LOOKS
Pick a mood, not a stock GIF
A theme draws the scenery round the words and gives them their typeface and their beat. An occasion brings its picture and its three colours. The number is how many cards use that theme. Confetti wins, obviously.
Confetti103
Paper bits falling and turning round the words
Elegant76
A double gold frame, glints, a small rule
Watercolour75
Soft washes of the occasion’s colours
Kinetic type48
Bars slide, the words punch in
Paper cut42
Layered hills with drop shadows
Pop art40
Halftone and a comic-book shout
Ornament36
Rosettes and filigree that turn
Sparkle34
Four-point stars twinkling on their own clocks
Retro sunset34
A striped sun over a scrolling grid
Cute buddy34
A little character who is very happy for you
Doodle31
Hand-drawn hearts and stars, drawing themselves
Minimal26
The words, one picture, lots of air
Balloons22
Balloons bobbing up the margins
Neon22
A glowing tube on a brick wall
Pixel21
Sprites hop between checkered bars
Postcard12
A stamp, a postmark, wish you were here
THE SHELVES
217 occasions, seven shelves
HOLIDAYS
Christmas, Diwali, Lunar New Year in several languages, Halloween, Día de Muertos, the first day of fall, and the zodiac years from the Rat to the Rooster.
FAITH
Ramadan Mubarak, Eid, Easter, christenings, bar and bat mitzvahs. Said with care, mostly in the Elegant, Ornament and Watercolour themes.
LOVE
I love you, love you more, anniversaries from the first year up, Valentine’s, and “miss you” in neon for the long-distance crowd.
MILESTONES
Graduations, new jobs, new babies, weddings, retirements and housewarmings. “Diploma acquired” is a real card. So is “You got the job!”
SUPPORT
Get well soon, thinking of you, sympathy. The quiet themes do the work here: Minimal, Elegant and Watercolour, with no confetti in sight.
EVERYDAY
Thank you, sorry, good luck, on my way, out of office. The little messages you actually send on a Tuesday. “OMW” comes in Pixel.
THE RULES
What every card promises
WORDS ON PAPER
READ ME!The words are set in the brand text colour on the brand paper colour, so a kit can re-skin a card and the words still read. The occasion’s colours are scenery, so a Christmas tree stays green under a blue brand.
NOTHING BEHIND
CLEAR!The scenery keeps to the margins round the words. Each piece is boxed tight round what it draws, so the contrast check sees what a reader sees.
SEAMLESS LOOP
AGAIN!Ambient motion is whole cycles over four seconds. A spin stops on a turn its shape repeats on. Whatever a cue brings on has left by the last frame.
These are not guidelines in a wiki. A test runs over all 660 cards and checks them: unique names, the words inside their band, and the first and last frames of every loop matching. Add a card that breaks a rule and the build says so.
FOUR MOVES
From occasion to sent
- 1
Find the card
Click New file and search: “birthday mom”, “diwali”, “get well”, “omw”. The cards live in the text-message GIF category, and every one plays its loop while it is on screen. - 2
Change the words
The words are real text on the card, not pixels baked into a picture. Type your own: a name, an inside joke, a date. Then press Space to watch it play. - 3
Make it yours
The paper and the words take their colours from the brand fields, so a brand kit re-skins the card while the cake stays the colour of a cake. - 4
Export a GIF
Click the download button, pick GIF. The palette is shared across frames so nothing flickers, and it loops forever. Then text it.
SHIP IT
Export a GIF that does not flicker
The export dialog knows what a GIF wants. Palette: Shared means one set of colours for every frame, so flat colour does not shimmer from frame to frame. Dither: None keeps flat fills flat; pick Ordered for a card with a gradient. Loop: Forever, because it is a card.
The summary tells you what you are getting before you click: 480×480, 120 frames, 4.0 seconds at 30 fps. A GIF tops out at 50 fps anyway, and the cards were drawn at 30.
The Love you more card in its Doodle theme, in Animate. The export button in the transport bar opens Export animation; GIF is picked as the format, showing its shared palette, dither and loop forever settings and the summary of the size, frame count and estimated file size.
HALLMARK, BUT
The old way vs. the card you made
| THE GIF KEYBOARD | A POPCRAFT CARD |
|---|---|
| Whatever the search ranks first | An occasion, a tone and a theme you picked |
| Someone else’s words, baked into the pixels | Real text. Type “Mum”, “Abuela”, or the dog’s name |
| A watermark from a site you have never heard of | Your colours, from your brand kit |
| A loop that hiccups every three seconds | A four-second loop the build checks for seams |
| Fine, I guess | Actually cute |
HOW THEY ARE MADE
Cards as code
We did not draw 660 files by hand. A card is one line of a catalogue: an occasion (its words, its picture, its three colours) said in one theme. The themes draw the scenery; about a hundred small pictures (cakes, clovers, lanterns, clocks) are components each card places. One build turns the catalogue into templates.
That is how “Happy 90th” gets antique gold and “Happy 16th” gets bubblegum: the colours follow the age. It is also why adding an occasion is one line, and why the same Kit is open to you. The templates page has the rest of that story.
A logo reveal in Animate. The download button in the transport bar opens Export animation. MP4 shows frame rate, range, resolution and quality with a summary of the size; GIF switches to palette, dither and loop settings; Lottie lists what the file can carry. The frame rate is set to 120 fps for MP4.
MORE MOTION
When a card is not enough
The cards are the small end of what Animate does. The same timeline types out headlines, staggers lists and cuts trailers to music.
A launch post in Animate with its headline selected. In the Design panel, the Text animation section’s Animate menu has Letter by letter: a text animator cascades each letter in from the playhead. Space plays the headline arriving a letter at a time.
A tips post in Animate. With the first tip row selected, the other rows are added with Shift-click. From + in the timeline, Rise is applied to all of them; the Stagger field sets how much later each row starts. Space plays the rows rising one after another.
A shader title card in Animate with its episode tag selected. The tag’s rows are opened, Rotation is added from + Property, and from the wave button on that row the Wiggle behaviour is added. Its amount and frequency show in the list. Space plays the tag wobbling on its own, with no keys.
SEND ONE TODAY
Somebody has a birthday
Statistically, someone you know has one this week. Click New file, search their occasion, change the words and export a GIF. The export docs cover every setting.
ASKED & ANSWERED
Questions, answered
How many cards are there?
660 text-message GIF cards: 217 occasions on seven shelves (birthday, holidays, faith, love, milestones, support and everyday), each said in one or more of 16 themes. They are official templates, so they are in New file for everyone.
What size are they?
Every card is 480 by 480 pixels and loops in exactly four seconds at 30 frames per second. We built them small enough to send as a picture message.
Will the first frame make sense if the GIF does not play?
Most cards show the whole message on frame one, because some messaging apps show the first frame until you tap it. The exceptions are the themes whose point is the words arriving, Kinetic type and Pixel, and their descriptions say so.
Can I change the words?
Yes. The message and the small note under it are ordinary text layers. Type over them. The colours of the paper and the words come from the brand fields, so a brand kit can re-skin a card too.
Can I export something other than a GIF?
Yes. A card is an ordinary animation, so it exports as MP4, WebM, a PNG sequence or a GIF from the same dialog. Free plan GIF and video exports carry a small PopCraft watermark; Creator and Studio export without it.
Do the loops really have no jump?
That is a rule the build checks. Ambient motion is whole cycles of a behaviour over the four seconds, and anything a cue brings on has left again by the last frame, so frame 120 runs into frame 1.
THE MANUAL, FOR THE DETAILS
BLING! YOUR TURN.
Hundreds of text-message cards that loop under a megabyte. Free to start, in your browser or on your Mac.