Telegram for Android brings Animated Stickers

Telegram has rolled out a new update which is all about animated stickers. Artists can also create and upload new packs of animated stickers for everybody to use.

Users can Send ultra-lightweight high-quality animated stickers to express emotion with motion. Obviously, you can also receive animated stickers instantly on any connection at just 20-30 KB per sticker and enjoy smooth animations at 60 frames per second.

Telegram engineers experimented with vector graphics, packaging methods and forbidden magic to create the Lottie-based .TGS format, in which each sticker takes up about 20-30 Kilobytes – six times smaller than the average photo.

Thanks to various optimisations, animated stickers consume less battery than GIFs and run at a smooth 60 frames per second. If a picture is worth a thousand words, that’s 180,000 words per sticker.

Telegram artists have created a few sample sets ranging from Rambunctious Rodents to Sentient Snacks. You can find more animated sticker sets in the ‘Trending’ section of your sticker panel.

As always, the fastest way to find a sticker that fits your mood is to type in a relevant emoji – Telegram will immediately suggest matching stickers.

All artists are welcome to create new sets and share them with Telegram users.

Creating Telegram Animated Stickers

To create animated stickers for the Telegram platform, you will need the following:

1. Any vector graphics editor that allows exporting vector objects to Adobe After Effects for turning them into animations.
2. Adobe After Effects.
3. The Bodymovin-TG plugin, a fork of Bodymovin for Adobe After Effects that can be used to export animations to .TGS, the Telegram animated stickers format.

Technical Requirements

• Sticker/canvas size must be 512х512 pixels.
• Sticker objects must not leave the canvas.
• Animation length must not exceed 3 seconds.
• Animation must be looped.
• Sticker size must not exceed 64 KB.
• All stickers inside one pack must have the same FPS (either 30 or 60).
• You must not use the following Adobe After Effects functionality when animating your sticker: Expressions, Masks, Mattes, Layer Effects, Images, Solids, Texts, 3D Layers, Merge Paths, Star Shapes, Gradient Strokes, Repeaters, Time Stretching, Time Remapping, Auto-Oriented Layers. Using any of these tools will make it impossible to export your animation with Bodymovin-TG

Once your stickers are ready, send the /newanimated command to the @stickers bot – then send it the .TGS files.

Your set will need an icon. Icons for animated sticker sets must be 100×100 pixels, with looped animation not exceeding 3 seconds.

What’s New Summary

• Send ultra-lightweight high-quality animated stickers to express emotion with motion
• Receive animated stickers instantly on any connection at just 20-30 KB per sticker.
• Enjoy smooth animations at 60 frames per second.
• Create new animated sets and upload them to @stickers for everybody to use
• Try animated stickers from the Trending tab in your sticker panel.