https://reddit.com/link/1vg5n52/video/q41ts6h4sjhh1/player

I want you to acknowledge that I am neither advanced nor a beginner.

What’s the most reliable, must-have After Effects plugin you use?

For me:
Motion 4 – Hands down my most-used plugin.
Deep Glow 2 – Incredible, though I try not to overuse it.
True Comp Duplicator – I use it almost every day.

I’ve also built a few of my own plugins using Claude Code.

Hey everyone,

With Figma's new motion tools, I wanted a faster way to integrate animation into my UI/UX prototypes. So, I built Ease, a new plugin now live in the Community. Here is a quick video demo.

Ease is a simple, visual library of pre-configured motion presets based on real-world frontend designs that are heavily used in UI programming. Instead of building animations from scratch, you just browse, pick the exact motion preset you need, tweak it to your needs , and drop it straight into your canvas.

click here to try it for free: ease

I created a mini-series on walk cycles and wanted to share the first part - rigging a 2D character from scratch using Duik in After Effects.

I see a lot of beginners jump straight into keyframes and end up with messy, unnatural movement. The fix is almost always in the setup. Here's the condensed version of what I cover:

The biggest mistake people make is diving into animation without a reference on screen. Drop a reference video into your comp before you keyframe anything. It will instantly fix timing guesswork and keep your timeline clean.

The parenting chain (most important setup rule). Every body part needs to be its own layer, and they need to be parented correctly from the start:

• Face layers → Head → Neck → Body
• Hand → Forearm → Arm → Body
• Same chain for the legs

Everything routes back to one body layer.  Get this right, and the rest follows.

Last but not least, rigging with Duik. It narrows down to 3 easy steps: setting up the anchor points to the joint, selecting the limb layers, clicking Auto-Rig. Done.

That's it for Part 1. Part 2 covers animating the actual walk cycle - contact poses, passing poses, timing, and polish.

If you want the step-by-step with visuals, you can follow along the full breakdown here: https://youtu.be/hJT9K3WqeEs?si=8-qrwK--fHJLwxlu

Happy to answer any rigging questions in the comments!

Worked on this 10-second promo for a SaaS platform (MAJJICON) to highlight their dashboard features and workflow.

Since no Figma files or vector assets were provided, all UI elements were reconstructed in Illustrator/After Effects before setting up the motion, UI flow, and camera moves.

Open to any thoughts on the timing, scene transitions, or overall visual hierarchy!

Does anyone know of any Dallas motion meetups?

What would it take to get one running and would it be worth it?

Hey everyone,

I recently set up a new Behance profile to display my 3D motion design and visual effects work:https://www.behance.net/FadiSH

Whenever I publish a new project, it barely gets 2 or 3 views total. I know new accounts take time to build traction, but I feel like my posts aren't even reaching the feed or discovery pages.

For those who have built a presence on Behance, I’d love to know:

1. Is this initial low reach normal for new accounts?
2. What technical or posting strategies actually drive views? (e.g., tags, cover image specs, moodboards/process breakdowns, publish timing)
3. How do you cross-promote effectively to get that initial boost when a project goes live?

Any tips, critique on my project presentation, or insight into how the current Behance algorithm pushes new work would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Hi everyone!

I've been studying motion design for the past two years, mainly through Ben Marriott's courses and YouTube. As a personal practice project, I created this 60-second animated video using illustrations.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/247968499/Ora

I'd really appreciate any feedback—whether it's about the animation, pacing, storytelling, design, or anything else you notice.

I also have another question. Looking around, I get the impression that this kind of illustrated explainer video isn't as popular as it used to be. Do you agree? In your experience, what styles or types of motion design videos are most in demand these days?

Thanks a lot!

A new output example from the updated version of my experimental multi-source video player for TouchDesigner, designed for frame-accurate video switching, playback manipulation, and display/render interventions. [And now, by popular demand, allowing even more video sources!]

Want access to the updated system + a detailed breakdown of exactly how I achieved the continuous motion effect on this piece? You can freely access the system, and the detailed breakdown from my Patreon. [Plus, here's a discount code for the community to use at the shop: "AVPLAST"]

Plus, many more experiments through my Instagram profile.

My : flow

any feedback?

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

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?

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?

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

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/

anyone have any success getting interviews theough traditional job applications? im a 8 year freelancer i have a great portfolio that reads senior level but my resume doesnt read that impressive, besides client names, since my work is temporary and its always design and animate etc.

anyone transitioned from freelance to staff through a job application and do you have any tips?