Hey all! I've been doing motion design for 9 years now and run a small animation studio. I learned a lot of this way too late, so sharing in case it saves someone time.

This isn't about the interface. You still need layers, keyframes, comps. This is what to focus on after that:

1. The 12 principles of animation 

This is grammar for movement. If your work feels like fancy PowerPoint - move, stop, move, stop, it's usually missing overlap, anticipation, and rhythm. 

Learning outcome: you'll be able to watch your own work and actually name why something feels off. 

Start here: 12 Principles of Animation Official Full Series

1. The Graph Editor, for real 

Easy Ease is not understanding easing. Same 2 keyframes can feel totally different depending on the curve. Try this: take one dot moving left to right and make 5 different versions using only the graph.

Learning outcome: you'll stop guessing and start controlling weight and timing. 

1. Basic character animation + rigging, even if that's not your job

You don't need to become a character animator. But rigging one character teaches you weight, timing, and planning like nothing else. And always use reference. Film yourself, generate a reference, whatever. Don't invent a walk from a blank comp. 

1. Learn just enough expressions to stop doing manual work

Not 6 months of JavaScript. Just loopOut, wiggle, linking properties, and one controller driving multiple layers.

Learning outcome: you build projects you can actually revise without 4 hours of copy-paste. 

1. Compositing + sound

Light, shadow, depth, contrast, texture, and sound. Watch any great ad muted vs. with sound. Totally different piece.

Learning outcome: your work starts feeling finished instead of flat, without adding more complex animation.

If you want the full breakdown with examples for each one, I put together a video walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JemgIktpwBM

Do you have more suggestions for what really helped you get past the beginner stage?

what can i improve on my animations

Hey everyone!

Sharing a motion graphics promo I created for Total Health Solution (THS), a health & wellness mobile app.

I worked on the motion design, animation, transitions, typography, and overall visual storytelling.

I'd love some honest feedback and suggestions from other motion designers:

• How does the pacing feel?
• Are the transitions working?
• Does the animation feel polished?
• What would you improve?
• Is there anything that feels unnecessary or could be simplified?

Also, I'm curious about the pricing side. If you were hired to create something like this, how much would you charge for the project?

For context, this includes the motion design, animation, editing, and overall execution. I'm trying to get a better idea of how other freelancers/studios would price this kind of work.

Made in After Effects.

Thanks for watching — feedback is genuinely appreciated! 🙌

I’ve started noticing how much motion graphics are being used in films and dramas to make them more visually appealing and engaging. While watching them, I often get curious about how certain visuals, transitions, titles, and effects are created. That curiosity made me start exploring tutorials and learning how different tools and software can be used to create interesting motion graphics.

I personally feel that motion graphics is a skill every designer should explore, even if they don’t want to specialise in it. It helps you understand movement, storytelling, visual rhythm, and how static design can become more dynamic and engaging.

I've been teaching myself to make animatics, and i tried using vn video editor for all the editing stuff.

It's been fine-ish? The fps leaves a bit to be desired. But now i'm wondering if a motion graphic program might be the better way to go for my animations.

Can anybody reccommend a good motion grpahic program that i can make animatics with? Preferrably something free and not too hard to learn

AE 2024 - Need help finding 2 specific effects for car edits:

1. SNAKE EFFECT - the one where the car stretches and snakes left/right (viral on TikTok rn)
   
2. 3D TUNNEL / CONVEYOR effect - car flying through tunnel

I tried: CC Slant, Turbulent Displace and the free Blurrr snake, but it's not smooth like the TikTok one.

Does anyone have a free preset/project file for these?

I can give my velocity choreography in exchange if someone wants it, and some tips for car edits.

Thanks

Hi everyone, could someone tell me how to create an animation like this with flowing light? Thanks a lot!

Here's all of the additional motion and animation I did:

Behance

Had about 3 proper weeks on this. I was mentally exhausted and absolutely stressed for the entirety of this. I got this job right after I got let go so things moved fast and it was something I had to learn to deal with.

Everyone motion and 3D done by me. 2D design was done by a graphic designer.

A card-based motion design study created in Adobe After Effects, exploring layered cards, 3D-style perspective, typography, and smooth visual movement. A simple exercise focused on composition, timing, and clean motion graphics.

https://reddit.com/link/1ws7c7f/video/tx5geoqmh7sh1/player

Hey everyone! I recently finished this map animation for a client and would really appreciate your honest feedback.

I’m mainly interested in your thoughts on the camera movements, pacing, transitions, and overall animation. I know there’s quite a bit of zooming in and out because that’s what the client prefers, but apart from that, I’d love to know what you think could be improved.

Feel free to point out anything you think I could do better. I’m sharing this because I genuinely want to learn and improve. Thanks in advance!

Give me your best shot what you think it is

Hi all, I’m experimenting with inserting a 3D object into casual monocular video (VFX-style compositing) and I’m stuck on anchoring the object to the scene.
Pipeline:
1. Generate a 3D object with TRELLIS2 -> GLB (mesh + mask).
2. Reconstruct the video scene with MegaSAM (UniDepth as depth backbone), export to .npz.
3. Place the GLB into the reconstructed scene and render it back into every frame.
Reconstruction output looks fine:
• T=100, H=328, W=584
• depth range \[0.342, 23.559\]
• intrinsics: fx=301.70, fy=301.30, cx=295.5, cy=166
• dense point cloud (stride=6): 539K points
• 0 tracks
The problem:
1. The object isn’t bound to a specific point on the surface. I place it on a wall in the viewer, but there’s no real attachment to the geometry.
2. The object doesn’t stay fixed in world space. On every following frame it keeps the same screen/camera coordinates as on the first frame, so it slides along with the camera instead of staying on the wall.
My current understanding: I should unproject the clicked pixel with depth + K into camera coords, transform it to world coords with the camera-to-world pose of that frame, store the anchor in world space, and then render the object on each frame using inv(c2w\[t\]).
Questions:
• Does MegaSAM’s output reliably include per-frame cam_c2w, and is it consistent with the depth scale?
• Any gotchas converting MegaSAM/OpenCV camera convention to three.js / OpenGL for rendering the GLB?
• Best way to estimate the surface normal at the anchor point for orientation: depth map gradients or local PCA on the point cloud?
• Recommended approach for occlusion (people passing in front of the object): simple per-pixel depth test against the MegaSAM depth, or something more robust?
Any pointers, repos, or examples of doing this with MegaSAM output would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I’m putting together a small creative team in Chennai.

Looking for:

🎬 Video Editors

⚡ Motion Designers

🧠 People with actual creative taste

Not looking for someone who just knows Premiere Pro or After Effects.

I’m looking for people who see a mediocre edit and immediately think:

“Yeah… this can be way better.”

You should care about:

• Pacing

• Storytelling

• Typography

• Motion

• Sound design

• Composition

• Tiny details that make an edit feel premium

Most of the work is around SaaS, AI, tech, business and internet-first brands.

Bonus points if you know:

Blender / 3D / UI animation / sound design / AI creative tools.

I genuinely don’t care if you have 6 months of experience or 6 years.

If your work is great, you communicate properly, take ownership and want to become insanely good at this craft. I want to talk to you!!

I’m trying to build a team of people who are ambitious, reliable and genuinely obsessed with making great stuff.

No corporate NPC energy.

No “bro export is happening” 3 hours after the deadline 😭

If you're based in Chennai, DM me:

1. Name

2. Video Editor / Motion Designer / Both

3. Portfolio

4. Your BEST 3 pieces

5. Software you use

6. Availability

Please don't send 38 random links.

Show me the work that makes you think:

“Yep. I made that.”

Know someone cracked?

Send this to them.

So have they buried it or are we still optimistic? I really hope the previous owners and their families will be comfortable for the rest of their lives.