How To Make Your Own Custom Gifs For Instagram Story Without Sharing Them To Giphy

May 5, 2020

Written By Lucija Šimec

Community Manager

In this blog post, we will show you how to easily create your own custom GIF for Instagram stories on your iPhone.

1. Download the app "Over"

You can download it from the App Store or Google Play.

Why do we use Over to create GIFs?

it has the ability to save in png, with the transparent background
it offers free graphics and shapes
you can work with layers
you can choose custom colors
the app is easy and convenient to use

2. Making The Layers

We will show how to create animated hearts.

open the Over app
click the "+" for creating and choose a transparent background

Over app home screen showing design tutorials and marketing template collections

Over app create screen showing background and layout options including transparent background for GIF creation

Over app editing interface with the Graphic option highlighted for adding heart shapes

go into graphics and search "heart"
choose the heart graphic you like (there are limited free options)
you can change the color of the heart if you want - we changed it to pink (hex code: e4a199)

Over app showing heart graphic search results with options to select and customize shapes

Over app color picker showing how to change the heart graphic color to a custom pink hex code

easily duplicate the heart graphic two times and then line up the hearts how you want the end product to look like

Over app canvas showing duplicated heart graphics arranged in the desired GIF layout pattern

Over app export screen showing three pink hearts on transparent background ready to save as PNG

it's better to make the graphics bigger as Giphy will reduce the quality
work backward - save the end product first
when exporting, pay attention that you export it as "png"
next, delete the graphics one by one and save each one separately

3. Making the GIF

You have to take the layers you've created in Over app to gifmaker.me to make the GIF.

upload the images
when you are done, click "Create GIF Animation"
download the GIF

GifMaker.me website interface for uploading image layers and creating an animated GIF

Finished animated GIF of three pink hearts beating created from the Over app layers

3. Uploading and Using Your New GIF

There are different ways you can use GIF in your stories.

First option: Copy/paste the GIF from your camera roll straight onto Instagram.

iOS photo options menu showing Copy option to copy the GIF from camera roll for pasting into Instagram

Instagram Story text editor showing where to paste the copied GIF onto the story

Second option: Create a Giphy account and upload the GIF onto there. You can apply for an "artist channel" to make your GIFs searchable on Instagram and Giphy so others can use them as well.

Of course, this is optional and it works just fine if you just copy/paste from your camera roll into Instagram and it's also much more convenient.