.

I've been trying to manually keyframe something like this but it's way more complex that I first thought. Is there a tutorial or are there plugins or something that I should use to do something like this?

I can pay for C4D, but it's really expensive and I really shouldn't be spending right now. I heard Blender is wayyy hard than C4D, and as a beginner that sounds so daunting. Is it true that Blender is that much hard to use? Or is Blender not that bad?
Thanks.

I sense Cinema 4D will be out of the game soon, because of it's high cost and low versatility. I would say blender will be the thing, but I'm no expert. What do you think?

(edit:) Yeah, C4D is expensive in my country unfortunately

I'm an animation student making collage-style work like Lucas Mariano’s stuff for Vox and NYT Opinion. Lots of 3D layers, camera moves, and everything’s in glorious 4K. I use Adobe Suite and DaVinci Resolve Fusion, and I’m currently punishing myself by doing all of this on a laptop.

Time to upgrade — but I’m torn. For the same price, should I build a PC and get more raw power, or go with the Mac Mini M4 Pro and enjoy that sweet, sweet plug-and-play peace of mind?

Hey all, I hope everyone is well.

Now that we are in 2025 there are two things that have been weighing on me and I'd really love to get other perspectives on this. Firstly I've been a freelance motion designer for nearly 20 years now, and as much as I truly enjoy what I do, the battle to get consistent work has been tougher and tougher due to a lot more clients just not having the budget to allow for animation work. As such I've been finding it quite mentally draining to keep the flow of work coming in.

Another factor is the looming presence of AI generated content. While I know a lot of creatives and clients see it as soulless plagiarized slop... as the tech gets better, I think it's going to get even harder to have a stable income without a lot of additional stress, and there are those clients out there that care more about content being fast and cheap, without a regard for quality.

It's these factors that have made me question my career path in general, and a drive to better understand my strengths. I've been freelancing and managing projects for so many years now, that I think project management, producing, marketing, researching, archiving, teaching, communicating / networking are all very much part of the work I do, and that it's not just about knowing After Effects and keyframes like the back of my hand.

This is a very long winded and rant filled way of asking if any one here as taken their skill set and applied it to a different job or career path? Maybe due to stress, or that you lost the passion, or simply that you wanted a change.

I'd love to get a few perspectives on this :)

I have had a love/hate relationship with Adobe for years. Their software is mostly great but I have a few issues, mostly with AE. Why is AE so sluggish? FFS, it is as slow a stoned geriatric sloth doing tai chi. And why do you need Overlord to copy vectors from AI to AE? You can literally copy and paste vector shapes into other 3rd party software such as Rive. There should he better native integration. I have a powerful pc but I can literally only RAM preview on 1/4 quality. I recently started learning Moho for 2D character animation and its stable and fast. I will never, ever, ever go back to AE for character animation again even though I brought Limber and JnS. And did I mention that moho is a once-off purchase? When you deal with client demands, the added stress that Adobe's products create in terms of instability and performance issues really makes life challenging. Rant done. For now....

I'm 29 with 7 years of agency experience working as motion designer and video editor, currently working remotely for one U.S. company doing work I don’t enjoy. I was successful as a freelancer before—never had a slow week, always had steady work. But now, as I’m about to become a mom, I’m torn. Stability seems important, but I don’t trust my coworkers, feel used, and honestly, I just don’t like my job.

Would going back to freelancing be a huge mistake, or is it worth the risk for my sanity?

Have situation where the client asked for it so he can take snippets from the animation.

Now I don't wanna be a hard ass, but I just been told not to give this away too easily, it's your intellectual property, and they could go to someone cheaper with this.

To be honest I don't have much interest in working with this client again, but I simply don't want to succubm to their requeat that hasn't been mentioned upfront.

If it is mentioned and agreed upon upfront, would people commonly charge for this transfer of source files?

I know its industry standard, from my experience at least, to design in illustrator then move everything over to ae... but illustrator is just absolutely horrible in my opinion. Having to individually add each effect to each shape to dealing with countless viewport bugs. Even just not having the ability in some cases to copy and paste hex codes sucks. It just feels like it was designed to resist any scalability in projects and Ive mostly moved my workflow to figma the past couple of years.

I feel Ive used it enough over the past years to get efficient with but still feels unnecessarily difficult to work with. Are there any mograph studios/freelancers that have totally abandoned it yet in their workflows or is it still something I should stay comfortable with?

I was planning to attend 3 days motion design conference. But total expense including tickets, flights and hotels would be more than $2000. And ticket price itself is about half of the total expense.

I am not going there for opportunities but more for experience and connect with other designers. But when I look at the cost that I would end up spending, I am not convinced by that yet.

Can anyone please share or DM me about your experience on any pricey motion design conferences you attended and if that was worth spending money?

I am sure the conference itself would be great, but still not easy to decide.

There's ton of stuff I'm interested in learning from After Effects and C4D. but man, is it overwhelming to understand both.

How did you approach this challenge? Did you learn one program first and then tap into the other next?

Thanks.

I am curious to know what professional designers went through when they first started (self taught included).

Hey yal!

I’ve been an architect for over 5years and I finally decided to get off of the mind-bending machine that is the architectural/urban field… I was thinking of leveraging my 3D and illustration skills to do freelance projects while learning more about animation/motion design. For those of you who have taken a similar path, I’d love to hear your experience ! - What are your days like ? - Is it easy to find clients ? - How is life/work balance? - Most importantly… Are you happy ?

Any insights/tips would be super appreciated as I take my first steps in this direction !

Tyyy

Hi guys,

I'm 23, graduated in 2023 with an associate degree in 3D Animation but I worked full-time as a graphic designer for a small apparel company in downtown LA. I'm back to college to get a bachelor but really frustrated. What should I start studying?

During my time finishing my associate, I found myself enjoying doing logo animation and other motion graphics using Ae. However, I'm scared that the market is saturated and the whole motion graphic seems a bit vague. I give myself a month to study motion design online from YouTube to see if I am actually interested in this... But at the same time, I'm on my savings, and it's lowkey running out. I'm also on a student visa, so this is really challenging for me.

What are the salries for a motion designer (in house/agency) like in the UK and India, please also let me know your years of experience for some reference. Im a graphic designer thinking of changing paths so im considering all options

I've frequently used Vimeo to search and look for all sorts of animation and motion design to inspire me... for years. And then recently they took away their global search and feed feature, at least for my region (Europe). For no bloody reason at all, seemingly. So now I can't access Vimeo's vast library of content or even easily see new work from those I follow. It's actually affecting my workflow!

I've contacted support, but in the meantime, are there any alternatives for motion design inspiration? Behance and Dribbble don't really have the variety and visibility that Vimeo had. Motionographer is good but I'd love to just have a feed where I can follow all the designers and studios I like. Instagram seems like the only alternative but only for short social media content. And I don't like Instagram because honestly it's detrimental to my mental health. This Vimeo update is a real kick in the teeth :/

I do motion design on the side and I hate sending people to my website. It never feels updated enough, and no one clicks links in DMs anyway. Plus, the amount of people that I can find to send to my website is very low.

Is there a platform that makes it easier to showcase your work and get discovered for paid gigs?

I know Behance exists, but I haven’t gotten a single inbound from there in years. Where are y'all getting inbound/good projects from?

I've been in the game for 10 years now, have worked a few different staff positions and lots of freelance gigs for branded work and tv. I have the portfolio, but that said, man this year and the last have been excruciatingly slow for me. Wanted to see what other's experience was, are people finding work these days? What are you doing to be successful do you think?

Producers, mangers, studios what are you seeing? Any advice in finding more work?

Hello!
I'm a fairly intermediate motion designer and have always worked on a gaming laptop for the most part and they've served me well. I was using only AE. For the last year, I have expanded into C4D. Now I want to invest in a PC which runs AE and C4D, Houdini without any hassle when it comes to simulations and heavy scenes.

From my research so far I haven't found much clarity. I've never configured a PC before and feel that the best way to go ahead might be to talk to the configuring companies that do this in my city. I'd be immensely thankful if I can get some pointers about the best way to go about doing it.

Budget: ~$ 2K [is this a decent budget?]. I have some wiggle room if the build needs a little pushing.

Cheers!

I am an industrial designer looking to dive into the 3D space as i love visual storytelling. I was wondering if its actually sensible to pivot completely to the 3D space as i hear people saying AI advancements will reduce the demand in this field. Demand as in less man power to do tasks.

I am interested in product rendering and motion graphics to be specific and also a bit of branding. So wanted to combine all my interests and start something unique together.

Any insights will be really helpful and any starting advice will also help.

Thank you !

I am an industrial designer looking to dive into the 3D space as i love visual storytelling. I was wondering if its actually sensible to pivot completely to the 3D space as i hear people saying AI advancements will reduce the demand in this field. Demand as in less man power to do tasks.

I am interested in product rendering and motion graphics to be specific and also a bit of branding. So wanted to combine all my interests and start something unique together.

Any insights will be really helpful and any starting advice will also help.

Thank you !