Practice

Tell us how long you've got. You get one thing to do: a goal, a constraint, and something to watch if you get stuck. Not a shelf to browse.

I have

I'm at

I work in

Paper

≈ 30 min

Before the software · Foundations

Sketch how it moves

Think in motion before a timeline can talk you out of it.

The brief

  1. 1Pick a poster, a logo or a screen you already designed.
  2. 2Write three to five words for the feeling it should have.
  3. 3Draw three frames: beginning, middle, end.
  4. 4Mark what moves first and what waits.

1 of 16 that fit

The path

Four stages, and you only ever need the next one.

Nobody starts at the timeline. Pick the stage you're actually in. The picker above will only hand you exercises from there.

How to practice

The rules that survive a bad week.

  • 01Consistency beats intensity. Thirty minutes you actually do beats a five-hour session you keep postponing.
  • 02Set the goal small enough that you can't fail. One element moving is a finished session.
  • 03Animate one parameter at a time. Enter is ease out, exit is ease in, emphasis is ease in-out.
  • 04Use designs you already have. "What should I animate?" is the question that ends most practices.
  • 05Name every file yyyy-mm-dd so a month from now you can see the distance you covered.
  • 06It doesn't matter if you set an expectation and didn't fill it up. What matters is that you come back next week.
One session a week is a practice. Zero sessions is a plan.

Worksheets

Made to be printed, filled, and finished.

Shared over the years with newsletter subscribers. Each one a small tool to think with, not another thing to watch.

Worksheets are shared through the newsletter.

the Motion Social Club

A place to question ourselves

The letter is free. The exercises are here. The references are here. Read one, or do one.

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