
Building a Web-Based Motion Graphics Editor - alyssaxuu
https://medium.com/women-make/building-a-web-based-motion-graphics-editor-bd070f8db795
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2pointsomone
Have you written to Dylan from Figma? He was around 20 when he came up with
the idea for Figma and got funders behind him. You NEED to make this happen,
Alyssa! This has been a need for very very long.

I think you can almost jump past the MVP stage for validation, this is a pure
execution problem and you need to get money, make this your full-time job, and
execute asap given your excitement on this problem!

~~~
alyssaxuu
I know about his story with Figma, and AFAIK he managed to push it forward
through the Thiel Fellowship (which I've considered myself too).

Honestly as I've mentioned in the post I've been quite excited about the
product (specially when I managed to make the MVP useful enough to replace AE
for simple GIFs, I even use the tool for that purpose) and my initial plan was
definitely to make this happen, but I haven't really seen a solid way to go
about it full-time without taking a huge risk, specially at my age.

~~~
Vomzor
Your age is exactly when you should be taking huge risks.

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danellis
I only noticed at the end, but it appears the author is only 18, which makes
this even more impressive.

~~~
johnhenry
The author, Alyssa X, is apparently quite prolific:
[https://makermag.com/2018/12/21/top-women-
makers-2018/](https://makermag.com/2018/12/21/top-women-makers-2018/)

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KaiserPro
One style of program that you might want to have a play with, is a node based
editor.

To me it makes complex motion graphics much easier to understand, and from a
UI point of view I think there is much to innovate.

nuke, combustion, natron and blender(although the node based bit is hidden
somwehere) are all good examples of the rough idea. However they were all
copying a previous bit of software.

As you're seeking to fill a different segment, you'll have the luxury of not
having to make it handle like shake, Flame or others.

~~~
atkbrah
Have you tried SideFx Houdini? Basically everything in it is a node.

~~~
KaiserPro
I'd forgotten about houdini, mind you thats harder to get hold of.

~~~
atkbrah
Since version 12 it's been somewhat more easier to use.

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rchaud
Somewhat interesting read regarding your approach to developing the UI, but I
can't provide much feedback without at least seeing a demo of the tool in
action.

You're right, there is a gap in the market for a web-based, Figma style
animation editor. I myself went with Tumult Hype (MacOS), as it was the
closest equivalent to Adobe Flash-style rapid prototyping that I'm used to.
But there isn't much online chatter about web animation in general. I guess
everyone has simply moved to Adobe AE+Lottie, SVG+GSAP or the like.

If you decide to build a public-facing version of this, I hope you'll include
a flat fee option instead of the monthly subscription BS all the startups are
going with (Haiku Animator being one of many). Tumult Hype has a $100 flat fee
price, which I love.

~~~
alyssaxuu
Good point. The article was mostly focused on the design and conceptualization
of the tool in order to keep it short and concise, but I certainly had a lot
to say about the development itself. I've been considering open sourcing the
project in GitHub so people can check it out & build upon it, but that might
take a while to polish and ensure it's stable. In its current state though I
do use the editor to create video pitches and GIFs since it's considerably
faster than After Effects.

As per the pricing, my plan was to make it free, or at least have a free plan.
It was one of my main reasons why I started the project, and one of its
biggest selling points.

~~~
_bxg1
If you do end up deciding to charge money, depending on how niche it ends up
being, Aseprite could provide a good model of an (extremely) reasonably priced
tool that fills a specific need:
[https://www.aseprite.org/](https://www.aseprite.org/)

But I also have a ton of respect for the desire to offer it free!

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avinium
I'm not really familiar with animation tools, but isn't this exactly what
Flare does?

[https://www.2dimensions.com/about-flare](https://www.2dimensions.com/about-
flare)

~~~
alyssaxuu
Flare lacks video and audio support since it's aimed to be used to create
assets and interactions for apps and games.

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JoeSloth
What sort of export does the tool have? Would be great if this exported to a
json file Lottie could use, or something that could be converted into a GSAP
timeline easily

~~~
alyssaxuu
I set up a custom JSON export to save and import animation files from the
tool. I could definitely make it work with Lottie and other formats, that is
if I continue pursuing it ^^

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zaxcellent
This MVP already looks very polished and I think the design is innovative. I
coincidentally noticed the gap in open-source for motion graphics, but never
got passed the notebook phase. One of the pieces I kept getting stuck on was
the way to correctly model all that timeline data and applying it to the
scene. Could you comment on your approach to that for this product? I also
would like to echo the desire to see it open-sourced.

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rwbt
> The UI of Adobe After Effects can be quite overwhelming to a new user.

I suppose so. When I was learning Mograph in school, After Effects was the
most intuitive tool among many others. Combustion, Motion etc never quite
managed to pull it off in balancing simplicity, ease of use and versatility.

AE aged very well IMHO and to this day is the weapon of choice of Mograph.

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_bxg1
Awesome. I'd love to find a market niche for a professional tool one day and
turn it into a business. Really inspiring!

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reubens
Can't wait to use this. The many times I've wanted to have simple motion
graphics in FCPX but didn't want to shell out for Motion or AE, I wished
something like this was available. More power to you

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Tinfoilhat666
Have you checked shapeshifter.design, Tumult Hype or Keyshape? They are very
similar.

~~~
alyssaxuu
Yep, but they have different purposes. These focus on HTML5 animations (super
useful and handy for web), but mine is meant to be used as a simple tool to
make videos and animations of different formats. It also has video and audio
support (I believe unlike the two tools you've mentioned).

~~~
robbrown451
What you are building looks really nice and seems like it could totally fill a
niche of its own. I've done a lot of work in similar areas and I'm very
impressed.

BTW, as a creative person, I personally can't stand it when people's only
comment is "have you seen X Y and Z which are similar to what you've built?" I
get it, reinventing the wheel isn't always the best use of time, but I wish
people realized how much of a wet blanket that sort of comment can be,
especially if it is unaccompanied by any other insights about your work. It
seems to imply that you haven't done anything worthwhile or unique, and your
efforts are a waste of time.

I hope you continue to build this out into a product. Good luck with it and
congrats on all your successes at a very young age.

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hitekker
>My plan was to build the product in 6–12 months (for an initial MVP)

For the kind of product being described, 6-12 months seems way too long for an
initial MVP. I also think statements like "build the entire tool" conflict
with the concept of delivering something actionable / people-will-pay-for
within a short amount of time.

~~~
cfcosta
Except that usually 1-month MVPs become 6 to 12 month projects, unfortunately.
Making conservative estimates at this stage of the process is the proper way
to go, imho.

