Similarly to the Illustration, I began this process by listing what I needed to animate.
My plan was to push the Figma Smart Animate tool as far as possible to cut down on the amount of work needed to be done in After Effects, however, I realised not everything could be done in Figma.
The first and most complex of the animations was the Transposition Manoeuvre. I started by drawing the parts and blocking out each keyframe in Figma.
After moving to AE, it wasn’t too tricky to create the animation. The hardest part here was using Mask and Mattes, two features of After Effects I hadn’t worked with before. I was really pleased with finished animation and felt it looped really well.
^^^Double Click if in Light Mode^^^
The second animation was a simplified version of the the orbital path from earth to the moon. This utilised animating along a path overlayed atop the original vectors, which I felt worked well. While it wasn’t accurate, it showed enough of the path to show what it needed to show.
This animation showed the Apollo landing module in the sea after arriving on Earth. I just used subtle motion to bring what was other wise a static image to life.
