A motion design piece for DEP, exploring its visual identity through animated brand elements, including a box, a roll-up banner, and a book with turning pages.
The page transitions form the letter E from the DEP logo, bringing the brand identity into the animation itself.

I hope I'm in the right place because gods know I've scoured everywhere else I can think of.

I have this idea for an interactive D20 that I want to utilize for my website. I've tried building it myself, but I am TERRIBLE at coding. I tried having Ai do it... turns out every Ai model is JUST AS BAD at it as I am, if not worse in some cases.

So I've come here in the hopes that someone might see this and be able to help. Here's hoping.

Not sure it it would help, but If you need any specific details about the concept just ask.

For a while, every new project meant hunting for the same fonts and stock footage I'd already used before, because everything was scattered across random folders.

What fixed it: one shared "Library" folder outside any single project, with subfolders like Fonts, Stock_Footage, Sound_FX, LUTs. Every new After Effects project just points to that library instead of copying files locally.

Benefits I didn't expect:

No more duplicate footage eating up disk space

Collaborators can use the same library without me sending files one by one

Missing font/footage warnings almost disappeared

The only downside is I have to be careful when archiving a finished project, since the assets live outside its folder.

How do you handle shared assets across projects? One library, or do you just duplicate files each time?

I used to name my layers whatever came to mind: "Comp 1", "logo final", "logo final v2", "logo FINAL FINAL". Fine on a small project, chaos on anything with more than 20 layers.

What fixed it: a strict prefix system.

BG_ for background elements

TXT_ for text layers

CTRL_ for control nulls

FX_ for anything with an effect stack

Now when I open a project from three months ago, I can find what I need in seconds instead of scrubbing through 40 unnamed layers.

The afternoon I lost was spent untangling a client project with zero naming logic, just to swap one logo version.

Does anyone else use a prefix system, or do you organize layers a different way?

so i made this video and its not perfect cus its the first draft, i made it in 6 days and will do the sfx today but i need some help with design and stuff so if any of you who does saas please dm

https://youtu.be/a6NJ0xTrXyo

I'm Nathan, a freelance motion designer and art director based in Paris. I've just finished my 2026 showreel and I'd love to get your honest feedback before I start sending it out. please be honnest !

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MtS-17BKNpgc4g6v2k6G3kICt5HzVpyS/view?usp=sharing

so i made this video and its not perfect cus its the first draft, i made it in 6 days and will do the sfx today but i need some help with design and stuff so if any of you who does saas please dm

I mean. Ok. I'm not sure how applicable the video's breakdown is to anyone else. I built this TV ident with the contraption I call the VOP. It's a video based optical printer running on a Pi. It does light streaks, extrusions and optical composites by showing the new element on an HDMI screen and a camera captures it and adds the light to any previously exposed image for that frame number. It's an extremely slow and tedious workflow. But it's the closest I have managed to get to the old school way of doing optical printer composites like ILM used to do it. It's FOSS and on github if anyone is curious.

So the video here is a showcase of how I used the VOP to do the ident in 15 exposure passes. It's a literally destructive process with no undos. If you mess up, you have to live with it... or start again from scratch.

My own thoughts about the result here. I think I underestimated how dark the blue of the "TRAILER" text is. Works good in a dark viewing room. And I think I should have shortened the overall runtime to maybe 6-8 seconds instead of 10 to have less dead space.

Link to reel - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DedkM9hTE3k

Another page posting same format - https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeXCn5soOGM

Thanks in advance 🙌

Been experimenting more with Claude Opus 5.5 and the Opac X plugin inside After Effects, and this time I made a solar system explainer.

The coolest part is that everything is still fully editable inside After Effects. Every tiny layer, shape, animation, and little detail can be adjusted manually. It's not just a rendered video.

I can still tweak the keyframes, change the timing, modify individual elements, or customize pretty much anything.

It's been really fun seeing how AI can help build animations while still giving you full creative control.

Still experimenting with what's possible, but thought I'd share this one here.

What do you guys think? Would you find something like this useful in your AE workflow?

• solved* hi everyone, I am creating JSON animations in after effects. one of the annoying things that it does is when a shape layers "in point" is extended backwards(white diagonal lines jn picture) it doesnt render the shape and its always a nuisance to go and manually move things especially when they have keyframes or are somethings parent.

does anyone know of a way to adjust a shape layer's in point without moving anything.

thanks to SchAdamfreude for the answer : Press Y to bring up the Pan Behind/Anchor point tool, then drag your layers (without any keyframes selected). That'll shift the start times without moving the layers themselves.

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I have been learning motion design and decided to focus on SAAS. I've watched tons of YouTube tutorials and learned After Effects, but I'm struggling with one thing: creating something on my own.

Whenever I follow a tutorial, everything makes sense. But when I try to create something from scratch, my mind goes completely blank. I don't know how to come up with ideas or what I should actually be practising.

I'm figuring everything out on my own, and honestly, sometimes I feel pretty lost. I don't have any friends in this field to learn from or ask for advice, so it's hard to know if I'm even going in the right direction.

And then there's AI. Every time I open Instagram, I see reels saying AI will replace motion designers. It makes me question whether all the time I've spent learning After Effects will actually pay off.

I haven't even started my career, and it already feels like it's over.

I'd really appreciate some honest advice from people working in this field.

1. How do you develop your own ideas and creativity instead of constantly relying on tutorials?

2. What's the best way to practise and improve when you don't have anyone to guide you?

3. With AI advancing so quickly, is motion design still a good career to pursue, especially for someone focusing on SAAS?

I genuinely want to get good at this. I just feel stuck right now, and I'd love to hear how others dealt with this stage of learning.

My first lyric video. This song means a lot to me :) Hoping I can upload it here... Enjoy!!