This is huge. I did my first internship at a company that was half animators making huge TV ads you have seen, and half web devs/designers that made interactive (web) apps.[0] Lottie is, without a doubt, solving a huge problem in the industry.
Previously, engineers were often stuck bolting animations and transients onto static PSDs, or designers fighting to communicate what they wanted an animation to be like. This completely get rids of the problem!
I can't wait to try this out. Now I just need to learn After Effects...
I've always been quite proud of my ability to acquire at least a moderate mastery of most software (I can use both vi and emacs!), but I never managed this with AfterEffects. I don't know what it was, but I always seemed to end up in some interminable state that I could never get back out of without quitting the whole damn thing, or I could never make the timeline behave itself (I never had this problem with Flash), or... it was just endless misery for me.
I very much admire people who are adept with it, and sometimes when I watch the opening sequences in films, or certain types of adverts on television, I can even imagine how they might have achieved it with AE - but for me it was a great relief when I never had to use the damn thing again.
(I spent about a year maintaining a proprietary ActionScript library that would render AfterEffects animations - not dissimilar to Lottie, in fact, except almost certainly a whole lot worse, especially the bits I wrote given that there are probably some horses who understand AE better than I did.)
After Effects isn't a video manipulation tool.
Video manipulation is one of its capabilities, it is also capable of motion graphics and animating vector shapes.
This library works off the vector shape side of after effects.
I see what ya mean!
Its always felt like some weird mix of illustrator and photoshop to me.
Strange to how PHOTOshop moved the graphic way and the lightroom became the defacto photo editor.
Guess that's just software evolution for ya :)
Hey, I think it's worth directing people to checkout Mt. Mograph[0] and from there looking of motions on Dribbler for inspiration.
I recently moved from working on media (largely motion graphics) into a more technical field of study. Mt. Mograph helped flesh out my after effects knowledge to improve my motion graphics.
(No affiliation whatsoever, I just find his videos great, first one is a bit long while he gets his bearings)
Previously, engineers were often stuck bolting animations and transients onto static PSDs, or designers fighting to communicate what they wanted an animation to be like. This completely get rids of the problem!
I can't wait to try this out. Now I just need to learn After Effects...
[0]: https://animade.tv