A new design format has become increasingly popular for all types of businesses. Here, we’re talking about Lottie animations. You have probably heard about it already, but you might not be sure what exactly is Lottie and why you should use them for your business. Today, we’ll cover everything you need to know about this format.
What Are Lottie Animations and How Do They Work?
Lottie is an open-source animation tool created by Airbnb Design. It is “an iOS, Android, and React Native library that renders After Effects animations in real-time.”
Lottie allows native apps to use animations as if they were static assets. This rich open-source library is quite flexible. Thanks to the countless number of collaborators from all around the world, it constantly integrates new features. In the library, you can find everything from basic line art to dynamic logo animations.
How did the name come into being? Well, it’s an homage to Lotte Reineger, a German film director. Lotte Reineger is the pioneer of silhouette animation and creator of the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, called The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926).
However, you are probably wondering how Lottie Animations works. First, a motion designer creates a cute animation in Adobe After Effects. Next, they export the animations as JSON files using an extension called Bodymovin. Then, a developer “drops” that file into their app’s assets folder and references it from a Lottie Animation View.
Why Use Lottie animations?
The web developer community has helped Lottie grow drastically in popularity over the last couple of years. There are many reasons for this, but the most prominent one seems that it provides a seamless solution for creating digital products. Besides this, Lottie animations:
● Are significantly smaller than any other file format. Thus, they’re easy to download and save up disk space.
● Can be scaled to any size. What’s more, while doing so, their quality won’t be compromised. No matter how much you reduce the file, there is no pixelation.
● Have many features built into their API which allows for higher versatility.
● Remove the burden of rewriting animations. They provide a smoother workflow for designers and developers.
● There are a countless number of free animations available in the library that can be used for inspiration.
And, that’s not all. Here are some additional Lottie animation benefits and reasons why you should use them for your business.
Easy to maintain
This design format is saved as plain text, which decreases debugging time and the total time to deployment. Moreover, plain text Lottie files are easy to maintain and fine-tune as they do not require the use of specialist software tools. The text inside them is structured as JSON, which means that it is ready for assimilation into Javascript or any other application development. This is one of the main reasons why Lottie is the most widely used format in the world.
Versatility
Lottie can be played anywhere as it is compatible with any browser that supports contemporary Javascript. Additionally, the integration of Lottie into any desktop or laptop program is way simpler. This design format is also possible to use in mobile apps, including IOS, Android, and Tizen platforms. Many companies embrace Lottie for their mobile frontends so they can easily stand out from the crowd.
Dynamic
This design format can be silly manipulated and have its content replaced due to the JSON structure it contains. Designers can replace the Lottie data with replacement material from any site. Consequently, Lottie is not only the most widely used but also the most dynamic graphics format.
Saves money
With this flexible format, it’s very inexpensive to personalize and customize everything. You can add a customized design to your APP and website without thinking about spending a lot of money. Using this design format is not only efficient and versatile but also cheaper.
Exceptional quality
Lottie uses vectors to represent geometric forms' dimensions and qualifiers to define their characteristics and how they move during the animation. The Lottie player renders at the screen's native resolution so that Lottie animations are always shown in the finest possible quality. They never pixelate, no matter how much you zoom into them.
Here at MotionAlly, we’re very excited by the prospect of Lottie and the benefits it provides for our clients. Using this design format, our talented team can unlock their skills a bit further to build unmatched digital products for you. Thus, helping you cut through the noise.
If you like the idea of using Lottie to add animations to your future web or mobile application, get in touch to learn how we can make it happen for you.
