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Adobe Animate, once known as Flash, has been used for cartoon animation for decades, and many countryball creators still use it. It combines vector drawing, a timeline with tweens and frame-by-frame tools, and video export in one program.
This tutorial takes you from an empty document to a short exported clip of a countryball moving across the screen. It covers the ideas you need first; the Adobe Animate Course by PolishTortoise goes much further.
Before you start
Adobe Animate is sold as a subscription through Adobe Creative Cloud, either on its own or in a bundle, and Adobe offers a free trial. In early 2026 Adobe said Animate is in maintenance mode: it remains available to new and existing users and keeps receiving bug and security fixes, but no new features. Everything below works in the current version.
Four shortcuts you'll press constantly: F5 adds frames, F6 adds a keyframe that copies the previous one, F7 adds an empty keyframe, and F8 converts the selection to a symbol.
Step by step
Step 1: Create the document
Create a new document at 1920 × 1080 pixels and 24 frames per second. Either platform type works for video; if you only make videos, pick one and stay with it so your settings stay consistent between projects.
Step 2: Understand vector and bitmap
Anything you draw in Animate is a vector: shapes described by points and curves, which stay sharp at any size. Imported photos and scans are bitmaps, made of pixels, which blur when you scale them up. Draw countryballs, flags and props as vectors so you can zoom the camera in without losing quality, and keep bitmaps for things like textured backgrounds.
Zoomed in, a vector edge stays smooth; a bitmap edge turns into visible pixels. Step 3: Make a symbol for the ball
Choose Insert, then New Symbol, and create a Graphic symbol called after the country. A symbol is a reusable object: edit it once and every copy updates. Graphic symbols play in sync with the main timeline, so what you see when you scrub is what you get in the exported video.
Step 4: Draw the ball and its flag inside the symbol
Inside the symbol, draw the flag on a layer called "flag" as rectangles bigger than the ball. On a layer above it, draw the body with the Oval tool (hold Shift for a circle), then drag its edge gently with the Selection tool so it isn't perfectly round.
Right-click the body layer and choose Mask. Animate turns it into a mask layer and the flag layer below into a masked layer, so the flag only shows inside the ball. Add the outline and white, pupil-less eyes on new layers above the mask. The countryball drawing tutorial covers proportions.
Step 5: Move it with a classic tween
Go back to the main timeline, drag the symbol from the Library onto the left of the stage at frame 1, add a keyframe at frame 24 with F6, and move the ball to the right on that frame. Right-click between the keyframes and choose Create Classic Tween. Animate fills in the frames between. Set an ease in the Properties panel so it starts and stops gently.
Classic tweens animate symbols: position, scale, rotation and colour effects. Shape tweens animate raw shapes, morphing one shape into another, which is handy for effects like a puddle growing or a border shifting.
A classic tween moves a symbol between two keyframes. A shape tween morphs one shape into another. Step 6: Add frame-by-frame expressions
Some moves look better drawn by hand: a shocked jolt, a shiver, eyes narrowing. Double-click the symbol to edit it, add empty keyframes with F7 on the eyes layer and draw each pose. Turn on onion skinning to see the neighbouring frames as faint outlines while you draw.
Step 7: Frame the shot with the camera
Choose the Camera tool to add a camera layer. Move and zoom the camera like any tweened object to pan across a scene or push in on a reaction, while your artwork stays put. Keep camera moves slow and eased.
The camera frame moves and zooms over the scene; the artwork underneath doesn't change. Step 8: Export the video
Use File, then Export, then Export Video/Media, and choose an H.264 MP4 at your document's size and frame rate. Watch the exported file all the way through: some effects only show problems in the final render. Then edit the clips together with sound in your video editor, as covered in making countryball videos.
Practice exercise
Where to go next
Compare Animate with Moho and the free options in the countryball animation software guide, or learn the movement principles that work in any program in how to animate countryballs.
Learn it step by step in the Adobe Animate Course by PolishTortoise
Seven chapters made by PolishTortoise, a countryball YouTuber. Learn Adobe Animate from the first launch: vector drawing, classic and shape tweens, frame-by-frame animation, the camera layer and animated flags, then exporting your video and growing as a content creator.
- Find your way around Adobe Animate: stage, timeline, layers and tools.
- Understand vector and bitmap images and when to use each.
- Draw clean countryballs with Animate's drawing tools.