Can Adobe After Effects Be Replaced by Canva? -

Several days ago, I got a challenge from my husband.

He created an animated background video for an important event his school held–the Minister of Education came to inaugurate a new building. The video looks beautiful and glamorous with many moving elements. I loved the combination of luxurious emerald green and shimmering gold. And I think many participants of this event were also mesmerized by the video.

Once the event was over–my husband told me–a staff member from the school foundation approached him. "Could you give me the Canva file for this video?"

I am not surprised because something like this happens quite frequently with these people. However, I still feel incensed.

No Respect for Free Labor

These people are basically seeking free labor from the teachers. They recruited teachers for teaching, right? Yet, they add more workload to teachers who have extra skills outside teaching, for doing extra work.

For example, my husband has a skill in graphic design and motion design. They often asked him to create promotional materials, without pay. He also created the school website without pay. I also know another teacher who has a skill in writing and content creation. They asked her to create contents for the school's and foundation's social media.

And for doing these things, teachers are often required to stay up late–my husband sometimes only got two hours of sleep–without extra pay, and they still go to school very early in the morning to teach as usual.

Well, I can't complain, though, because my husband does this voluntarily without objection. But as an outsider looking at this matter, I feel that this is unfair.

The foundation could have hired professional content creators, graphic designers, videographers, and internet marketers for its publication division. It's not that they don't have the money. For schools this big, I believe they can assign some budgets for hiring professionals.

What is more shameless, after doing so, they ask for the raw files so that they can replicate the work for their other event or school without giving credit to the creator. I don't know if that can be called piracy, but I believe it is.

Plus, if you know how much a teacher is being paid in my country, you might even be more enraged. My apologies.

The Challenge My Husband Gave Me

Let's get back to the time the staff asked him the Canva file.

My husband just laughed, "I don't use Canva, Sir. I created this using Adobe After Effects." He was sure that the staff didn't know how to use After Effects, but he gave him the file anyway.

This situation made him wonder, can such video be created using Canva? Why do people assume that the video is created with Canva? If Canva can be used to create such video, that would be awesome. The cost would be cheaper anyway.

So, he asked me to recreate the video from a blank canvas using Canva. "What's the deal?" I said. The video is quite complex; it would take a lot of my time and effort to do it. I can't just take this challenge for nothing.

"What do you want?" my husband said.

I was thinking, what's worth the effort for this? "One year of Canva Pro subscription," I said after a while.

"Deal!" And we shook hands.

The Challenge of Using Canva

As soon as I started the project, I doubted myself. I am lucky I still have the Pro subscription from the last time I claimed the free trial from Canva. But the stock elements are not enough to recreate the video.

On day two, I gave up.

I asked my husband to show me the breakdown of the project in After Effects. Oh, no. The detail of the project is insane. There are so many layers. Some patterned objects are even manually created using Adobe Illustrator before being exported to After Effects. How can I possibly recreate such details using only stocks in Canva?

Below, I listed some parts of the project that I find difficult to work on using Canva. However, this might be because my Canva skills are not enough yet. I would really appreciate it if you could suggest to me how to do this task by leaving a comment. I will also update if at any time I find a solution to these problems.

1. I cannot rotate an object around an axle other than the center. Instead, I created a grouped object so that it looked as if the object is rotated not by the center.

2. I cannot convert a text or object to a frame so that I can insert videos inside it.

3. Creating a flashing effect for an object is also difficult. I used a flash video for this. I removed the background and put it on top of the object.

4. Creating motion paths and editing the speed of the animation is still very difficult in Canva.

Conclusion

Until the moment I publish this post, it is clear to me that Adobe After Effects cannot be replaced by Canva. However, considering how fast Canva has developed its tools right now, the possibility is still there for the near future.

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