Tooling
WIP 24.09.27
Introduction
What is Tooling in Motion Design?
In Motion Design, tooling refers to the building of various different kinds of components to streamline and optimize the design and animation process, enabling designers to work efficiently, automate repetitive tasks, and produce high quality animations. This could as simple as After Effects Animation Presets (FFX), rigs, scripts, or plugins.
Why tooling, why create tools?
As we grow as designers, our focus shifts to advancing and scaling production to tackle bigger, more complex projects, often involving multiple team members. Creating tools helps increase our leverage—not just by streamlining our own work but by empowering others to perform at a higher level. This reduces the need for constant intervention, ensures design consistency, and optimizes existing processes.
Tools, Tooling, Toolkitting, what's the difference?
Tools refers to the thing that creates or help you do the work; eg. After Effects and Adobe Suite is a creative tool to make designs, Trapcode Particular is a plugin that allows you to create particles,
Tooling refers to the building of the tools/parts
Toolkitting refers to the process of grouping tools into a unified set. For example, one can make brand animation AEP toolkit for a company to produce social media content. All designs/animations/assets are prepped in the toolkit, and the user just need to make minimal modification to the elements such as the copy or images being used.
Seriously, why is this important?
We shouldn't see all these as separate skills, but an integral part of a business operations/technical direction...
References
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