How to Make a YouTube Intro
In this guide I'll show you how to quickly assemble a professionally animated YouTube intro. A good video intro can boost the perceived production value of your content and establish consistent branding throughout your output. These short logo animations used to take a significant amount of time and resources to make, with Videobolt's intro maker you can have yours done in minutes.
In order to tech you how to make an intro, I’ll pick Grunge Glitch Logo Title Reveal, a quick 6 second video intro with a grungy, glitchy aesthetic. Since I'm writing this on St. Patrick's Day, I'll make an intro dedicated to the holiday. Let’s take a look!
Finding the Right Intro
There are thousands of intro templates to pick from in Videobolt’s library, so it’s guaranteed you’ll find one that fits your YouTube channel like a glove.
Going through 1000s of intro templates may sound daunting, luckily there are many filters to help you narrow down the search:
- Industry - filters templates based on categories like finance, retail, hospitality, etc;
- Style - filters based on animation style like 2D, 3D, glitch, etc;
- Format - filters based on the technical aspects of the template such as duration, aspect ratio and resolution.
Upload your Logo
All templates are highly customizable, and we can make these alterations directly inside the online editor. To open up the editor simply click the “Edit” located below the template’s thumbnail.
Inside the editor, the video preview takes up most of my screen, while on the left I can see the sidebar with all the placeholders (and vertical tabs for other options). We’ll fill the placeholders first, and then go through further customization.
I have a logo ready on my PC, so I’ll click the logo placeholder, choose upload and select the PNG file.
Any change will automatically create a low resolution image and video preview, so I can check how my logo fits in the video. I have a logo with a transparent background so this will work out well. Another thing I want to do is hide the tagline, since I don’t need it in this video. To hide the tagline I’ll click the tagline placeholder and then click the eye icon so that it’s shown as strikethrough.
NOTE: If you don’t have a logo on hand, you can use text instead. I’ll continue the guide assuming a logo, though you can see how to switch to text at the end.
Choose the Colors
Now that my logo is in place, I should adjust the colors in the video to reflect the St. Patrick’s Day theme which would be the colors of the irish flag: green, white and orange. Adjusting the controls is a walk in the park. Click the Customize tab in the sidebar and adjust the colors using the circles at the top.
Produce and Download the Video
With my colors set, I’ll wait for a preview to check the results. The video turned out exactly as I intended so I can go ahead and render a high resolution video.
In order to produce the high quality video:
- Click “Produce & Download” in the top right corner of the editor, click produce final render and the rendering process will begin;
- In the ensuing dialog you can see the final resolution of the video, in addition to how many video credits it will cost to render (everything except music visualizers will cost 1 video credit);
- Click produce final render and the rendering process will begin.
Once the render is done you’ll see a screen with options to share the link, download or post your video to social media. That’s it, you now have a branded new logo intro ready to be used with all your video content.
BONUS TIP: Making an Intro Without a Logo
If you don’t have a logo ready, you can use your brand or channel name to make a text intro.
In order to switch to text:
- Go to Customize in the sidebar;
- Find an option titled “Logo or Text” and change the dropdown to Text;
- Fill out the title placeholder by clicking the placeholder button right next to the logo. You can type several lines of text and it will be reflected in the video;
- If you wish to further adjust your logo text, do so from the options in the Customize tab.
Following the steps above, we made an intro that displays text instead of a logo image. Sadly, not all intros support text instead of a logo, though you can easily find the ones that do by searching for “logo or text”.
I hope this guide helped you learn how to make a YouTube intro animation you'll use for all your future video content. If you feel like sharing feel free to shout out @videoboltnet on Twitter.
Stay tuned for further tips, tricks and other Videobolt news. Have a great day, see you soon!