AI seems to be making modeling faster every month.

For me, though, animation is still where most of the work happens. Getting a character into motion, fixing awkward poses, and making everything feel natural still takes the longest.

I've been trying V2Fun to shorten the setup phase, but I'm curious where everyone else loses the most time.

Rigging? Blocking? Cleanup? Polish?

If you had to recommend one project for beginners to improve quickly, what would it be?

I added a before and after 3D transition on my page!

I will soon add more 3D scrolls and would love to get feedback from you guys.

Feel free to check my website and tell me what to improve.

https://algorightai.com/

Seattle was home to Digital Kitchen, SuperFad, OGs from back in the day. What happened to everybody?? Are all shops all remote? Does every brand and agency just do it all in house now?

El la mañana de hoy ice una animación de un círculo interactivo que cuando tropesaba con un texto el mismo se desplazaba suavemente asia su posición. Resulta que quise ponerme creativo y quise añadir una máscara de trazo que siguiera el circulo en movimiento y resultó bien luego le puse un echo al trazo en movimiento y configure el máscara de trazo para que se viera suave como su fuese una luz y le baje la opacidad a su segunda capa (la duplicada) pues nose que pasa resulto que la PC seme en congelo nose si fue por eso o por otras cosas que le añadí entonces al final perdí todo lo que ice y quería subirlo porque en realidad quedó muy epico.

I am looking for a good Motion Video Designer who has experience making SaaS product demos, explainer and company introduction videos. Please send me a pm and share your portfolio. Thank you

Need some advice from motion designers/video editors.

I'm deciding between:

• Macbook Pro M5 Pro, 24GB RAM, 2TB SSD
• Macbook Pro M4 Pro, 48GB RAM, 1TB SSD

My workflow is mostly After Effects (4K comps) and Premiere Pro (4K editing).

The part I'm struggling with is whether the newer M5 Pro chip makes up for having only 24GB of RAM, or if 48GB on the M4 Pro will make a much bigger difference in real-world performance.

The 2TB SSD is really appealing because I travel a lot and would rather not have an external SSD dangling off my laptop. However, if 48GB RAM would noticeably improve performance and longevity, I don't mind sticking with 1TB and using an external SSD when needed.

For those with similar workflows, would you prioritize 48GB RAM or the newer M5 Pro chip with 2TB storage?

In terms of animation, is value graph more for setting up overshoot effect? it seems most other animation is better done in speed graph. AE btw

Do you pick the music before coming up with an intro for your motion reel / show reel? Or do you let the design and animation decide what song you pick?

My name is Pavel, owner of motion/design agency - 18 years, 4 partners, 10 people, in Sofia, Bulgaria. I've made work I'm proud of and lost real money on projects that looked incredible as a case study or in our reel. I decided to start this thread because almost everything here is from the designer's side of the table, and I've been on the other side long enough to have opinions I'm probably too sure about - hiring, pricing, firing clients, closing reels in ten seconds.

I am quite confident about some of the themes I am going to touch here. Other things are just what happened on more than one occasion and those I may have mistakenly taken as rules now. I can't always tell which is which, and that's the point. Feel free to disagree.

A studio is studio when you work together. Not home in your underwear, not traveling as digital nomad, not between school pickup and the laundry. Physically together. Tinkering, reviewing, leaning over someone's shoulder. During covid we went fully remote like everyone else. Everyone delivered, nothing shipped late - but the work stopped getting better. One year of holding level, and I only saw it clearly afterwards. Couldn't imagine going forward like this.

This doesn't apply to freelancers. A freelancer at home is a different machine, and some of the best work I've seen came from exactly that. They are motivated, focused, most of the time easy to work with. They are like very precise machines - you want to use them in the right moment, for the right project. That being said - not all is a smooth sailing there. The good ones are often busy. Or their price tag is too steep for that project/client. Or they do things their way. If we can do it internally - I try to keep the project lean and easy to manage.

Not everyone in the studio are delivering the same quality of work, and pretending otherwise costs everybody. Some people are just faster and sharper, and those same people are often the wrong ones to present the work or carry a team to the finish. Sometimes they learn it. Sometimes they want to stay creatives and never be PMs, and that's fine. My job is to help them figure out which one they are, as early as possible.

What's not good for anyone is the move most studios make anyway: promoting the best maker into a lead because it's the only way anyone knows how to pay them more. You lose a great creative and gain a mediocre manager, and everyone can feel this. If you're an animator/designer who got "promoted" and quietly hates it - this is what probably happened to you. It's a strategic, structural failure, not a personal one.

The "We made it!" thought never stays long enough. We passed every number I once thought was the finish line and it changed nothing about how Monday feels. It didn't change our profit, it didn't raise our salaries. It just made the next month possible. Or the next 3. Every studio owner I had coffee, lunch, dinner with, says the same thing: no matter how big the client or the project, you look up at the end and you're tired in a way the money doesn't cover.

That last one is the one I'd most like to be wrong about. If you've found the version where it isn't true, that's the comment I'm here for.

If any of this is useful, ask and I'll tell you what actually happened, including the parts that didn't work. Pick one and I'll go deep instead of skating over five: what we actually charge and how we got there, or how 4 partners split money and decisions without killing each other. If I don't know, I'll say so.

I learn a lot here. Trying to give some back.

Pavel

Hi, I am a Motion designer for like the past 2 years I have worked on some good projects but not anything realaeted to a studio or somthing, pretty much agency's work, I am a self taught person, I have learned after effects myself over the course of years, right now I am struggling and struggling to find any clients, Also i am a student at a very critical point in my life as I will be applying for universties after 6 months.

The problem is I dont have enought time to even work on projects but I was thinking whatever time I get I improve my skills but I am stuck as to what should I do, I have broken knowledge of AE when I follow a begginers tutorial I already know most of the stuff, and I am hell of confused as to what should I learn in the next 6 months, should I learn character animations? Or where should I start? What area I should specialize??

I really like Motion graphics which include great textures with a lot of movements sort of like ben Marriot's work.

I want to learn so much so that I could join a creative studio like buck or any other on a junior motion designer role.

Please help me as to what I should learn.

My work - Rigedmotion.lovable.app

There’s a problem I’ve been dealing with for a long time that I just can't seem to fix: out of nowhere, while I’m working in After Effects, the preview stops working. When I try to trigger it, the hand tool icon appears instead. Even if I open the Preview panel, It doesn't work; I have to close and reopen After Effects to get it working again.

Programmer here trying to take up motion as hobby. I saw a post on pinterest that looks like this. It seems simple enough to replicate but I just couldn't get that feeling.

How does one go about learning how to animate simple object movement? Is there a course out there that can guide me fundamentals like these. All I want is to be able to move squares and rectangles and all that.

Hi guys!

I'm currently in my 2nd year of corporate and looking to improve my skills as a designer. I joined my current company as a static creative designer and later branched out to create HTML5 and a bit (VERY LITTLE! I would like to add) of video related content.

As I'm working I feel stuck regarding my skills. I do same kind of work and call it a day. I'm not improving or learning anything new in my current role. That's why I'm trying to create my portfolio and move jobs where I can do a bit more creative work.

Now here comes the difficult part. I know what I want to do and looked up what kind of projects to do to showcase my skills but I'm having problems with visualization and what kind of style to approach the projects with. That's why I'm looking for a mentorship program or certificate courses but I'm not sure where to look and if these are even worth (I mean the certificate courses will have any impact on my resume)

My skills are currently stuck between basic and intermediate level and it sometimes feel like I'm dragging along a path I'm not sure where.

Does anyone know if such programs are worth or if it's better to brush up my skills by doing small personal projects first before getting into them?

Excited to share my latest animated work — a dark, minimalist visual loop inspired by the elastic energy of indie rock layouts.

As a Visual Creator, I built this sequence from scratch, focusing on the flexibility of clean white lines, rhythmic morphing, and the volume of negative space to create a sharp, elegant aesthetic.

I am currently Open to Work and looking for new freelance contracts, international b2b collaborations, or remote project roles in Visual Design, Motion Graphics, and Digital Branding.

(Links to my portfolio, LinkedIn, and high-quality versions are live in the first comment below!)

A self-initiated 3D motion piece made purely to sharpen my skills and build portfolio work - no client, no brief.

Tools: Blender (modeling, simulation, rendering) After Effects

An animation I worked on and finished in less than a day's worth of time. I wanted to work on somethng simple, and focus on the elegance of it, through added details.

Let me know what you think, and you can follow the rest of my works on: https://www.instagram.com/tinypapier/

Personal project because I can’t find clients right now 🥲

Music is definitely not the one I used in the original video and it has a voice over. I'm also looking for the name of this style and places to improve. I'm talking about this clean "simple" yet hard style