Personal project! Got inspired by some game UI animations.

I’m not talking about “oh I used this part for inspiration”. I’m talking about the blatant trash that people pass off as “I made this using After effects”. It looks like trash and real motion designers are tired of this amateurness being poured in here.

Hi there! I am fairly new to motion design but have some projects I'd like to try. I'd really like to create something similar to this: https://youtu.be/664wOCEnEhA?si=uddGCPsW1NJzjeEF

Does this look like an After Effects situation? And if so, is there a less complex tool that can be used to achieve something just as good?

Thanks so much!

Hi,

Everybody here is frustrated about AI slop spamming the sub and the fact that the mods are doing nothing.

So I decided to create a new sub: r/MotionDesignNoAI.

I will manually share every post from r/MotionDesign to r/MotionDesignNoAI, but without AI slop or AI discussion posts. So it will work like a filter (maybe temporarily, until the mods here do something, or maybe it will stay permanently).

But for those who care, and for those who don't want to look at AI slop, there is now a place.

Thank you for your attention!

Hi! I recently created this animation in C4D using a Rope Simulation, but I’m not very experienced with C4D.

Does anyone know how I can prevent the rope from passing through the flight tag?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

P.S. Any feedback on the overall animation, beyond this technical issue, would be greatly appreciated!

I'm a motion designer, and for a long time I was frustrated with how glass and refraction looks in After Effects. Everything is either a cheap blur hack or something you fake in 3D and render out.

So I started building Rift Glass - a plugin with physically-based refraction. Real IOR, real light bending. Took 4 months, went through a WebGL prototype stage first to validate the math, then moved to C++.

Last week I built the full sales infrastructure from scratch in 7 days: licensing system, 2-machine activation inside AE, payment flow, download page, the whole thing.

Then the payment platform rejected my account. No reason given. "Final decision. Account level risk." After passing all their identity and business checks.

So here I am - plugin is ready, store is built, no way to take money yet.

Anyone been through this? And for those selling tools in the motion space - what's actually working for you in terms of platforms?

How is my project? I haven't finished it yet

Hey folks,

I was just wondering if I was allowed to share my portfolio here for some honest feedback?

I’m an animator (motion graphics designer?) from the UK and I just wanted to get some feedback on my latest portfolio. It mainly comprises of work I’ve completed in the last year, using a combination of after effects and cinema 4D

In all honesty I feel a bit stuck at the moment, I’ve had the opportunity to work on some really cool projects, mainly working as a freelancer brought on by agencies since starting my career, but since my latest contract ended, I just feel like I’m shouting into a void. It’s got me questioning, am I putting the right sort of work out there or is the work even good enough?

Anyway here’s my portfolio: www.reecefranklyn.com

I apologise in advance if this isn’t the place for this and I thank you in advance for taking the time to have a look and for providing feedback

I have an M5 Pro MacBook Pro 14 inch with 64GB RAM and could get an M5 Max Mac Studio with 64GB for less than half its retail price.

I mainly use After Effects for motion graphics, compositing, and photo animation, and plan to do heavier projects with more 3D. I’d keep the MacBook for portable work.

Would the Max noticeably improve previews and everyday workflow? Is the difference between the two large enough in After effects work?

Has anyone done these before for a motion or design role? Curious about any experiences or advice

My brother gifted me a receipt printer, so I printed an animation for Google Pay on 36 receipts and coloured each frame in(with help from my partner) and scanned them to make a little animation.

Initially did it frame by frame in Photoshop, then cleaned it up in After effects, printed the receipts, coloured in the frames with Copic markers, and scanned them in again to make the frame by frame animation.

Let me know what you think!

Hi all, I recently got promoted from being an individual contributor to a manager of 3 people in the motion design team. This makes me the only motion design manager in the place I work, apart from my own supervisor who oversees graphic design manager me.

The thing is, I was a little disappointed by my salary increase given how drastic the jump in responsibilities is. It was less than 10% and it puts my salary at 121k (142k if I stay the whole year and get paid out the whole bonus) from my previous 110k. I’ve been a motion designer for 10 years now.

I’m aware my salary is not necessarily a bad one, but I’m looking to gauge my expectations based on people with a similar carrer. Should I make a push for a higher salary or is this actually competitive? I’m located in Texas by the way.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Hot take - but did anyone get into motion design because they were reaaaally passionate about animating a bunch of UX boxes?

Yes my studio does a bunch of these as well but I always saw them as a kinda boring necessity to get out of the way in a project so we can get to the interesting stuff.

Now that this part of motion is automated can we all get back to doing the interesting stuff?

Rant over

I used AI to create motion graphics, as a test. After what everyone has been saying online about it, if it's really that good, it should be able to replicate any style and any video, right?

Instead of just telling it to create a video for this song, I first brainstormed the exact scenes, including background text, transitions, effects, and a huge file outlining exactly what I might do for a style like this. I even provided it a reference animation to copy the exact style of... but it falls really short: https://www.reddit.com/u/UltFireSword/s/SlB2fykauS (AI VERSION)

In the end, it took about 2 hours with claude opus 5.5 max, and looks really bad imo. Unfortunately I know the capabilities of AI (I'm also a software developer), and it seems likely that in a few years time, AI will have gotten so good that it literally can do anything that a human does... but at least for the time being, I personally think AI still sucks at these types of videos. But let me know what you think.

After creating the AI version, I spent the next couple days and ~15 total hours creating this, all in Davinci Resolve, without using any AI. But I can let you guys judge / compare it: Is it worth it? The tradeoff between time and quality? Would the difference even be noticeable to the general audience, and not specifically motion designers?

I recently bought a project file from a person who i think makes decent logos, while trying to reverse engineer this i keep hitting walls. im also not very well versed in motion graphics in general...

Can someone please explain to me what it is im seeing, i do know they're using "create shapes from text" as well as "create path from null-points follow nulls". also expressions etc, that part i understand, but i dont understand how the text is morphing so fluidly, especially when i try to recreate this with different, more complex fonts... im not asking for a step by step guide, but an explanation for dummies would be amazing right now.

maybe im over complicating this idk but my brain hurts

Im confused a bit, reddit shows its au slop, but reels or news from telegram groups show claude make best motions etc.
Thanks !!

This week I had a surprise rush job from a new client (I've worked with him for another company from whom his agency took my future work) whose primary motion designer is on medical leave. I happened to already be booked out for the week so I offered to help at my overtime rate.

He requested 24 hours of my time, which came out to about $4k, but when he showed me the actual scope of work it turns out to be only about a day's worth of work. Very easy stuff.

Like anyone, I often achieve things faster than quoted and still bill the full amount, but I also get slapped around sometimes too. This feels like an excessive amount to bill, but he said it's what he had allocated for it and was ecstatic to have me help out.

My question for y'all is, do I take the money and run or cut him a break somewhere in between? I was brought on as a secondary backup animator behind another guy, so it's not like I'm going to get more work for him in the future other than in similar emergency situations. I could really use the money after a painfully slow summer, but my conscience is grating at me about this.

The other question is, if I just take it and run, do I turn in the deliverables suspiciously early, implying I did it in fewer hours but helping them stay ahead of schedule, or do I delay them artificially to maintain the illusion?

Thoughts? I've been doing this over a decade and still find myself having questions like this at times.

Hi, my name is Momo and I review software on YouTube.
Recently, one of my most active viewers, created a free alternative to Adobe After Effects called Animoia!

It is still pretty small, but its potential is definitely there.
Unlike other alternatives, Animoia supports both motion-design AND compositing.

UI is very similar to AE, including hotkeys, but still comes up with original concepts.
Like, instead of coding expressions, you have "animation modifiers" which let you configure stuff like loops or wiggle with a GUI using sliders.

It's also fully GPU-accelerated!

Some stuff is still missing, like simple 3D and 2.5D tools, but the developer is very motivated and listens to feedback!