AirBnB’s Lottie Brings Animation to Apps

by Margaret Penney | September 4, 2017

AirBnB is already well-known for their smart user interface and graphic design. Now they lead the way again with Lottie, an open-source animation tool that makes creating motion graphic animations for Android, iOS, and React Native apps simple.

Lottie does this by rendering After FX animations in real-time and by allowing the apps to treat the animations like they would static images. Lottie takes data exported from After FX as JSON files from the open-source AE plugin Bodymovin. The extension has a Javascript player already bundled that makes it easy to create animations that are ready-made for playing on the web and in apps.

Animations for apps using Lottie are distinctly different than those previously seen with Flash or with any web-based motion graphic environment. It creates animations that are incredibly fluid, with no load time issues and no lag in frames (frame movements are fast and incredibly precise.)

Lottie is a work-in-progress and plans to add enhancements to the app over time, like more support for type, gradients, and images. AirBnB made Lotte open-source to ensure that it can constantly improve and reflect what people want. Lottie already has a robust community of designers and developers working on the tool.

Learn more about Lottie at https://airbnb.design/lottie/.

Download the BodyMovin plugin at GitHub https://github.com/bodymovin/bodymovin.

Margaret Penney is the Managing Editor of Notes on Design. Margaret is a teacher, designer, writer and new media artist and founder of Hello Creative Co.

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