[super256]

Can anyone recommend a course or tutorial series on creating simple 2d bodymovin animations in after effects? I always wanted to use lottie, but never really dived into 2d animations.

Edit: To make it clear: I'm a complete afterfx noob.

[another_kel]

If you want a course and are willing to pay for it I can recommend School of Motion — https://www.schoolofmotion.com/courses/after-effects-kicksta... (did not take this one, I took more advanced stuff and it was good). Or just like in SE a good way to learn is to choose what you want to make and then watch tutorials on youtube about that specific topic.

> I always wanted to use lottie, but never really dived into 2d animations.

However, as a person who worked as a motion designer for several years, I must say that creating good animations, especially for lotties limited toolset is not a technical problem, but an artistic one. Making animation feel good is hard and takes a lot of practice. Even more for character animation.

[klabb3]

Hijacking thread. Are there any alternatives to AE for those of us that want to animate and export to Lottie but also suffer physical repulsion to Adobe? Is there any serious competition? Lightweight and FOSS are on the wishlist..

[aceazzameen]

It's been a while since I've played with it, but there's also Expressive Animator. I think it used to be FOSS, but isn't anymore. It looks like it has a monthly subscription for Pro now (Lottie exports). About the same price as Adobe, which is a shame. https://www.expressivesuite.com/expressive-animator/

[calstephens98]

Hah I have the same question! I've been working on Lottie for over a year, but I've never used After Effects before and don't have it installed. My life would sure be a bit easier if there was a nice lightweight tool for creating and modifying Lottie animations. One useful tool is the lottiefiles.com editor, but its really barebones and only lets you modify colors of layers in existing animations.

[another_kel]

Serious competition is the opposite of lightweight and FOSS to be fair.

The most powerful AE competitor(in 2d animation) I've seen is Cavalry. It targets professional motion designers, has neat procedural animation toolset and can export to lottie.

https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/

[boriscal]

I've been on the waitlist for a while now, but this might be what you're looking for: https://lottielab.com

[aceazzameen]

Searching around and I also found this: https://www.fable.app/