Animation stack for creating animations fast

March 11, 2024

Building an audience

I really like animation as a means of communication because of its expressiveness, flexibility, and iterability.

Here is one animation ad that I did recently for Twice Commerce.

Horizontal: Check it out in Youtube

Vertical: Check it out in Youtube

I think that the increased consumption of short video content, combined with the AI revolution, makes animation a highly potential and cost-effective way to engage potential users/customers.

The animation stack

I created the above animation with this tech stack:

  • Adobe After Effects for creating the animation.
  • Figma to access the design teams UI elements in vector format and create mock ups for the animation.
  • Adobe Illustrator to edit the vector graphics and make them better 'digestable' for After Effects.
  • Battle Axe Overlord plugin for exporting specific layers or collections of layers to After Effects.
  • ElevenLabs for the voice over. Super impressive tool!
  • ChatGPT to create the ad copy.
  • Runway to create the grandmother scene.
  • Motion Array for explosions and other special effects.
  • Motion Array for the squirrel stock footage.
  • Motion Array for the music.
  • Photoshop generative fill for tweaking small visual elements if necessary.
  • Adobe After Effects Rotobrush 3.0 for making the squirrel look like it is drinking coffee.
  • Ableton Live 11 for editing the music track.

Lessons learned

When you are experimenting with different approaches and narratives for e.g. a new product or testing traction for some new feature, it can make sense to create the initial animations in-house.

Once you have the targeting, communications and value propositions dialed in, then it's time to check in with professional animators.

AI voice-over technology has become super good. Highly recommend ElevenLabs.

Motion Array is pretty cool resource as well. The music selection is pretty great.


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Written by Aleksi Immonen who has worked 9+ years in growth and startups. You should follow him on X!