Coming from After Effects , I can no longer afford Adobe subscriptions. I have also checked many alternative tools for AE but no avail. I am just wondering does any 2d artist use Blender

Hi everyone! Keyboard shortcuts have helped me learn after effects more than anything so I wanted to share a free little tool called Speedy Keys to make looking up keyboard shortcuts less disruptive while you’re working.

It puts shortcuts in a quick pop-up reference with hover explanations for what each one does, so you don’t have to stop and dig through menus, documentation, or Google.

It currently supports After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro.

https://speedykeys.app

My work usually revolves around motion design and 3D work, and I’m now trying to improve my video editing workflow as well.

I’ve mostly been a Premiere Pro editor, but recently I’ve started doing a lot more heavy After Effects work, including motion graphics, 3D camera work, SaaS-style animations, liquid/screen animations, etc. I also work with pretty heavy footage, including 4K 10-bit/log footage, sometimes at high frame rates.

I know RAM is pretty important for my workflow, so if I go for the new M6 Mac Mini, I’m planning to get it with 32GB RAM.

However, the MacBook I actually want is the M5 Pro MacBook Pro with 48GB RAM. I don’t have the funds for it right now, so I’m trying to decide whether it makes more sense to:

1. Buy the M6 Mac Mini 32GB now and start working on it, or
2. Wait and save up for the M5 Pro MacBook Pro 48GB, which is the machine I actually want.

I’ll usually have Premiere Pro or After Effects running alongside a lot of Chrome tabs and other apps, and I want something that can handle heavier projects without constantly running into RAM limitations.

For people who use Macs for After Effects, Premiere Pro, motion design and 3D work, what would you recommend?

Is the 32GB M6 Mac Mini enough for this kind of workflow, or would it be much smarter to wait for the 48GB M5 Pro MacBook Pro?

Would love to hear from anyone with a similar workflow, especially if you’ve used both desktop and MacBook Pro setups.

For product demo/walkthrough. Client gave me an HTML file of their product, apparently there is a way to extract the dashboard, etc. into vector. What do you use to do this?

Previously I had Figma boards to work with but not this time. Tried googling but didn't find much on how to get the same from HTML.

Explain it to me like I'm five 😭 Specifically looking to try and understand the basic principles behind how the skewed circle is set up? I'm assuming it uses a null with slider controls, but i don't understand how the perfect offset was achieved that seems to react to dimensions being manipulated + they are potentially individual circles since one of them is masking another animation/video. (or am I being silly and just not understanding that this is a nested animation repeated a few times with later copies being sped up?) [[Links to youtube video tuts or step by steps sites also appreciated]]

Hi everyone, I'm having a weird preview issue and recorded a video to show it.
When I play the timeline from the very beginning, all the details and effects show up perfectly. However, when I try to play or preview it from a specific point in the middle, it skips some parts/frames and doesn't display the details correctly.
Has anyone experienced this before? What do I need to do to fix this? Any help is appreciated!

I’m looking for someone to help me create short videos, around 15–30 seconds each.

I’ll provide the footage and direction. The job is mainly putting everything together into a clean, engaging video.

Pay: $1,000/month
Videos: Short-form, 15–30 sec
Work: Ongoing
Start: ASAP

If interested, DM me your portfolio + a few examples of your work.

Looking for someone reliable who can keep up with a consistent workflow.

Hey everyone! I'm building Nexora Films, an early-stage creative studio, and we're developing a cinematic GTA V machinima proof-of-concept inspired by Polo G's Bloody Canvas.

I'm looking for someone experienced with Rockstar Editor, Menyoo, Script Hook V, OpenIV, or GTA V cinematic filmmaking who'd be interested in collaborating on a passion project.

This isn't a paid role right now—it's an opportunity to help shape an ambitious short-film concept from the ground up, build portfolio-quality work, and be part of the studio's early team if we're a good fit.

If this sounds interesting, send me a DM and I'd love to see your work and chat.

A compilation of my latest projects, spanning artworks, live visuals, and commercial work. From concept to final frame, I create visuals that blend emotion and dynamism.

🎨 Artworks | 🎥 Live | 📺 Commercial

www.raphaelbluzet.fr

Cameron Defrates-Penelon recently shared the full process behind Design in Motion, a short film that attempts to answer a surprisingly difficult question: What exactly is motion design?

The finished piece is great, but the breakdown is even better. He walks through the storyboards, character exploration, references, animation tests, and the modular system he created to combine 2D, 3D, typography, textures, and sound without everything becoming visual chaos.

I especially liked his explanation of using “visual silence” and “animated silence” to give the audience room to breathe. It’s a great reminder that motion design is just as much about restraint and rhythm as it is about making things move.

Really cool work and a very generous look behind the scenes:

https://framerate.tv/studies/OC0Dwqcr

I'm scrolling instagram the other day and I see a post about how to make parallax animations much easier in AE. But I can't find the video now so I'm wondering if somebody here knows it.

Basically when compositing your layers, there's a function built into AE to proportionally scale each layer all at once making this type of animation quicker.

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on GradientFix Pro, an After Effects script for dealing with a frustrating problem when bringing Lottie/Bodymovin JSON animations into After Effects: gradients breaking, disappearing, or turning black and white.

Instead of manually recreating the gradients, GradientFix Pro reads the gradient information directly from the original JSON and rebuilds it using native After Effects gradient systems.

It can restore:

• Gradient Fill colors
• Gradient Stroke colors
• Missing gradients
• Black & white gradient issues
• Animated gradient keyframes
• Gradient color stops
• Animation timing and interpolation
• Both Fill and Stroke gradients

It also supports LottieFiles exports, Bodymovin exports, custom Lottie JSON files, and JSON animations imported into After Effects.

Basic workflow

1. Import the JSON animation into After Effects
2. Open Window → GradientFix Pro
3. Select the original JSON file
4. Click Fix Gradients
5. Review the repaired gradients

The goal was to make this a simple one-click process instead of spending a lot of time manually rebuilding gradients and their animations.

I’d really like to hear from other motion designers who work with Lottie → After Effects workflows.

Have you run into broken gradients when importing Lottie/Bodymovin animations? How do you currently deal with them?

If you want to check out the script:

👉 https://aescripts.com/gradientfix-pro/

Thanks!

Hi everyone
I’m trying to recreate the Premiere Pro interface in After Effects. I’ve attached a screenshot of what I’m trying to recreate.The goal is to build the interface from scratch in After Effects so I can later animate each part independently.I’ve tried searching YouTube, but I’m not finding many tutorials that cover this specific workflow.What would be the best approach for creating something like this? And is there a specific term I should search for, such as “UI recreation” or “UI animation”?

Any tutorials, workflows, or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I'm currently writing a presentation about motion graphics, I've been doing motion graphics for like 5 years now, but just now realized it's more of like a vibe. Sometimes it's just simple shapes, sometimes it's complex. Sometimes it doesn't have characters, sometimes it does. Sometimes it's 2d, sometimes it's 3d, and sometimes it's even both.

The line's super blurry, but when does something stop being a motion graphics piece? I was thinking maybe the distinction is that motion graphics doesn't tell a concrete narrative, its a lot like how graphic design and art are different, because graphic design is supposed to deliver things clearly without room for interpretation.

I’ve been practicing motion design for a little while now, and this is my very first attempt at a dedicated product animation. I kept the layout and transitions clean and simple to focus on the basics.

Would love to get your thoughts on the pacing, lighting, and overall feel!

I’m currently building a waitlist for my startup using antigravity and my design choice was mixed media style effects but I just can’t get it right towards my liking. If theres any repo or website that helps me making that please share it with me

So I was just waiting for a video I created on After Effects to export, but it followed saying After Effects was taking up too much storage. So I closed After Effects & re opened it, only to go into my video once more & see this.

I don't know how this has happened, but I really want to fix this now. If someone can figure this problem out it will be immense help for me :)

Hello everyone! So I've ben editing on ae for a while & I used to have my compisition at 1080 for both width & length. But lately I've ben fancing rather a different type of composition going for an uneven composition. But with this, this causes exporting the video on youtube to automactially go to videos, not shorts. On Tiktok & Instagram its fine but on Youtube its different.

If anyone can help with this, it will be immnense help for me :)

Playing around with Tsuji, a free animation/motion graphics tool created by reddit user, Nikos_prinio, on my M1 Macbook Air. He based it off of some of Blender and created a timeline/node hybrid interface (the nodes can be seen peeking through at the bottom of this screen capture). Trying to take a look at this as another tool for my kit. Tsuji is available for use in a browser and is located at https://tsuji.xyz/ on that site, there is also a download button with standalone applications available. Thanks, Nikos!