Have you written to Dylan from Figma? He was around 20 when he came up with the idea for Figma and got funders behind him. You NEED to make this happen, Alyssa! This has been a need for very very long.<p>I think you can almost jump past the MVP stage for validation, this is a pure execution problem and you need to get money, make this your full-time job, and execute asap given your excitement on this problem!
One style of program that you might want to have a play with, is a node based editor.<p>To me it makes complex motion graphics much easier to understand, and from a UI point of view I think there is much to innovate.<p>nuke, combustion, natron and blender(although the node based bit is hidden somwehere) are all good examples of the rough idea. However they were all copying a previous bit of software.<p>As you're seeking to fill a different segment, you'll have the luxury of not having to make it handle like shake, Flame or others.
Somewhat interesting read regarding your approach to developing the UI, but I can't provide much feedback without at least seeing a demo of the tool in action.<p>You're right, there is a gap in the market for a web-based, Figma style animation editor. I myself went with Tumult Hype (MacOS), as it was the closest equivalent to Adobe Flash-style rapid prototyping that I'm used to. But there isn't much online chatter about web animation in general. I guess everyone has simply moved to Adobe AE+Lottie, SVG+GSAP or the like.<p>If you decide to build a public-facing version of this, I hope you'll include a flat fee option instead of the monthly subscription BS all the startups are going with (Haiku Animator being one of many). Tumult Hype has a $100 flat fee price, which I love.
I'm not really familiar with animation tools, but isn't this exactly what Flare does?<p><a href="https://www.2dimensions.com/about-flare" rel="nofollow">https://www.2dimensions.com/about-flare</a>
What sort of export does the tool have? Would be great if this exported to a json file Lottie could use, or something that could be converted into a GSAP timeline easily
This MVP already looks very polished and I think the design is innovative.
I coincidentally noticed the gap in open-source for motion graphics, but never got passed the notebook phase. One of the pieces I kept getting stuck on was the way to correctly model all that timeline data and applying it to the scene. Could you comment on your approach to that for this product?
I also would like to echo the desire to see it open-sourced.
> The UI of Adobe After Effects can be quite overwhelming to a new user.<p>I suppose so. When I was learning Mograph in school, After Effects was the most intuitive tool among many others. Combustion, Motion etc never quite managed to pull it off in balancing simplicity, ease of use and versatility.<p>AE aged very well IMHO and to this day is the weapon of choice of Mograph.
Can't wait to use this. The many times I've wanted to have simple motion graphics in FCPX but didn't want to shell out for Motion or AE, I wished something like this was available. More power to you
>My plan was to build the product in 6–12 months (for an initial MVP)<p>For the kind of product being described, 6-12 months seems way too long for an initial MVP. I also think statements like "build the entire tool" conflict with the concept of delivering something actionable / people-will-pay-for within a short amount of time.