can you do simple animations in Illustrator?

I don't think this is directly pertinent to OP's needs, but I wanted to add an interesting contribution by J. Kriebeler (sorry I can't find his user tag for some reason). It's called Frame-by-frame SVG animation script and is pretty clever I think. Note that this script generates an animated svg (animated with internal css) so it will work when added to a html page, but almost certainly won't work as a managed asset on Instagram or the like.

- Mark

Well, it is not so long ago when Illustrator still allowed you to export layers as .swf frames to create simple animations (I think it worked up to Illustrator 2020). Then all you need is a .swf to .gif converter, for example, or something else that may convert it to another file format that supports animations.

Of course, you may also dare to tackle the very famous SVG Interactivity palette in Illustrator and then do something else with it.

The simple answer is no, there is no animation within Illustrator itself. You need to take the assets you have made into another program to animate and then the choice of program is up to you - Photoshop, Animate, Adobe Creative Cloud Express would be ideal for Instagram animations (similar to Canva).

Hi. Illustrator doesn't have native tools or functions for animation. You can try Adobe Animate.

Use photoshop for simple gif animations. Use the window >> timeline > Create Frame Animation, then file >> save for web legacy check animation

Illustrator can not export to an animated format, and also does not have a timeline. Feel free though to copy Ilustrator items as smart objects into photoshop, this way you can scale to infinity.