How to make an intro: build your channel's five seconds
The intro workflow: distill the brand to mark, palette, and one motion; time it like a sting; add a mute-proof audio signature; export every format your content uses.
Making an intro is a small, finishable project: distill your channel's identity into three ingredients, animate them for three to five seconds, add sound that survives muting, and export the format set. Why intros should be this short, and whether yours should even play first, is covered in the intro strategy guide; this is the build.
Step 1: distill to three ingredients
Your mark (logo or channel name as a wordmark), your palette (two or three colors, taken from your thumbnails so the feed and the intro agree), and one motion idea, the same discipline as animating a logo, because a channel intro IS a logo sting wearing your content's clothes. Write the motion idea as one sentence before opening anything: "the name types itself and the cursor becomes the logo."
Step 2: block the timing before styling
Three to five seconds splits into: entrance (0.5 to 1.5s), the moment (the mark lands, 0.5s), and the rest (a full second of legible stillness before your content cuts in). Apply the two timing rules, ease everything, settle with a small overshoot, and resist adding a second event; intros die of ambition, not simplicity.
Step 3: the audio signature
Two or three sounds, synced to the entrance and the land, form an audio logo your audience will learn faster than the visual one. It must work in silence (most plays are muted) and reward sound-on. Keep the music stem separate from the SFX so you can duck it under a cold-open voiceover.
Step 4: export the working set
16:9 for videos, 9:16 for Shorts and reels, 1:1 where you need it, plus a version with two seconds of tail stillness for editors to cut against. Name them properly once; future-you edits weekly.
Tool routes, quickly
CapCut or Canva can assemble a serviceable intro from your ingredients today at template-look risk; the AE tier buys full control at learning cost; generation takes the sentence from step 1 plus your brand kit and returns the timed, formatted set with revisions as edits. Intros are in Motionpilot's first template wave; the waitlist below is the shortcut.