Glossary · Camera & motion
Keyframe animation
Keyframe animation sets how something looks at a few chosen moments, called keyframes, and fills in the movement between them.
Why it matters
It is the basic idea behind most animation, from a title sliding onto the screen to a still picture brought to life, so knowing it makes motion easy to describe.
A keyframe records a state at a point in time: where a thing is, how big it is, which way it faces, how visible it is. Between two keyframes, software or an animator works out the frames in between. In hand-drawn animation these are called in-betweens.
How the change happens matters as much as where it ends. Easing makes a movement start or stop gently instead of all at once, which feels more natural because real objects rarely jump straight to full speed.
The same idea appears in AI video, where a first picture, and sometimes a last one, act like keyframes and the motion between them is generated. Fewer, well-chosen keyframes usually give cleaner movement than many small ones.
A chart of a company's yearly sales rises on screen. The first keyframe shows the bars flat at zero, the second shows them at full height one second later, and easing lets each bar slow down as it settles.
Last reviewed 15 October 2026.