Motion & Animation Design

The designer-facing half of motion — authoring animations that feed into your app or marketing. The developer-side runtime libraries (Motion, GSAP, anime.js) live in Animation. For canvas drawing, see Whiteboards.

Interactive animation (state-machine / runtime)

• ★ Rive — closed source editor, OSS runtimes (MIT) for web / iOS / Android / Flutter / React Native / Unity. Free tier covers 3 files / 10 GB / 2 editors. Vector + state machines + bones; the runtime sweet spot for "interactive UI animation that responds to data." The clear leader for this in 2026.
• Lottie (Bodymovin / dotLottie) — open format from Airbnb; export from After Effects via Bodymovin or design natively in LottieFiles Creator. Runtimes (lottie-web, lottie-react, dotlottie-react) are MIT.
• Theatre.js — code-first animation editor; OSS (Apache-2.0); pairs with Three.js / DOM / canvas; the dev-leaning pick.

After Effects–class motion design

• ★ Cavalry — closed source, generous free tier (export limits); procedural motion-design tool from former Adobe / The Foundry folks. The OSS / cheap pick that's actually good in 2026.
• Blender (Grease Pencil + 2D animation) — free OSS; full 2D animation pipeline lives inside Blender now.
• Adobe After Effects — closed source, paid; industry default. No free tier worth speaking of.
• Moho / Toon Boom Harmony — paid; traditional 2D character animation.

UI motion design / quick mockup animations

• ★ Jitter — closed source, freemium; "Figma for motion" — animate Figma frames in a browser. Watermarks on free tier.
• Phase — closed source, free during beta; vector + motion design.
• Linearity Move (formerly Vectornator Move) — closed source; iPad / macOS motion design.
• Figma's Smart Animate — built-in; for prototyping transitions, not export.
• Framer (free tier) — see Wireframing & Prototyping; animations export as live components.

SVG animation

• ★ SVGator — closed source, freemium; visual SVG animator; export <svg> + CSS or JS.
• Method Draw / Inkscape + Snap.svg — DIY pipeline for hand-coded SVG.
• Haiku Animator — discontinued but still usable OSS.
• See Animation for runtime libraries (Motion, GSAP).

Lottie ecosystem

• ★ LottieFiles — closed source, free; library of 200k+ free Lotties + Creator + dotLottie format. The default if you're shipping Lottie.
• dotLottie — newer compressed Lottie format with state machines (closer to Rive).
• lottie-react / @lottiefiles/dotlottie-react — runtimes; MIT / Apache.
• LottieLab — closed source; native Lottie editor (no After Effects needed); freemium.

Specific picks for "animated icons / illustrations"

• ★ Lordicon — closed source; library of premium animated icons; freemium.
• Useanimations — free CC-licensed animated SVG icons.
• IconScout's Lottie library — closed source; freemium.

Pick this if…

• Interactive UI animation that reacts to state: Rive.
• Ship an animated illustration cheaply: Lottie + LottieFiles.
• Marketing-quality motion design, OSS-leaning: Cavalry or Blender.
• Animate Figma frames quickly: Jitter.
• Animated SVG export: SVGator.
• Code-first motion in your React app: Theatre.js + see Animation.