UI Animations with Lottie and After Effects

Understand and develop immersive animations along with animated stickers for Telegram using Bodymovin, After Effects and LottieFiles and integrate them in your React Native apps using this color guide to UI animations

Key Features

• Explore key principles of storytelling, 2D digital animation, and design thinking
• Create animations in After Effects, learn how to export them with both Bodymovin and LottieFiles plugins, and tweak them using the LottieFiles platform
• Understand how to implement Lottie animations with React Native

Book Description

Lottie is a small and scalable JSON-based animation file. LottieFiles is the platform where Lottie animations can be uploaded, tested, and shared. By combining the LottieFiles plugin and the LottieFiles platform, you’ll be able to create stunning animations that are easy to integrate in any device. You’ll also see how to use the Bodymovin plugin in After Effects to export your animation to a JSON file.

The book starts by giving you an overview of Lottie and LottieFiles. As you keep reading, you’ll understand the entire Lottie ecosystem and get hands-on with classic 2D animation principles. You’ll also get a step-by-step guided tour to ideate, sketch for storytelling, design an icon that will fulfill the needs and expectations of users based on UX, and finally animate it in Adobe After Effects. This will help you get familiar with the After Effects environment, work with vector shape layers, create and modify keyframes using layer properties, explore path and mask features, and adjust timing easily to create professional-looking animations.

By the end of this animation book, you’ll be able to create and export your own Lottie animations using After Effects and implement them in mobile apps using React Native. You’ll also have an understanding of 2D animation best practices and principles that you can apply in your own projects.

What you will learn

• Get started with Lottie and integrate animations either by creating them from scratch or by downloading them through LottieFiles
• Explore the key principles of 2D classic animation
• Understand the basics to create your first animation using After Effects
• Export your animations into Lottie JSON files through Bodymovin
• Integrate your very first Lottie icon animation inside your React Native app
• Control your animation within the app through React APIs, while exploring best practices and common pitfalls

Who this book is for

This book is for developers and engineers who are already familiar with React Native, as well as UX and UI designers who want to create their own animations and integrate them with their platforms through React Native. Basic knowledge of JavaScript programming is assumed. Beginner-level illustration skills are also preferred, although not necessary.

Table of Contents

1. Get Started With Lottie
2. Creating the Illusion: Get Rolling With the Basic Principles of 2D Classic Animation
3. Learning the Tools: Getting Familiar With After Effects
4. Move It! Animating Our First Lottie With After Effects
5. Share It With the World: Working With LottieFiles
6. Don’t Stop! Exploring Plugins and Resources That Will Keep You Going
7. An Introduction to lottie-react-native
8. Installing lottie-react-native
9. Let’s Do Some Magic: Integrating Your First Lottie Animation
10. How To Nail It: Controlling Your Animation
11. Any Questions? lottie-react-native FAQs

Mireia Alegre Ruiz is a Head of UX/UI and is proficient as a UX Product designer and Illustration - Visual designer with motion graphics and video editing skills. Mireia has more than 20 years working experience sketching, illustrating and creating micro animations from scratch since old Macromedia Flash days. With a Graphic design background, she made a move and specialized in digital design back in the early 2000’s. Since then, she has been working for big international advertisement agencies and Barcelona based start-ups as a Product designer. Always with the user in the centre of the picture, and based in Design thinking and Agile methodologies, her principles are very clear: Make people's lives easier.

Emilio Rodriguez Martinez is a senior software engineer who has been working on highly demanding JavaScript projects since 2010. He transitioned from web development positions into mobile development, first with hybrid technologies such as Cordova and then with native JavaScript solutions such as Titanium. In 2015, he focused on the development and maintenance of several apps built in React Native, some of which were featured in Apple's App Store as the top apps of the week. He is also an active contributor to React Native's codebase and Stack Overflow, where he provides advice on React and React Native questions.