aminghaseminia/motion-design

Motion Design — Art Direction and Motion Craft

This skill turns adjectives into observable decisions. "Premium" is not gold gradients; it is restraint, spacing, controlled contrast, and considered timing. "Futuristic" is not random neon; it is a coherent grid, precise motion, and a limited palette.

Read references/MOTION-CRAFT.md for numbers, tables, and worked examples.

1. Start with a compact creative direction

Write these seven lines before any scene code:

Subject:      one sentence
Audience:     who and where they watch
Message:      the one thing they must remember
Tone:         3 adjectives, each translated into a visual decision
Palette:      4–6 hex values with roles
Type:         1–2 families, weights, scale
Motion:       speed, easing character, transition vocabulary

If the tone adjectives cannot be translated into decisions, the direction is not finished. Example translation:

Adjective	Concrete decisions
Premium	Slow easing, wide tracking on display type, 1 accent colour, deep negative space, soft key light, no bounce
Energetic	Fast entrances (8–12 frames), 6–10% overshoot, cut-on-beat, high contrast, saturated accent
Trustworthy	Symmetric grid, mid-tone palette, slow reveals, stable camera, plain language, no gimmicks
Technical	Monospace accents, ruled lines, measurement ticks, precise linear motion, cool neutrals

2. One system, then scenes

Define the system once and reuse it:

• Grid: 12 columns, 5–8% outer margin. Vertical/social formats need more margin because platform UI covers edges.
• Type scale: e.g. 96/64/40/28/20 px at 1080p. Never invent a size per scene.
• Spacing: 8 px base unit. Space communicates grouping more than lines or boxes do.
• Colour roles: background, surface, primary text, muted text, accent, semantic. One accent, used sparingly.
• Shape language: corner radius, stroke weight, and whether elements are flat, bevelled, or lit.
• Motion language: entrance style, exit style, transition vocabulary, and whether camera moves exist at all.

A style frame is cheaper than ten finished scenes. Render one frame that represents the whole piece and get it right first.

3. Composition rules that hold up

• One focal point per beat. If two things are equally bright, equally large, and equally moving, there is no hierarchy.
• Contrast is relative: if everything glows, nothing does.
• Negative space is a feature. A 30% empty frame reads as confidence.
• Align to something — a grid, an optical centre, or a deliberate diagonal. Near-alignment looks like a mistake.
• Keep the subject out of the outer 5% on social formats.
• For text over imagery, ensure a luminance difference of at least ~4.5:1 for body copy; add a scrim rather than a heavy shadow.
• Depth cues in 2D: scale, blur, opacity, overlap, parallax. Use one or two, not all four.

4. Timing

Duration communicates weight. Rough starting points at 30 FPS:

Element	Entrance	Exit	Dwell
Short headline (1–3 words)	12–18 f	8–12 f	≥ 24 f
Long headline	18–24 f	12 f	≥ 45 f
Body line	12–16 f	8 f	≥ 30 f
Logo reveal	24–40 f	12 f	≥ 45 f
Chart	30–45 f	10 f	≥ 60 f
Full-screen transition	10–18 f	—	—
Camera move (3D)	45–90 f	—	—

Rules:

• Bigger distance or mass → longer duration.
• Groups move together, then stagger by 2–6 frames; do not stagger everything by the same amount.
• Leave a beat of stillness after an important reveal.
• If a viewer must read it, it must be on screen about twice as long as you think.

5. Easing

Situation	Curve
Arriving and settling	ease-out (cubic or quart)
Leaving	ease-in
Moving between two rest states	ease-in-out
Mechanical / continuous / looping	linear
Physical snap	spring, damping 14–22, stiffness 90–180
Camera	very soft ease-in-out, long duration

Never ease every property identically. Position, opacity, and rotation can share a curve; scale usually wants slightly tighter timing. Avoid bounce unless the brand is playful — it dates quickly and fights legibility.

6. Transitions

Build a vocabulary of 3–4 and reuse them:

1. Cut — default for pace. Cheapest and often best.
2. Crossfade — 6–12 frames, for soft continuity.
3. Mask wipe — directional, for a spatial relationship.
4. Scale-through — pushing into an element, for a chapter change.
5. Match cut — shape or motion continuity, the most satisfying and hardest.

Avoid: default zoom-blur on everything, star wipes, and transitions that contradict the story's direction of travel.

7. Colour

• Start from one dominant, one accent, and neutrals. Add a second accent only if it carries meaning.
• Check contrast at final size, not on a large monitor.
• Keep saturation controlled: highly saturated colours on large areas fatigue the eye.
• Dark backgrounds need slightly desaturated accents and lifted shadow detail; pure black plus pure white text is harsh.
• Use colour to encode meaning consistently (one colour for "before", another for "after"), not decoratively.
• Verify colour across tools: browser (sRGB), Blender (view transform), and encoder. A washed-out composite usually means mismatched view transforms, not a bad palette.

8. Typography

• Max two families: one display, one text (or one family with multiple weights).
• Display tracking: tight for large sans (-1% to -3%), wide for short all-caps labels (+8% to +20%).
• Body line height: 1.35–1.6. Display line height: 1.0–1.2.
• Line length: 45–75 characters. Headlines can be shorter.
• Avoid orphans and single-word last lines; rewrite the copy if needed.
• Numbers: tabular figures for counters and tables.
• Never stretch or condense a typeface to fit; change the layout or the size.

Right-to-left (Persian, Arabic, Hebrew)

• Set direction at the container level and use a shaping-capable font (e.g. Vazirmatn, IBM Plex Sans Arabic, Noto Naskh Arabic).
• Test shaping, joining, diacritics, and punctuation in a rendered frame, not in code.
• Mixed content: keep Latin brand names/URLs in their own spans with dir="ltr", or the bidi algorithm will reorder punctuation.
• Persian numerals vs Latin numerals: choose one system for the whole piece.
• Line height needs more room than Latin for the same optical size.
• Do not letter-space Arabic script — it breaks cursive joining.

9. Sound

• Decide the role of sound before choosing tracks: pace-setter, emotional bed, information (voice), or punctuation (SFX).
• Separate stems: voice, music, ambience, spot effects. Duck music 6–10 dB under voice.
• Accent the visual event, not the clip start.
• Fade every cut; a hard start or stop clicks.
• Leave headroom (-1 dBTP), avoid clipping, check mono compatibility for phone speakers.
• Silence is a tool. Dropping music for one beat before a reveal is stronger than adding a riser.
• License every track and record the source. Never assume "free download" means commercial use is allowed.

10. Accessibility and platform fit

• Captions for any spoken content; on-screen text also helps silent viewing, which is the majority on social.
• Do not encode meaning in colour alone.
• Avoid flashing above 3 Hz; no strobing.
• Keep essential text inside safe areas, at a size readable on a phone.
• Check the platform's current duration, aspect, codec, and bitrate requirements before delivery.

11. Review method

Watch the piece three times:

1. Silent, at 50% size — does the hierarchy read? Is anything clipped?
2. Full size with sound — does the rhythm work? Is the audio fighting the image?
3. Frame by frame at boundaries — flashes, gaps, jumps, unreadable frames.

Then ask the three questions:

• What is the one thing the viewer remembers?
• Where does attention go first, and is that intended?
• What can be removed without losing the message?

Removal is usually the highest-value revision.

12. Deliverable for the design phase

• brief.md — subject, audience, message, constraints, assumptions.
• style-guide.md — palette with roles and hex, type scale, spacing, motion language.
• storyboard.md — one row/block per scene: time, purpose, composition, copy, motion, transition, sound, tool.
• 1–3 style frames — the visual target, approved before mass production.