LottieFiles — the future of Internet animation

LottieFiles is the future of animation on the Internet. What makes these animations so cool and why you should use them.

In the world of web design and development, animation has become a key element in attracting users’ attention and improving user experience. And while creating complex animations used to require considerable effort and time, LottieFiles technology has changed the game. I’m sure you’ve seen the cool stickers you can find on Telegram now. So, these are not standard GIFs, but the Lottie tool.

What is Lottie animation?

Lottie animation is an amazing tool that makes online animation smoother, more manageable, and eliminates the need for users to download heavy animation files. The format created by Airbnb allows apps to show animations created in Adobe After Effects in real time.

Why Lottie and not GIF, AVI, mp4, and animated HTML elements?

• GIFs are heavy and have many limitations related to quality loss
• AVI and mp4 have a lot of weight, you can’t export videos with a transparent background
• Manually animated HTML elements are difficult to develop. First of all, the work is accompanied by a lot of edits from the designer.

Secondly, the developer cannot control the speed of the animation. Because of this, you have to sacrifice quality or time to optimize it properly.

Pros and cons of using Lottie Animations

Lottie is currently one of the best tools for creating animations, but it also has its advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages are as follows:

• Lottie provides a smooth workflow. Turning a designer’s idea into reality is easy, as Lottie’s animations are accurately converted into code.
  
• Saturated animations with complex interactions can be made with minimal effort and time, as you don’t need to code every line.
• The JSON file stores the animation values – position, graphics, and time, so there’s no need to have a separate program to view the output file.

Let’s consider the disadvantages:

• Lottie has disadvantages associated with the use of After Effects.
• Advanced lighting effects and design tricks cannot be created with Lottie.
• You can’t create screen transitions, and you only have access to work with the animations that are on the screen.

The most important thing to highlight about Lottie’s efficiency is that the entire process of designing and developing animations has become easier. This results in you focusing on the development of the animation itself, rather than the tool or complex process by which it is executed.

Where you can use Lottie

Emails and stickers

All animated stickers on Telegram are Lottie animations. Its use significantly saves traffic, as the program works with data, not video files.

Cool narrative

Bodymovin allows you to export many elements from After Effects. The very nice piece of the loop below was created using After Effects’ Newtonian physics.

Logo presentation

The logo presentation is simplified using the Lottie format. The files are vector-based and easily scalable, leaving no jagged edges or compression artifacts.

Characters

Lottie is powerful enough to support a variety of tools for character animation. Below, we’ll go over some of the plugins and tools supported by Lottie and Bodymovin that you can use to create character animations.

Simple UI elements

Lottie is a great solution for UI. The very small file sizes, crystal clear resolution, and frame rate mean that the icons you create will stay exactly as you illustrate them.

Lottie animation limitations

You may have to do without expresses

An expressive is a JavaScript command written for a specific property that sets the value of the property it is written for. Now, not all expressions are supported by the Lottie library, only some of them. If you are going to use them, we recommend testing the animation in different browsers.

You’ll have to minimize the use of Alpha Matte and Alpha Inverted Matte

Despite the fact that these types of alpha channel are convenient to use, it is better to refrain from them, as they often give unpredictable results and problems are difficult to find. We recommend using masks to avoid artifacts.

Use as few Keyframes as possible

A keyframe is the start and end position on the timeline between which the animation takes place. The more keyframes you have in your project, the more the final file will weigh, so try to use fewer keyframes

Conclusion

Thanks to LottieFiles, we can expect new and exceptional animation solutions in all areas of virtual reality, gaming, marketing, and education. These technologies open the door to an unforgettable world of animation, where the only limits are our imagination. Have you tried using LottieFiles yet?