Back to Lotties, and wrapping up the motion graphics editor
Back to Lotties, and wrapping up the motion graphics editor
Issue #28
Hey! I’m Alyssa X, a serial entrepreneur building 12+ products by myself. This email is part of my maker journey, which you’re subscribed to. Feel free to forward it to others if you find it interesting! You can support me through GitHub Sponsors, I’d really appreciate it! ❤️
Hey all,
I've been feeling better this week, but to be honest I didn't get much done. There's a heatwave going on (again) and it's not really helping me focus 😅
Quick recap
This week I didn't really have a whole lot of tasks in Notion. I quickly realized that most of them were tasks I had been leaving out week after week, and after closer inspection a lot of them didn't feel necessary for the MVP launch. Just to get an idea:
What I got rid of
I decided to get rid of the subtitles entirely, since I could always add it later and I don't know how common of a request that would be.
That said I did look into it a bit, my plan was to get SRT files (for captioning), interpret them in code, and then display the subtitles with Fabric.js at the right time.
I browsed around for SRT libraries, only to realize I already pretty much built my own for Jumpskip last year, where I used that same file to check the timestamps of jumpscares and the specific type. I repurposed the code for the motion graphics editor, and while it did work fine I realized it would be a bit tricky to add new elements into the canvas that were static, not present in the layer tree, and able to be styled + fitting in the proper canvas dimensions with all edge cases accounted for. Sooo I just decided to leave it.
Similarly for text animation, I decided that having the end animation for the text was not that important for the MVP, and i could always add it on request afterwards pretty easily.
What I worked on
I only ended up doing a couple of things. The first one was having a way for users to upload their own Lotties into the tool.
I simply added an option in the "More" section where users can select a JSON file to import into the canvas (there's lots of amazing animations over at LottieFiles). I considered having a panel for it, but I have not found any API for browsing Lotties that I could integrate into my tool, and licensing would also be tough. But nonetheless users could still create the animation in After Effects, or download them through some site, and then easily upload it into the editor to make all sorts of videos.
The other one was quite silly to be honest, I just fixed the loading status on the images in the panel, so it would show a spinner while fetching them, and once complete it would go away.
What I'll work on next
And that's literally it. After doing all that I realized I was finished with the tool. I could do some polish, test it extensively, but adding more features feels a bit unnecessary, and I need to launch at some point anyway.
So for the following weeks I will need to work on launch-related tasks, and get a launch tasklist going. Here's a few thoughts of what I will need to tackle:
I might need to have a landing page. I've been debating whether I would have one, or just bring users directly into the editor with some sort of onboarding, so people can start creating really quickly. There's pros and cons, with the landing page I could improve the SEO + make the product look more "professional", but without it I might be able to get more people using the tool right away,.
I don't know if I will end up adding some sort of pricing or not. I think if anything I might have some sort of way for companies to integrate the editor into their products, but probably more on a "contact me" basis anyway, so it should be fine.
Will need to think of a teaser to make for the tool. Unfortunately it might be pretty tricky, especially trying to convey all of the functionality. I feel it could be somewhat similar to what I made for Sonuum, since it worked pretty well.
Need to decide on a name and a logo. I'm kind of leaning towards Motionity, just because I could tie it in with Screenity.
Honestly, I don't know if I'm super confident with the product. I might want to get more of people's thoughts, how I could possibly improve it. One worry I have is that the keyframing might not necessarily be super intuitive, I'm personally very used to it since I use After Effects a lot, but most users without that background might find it strange.
I considered having some sort of alternate view or mode for beginners where it would be closer to a classic video editor timeline, maybe with auto animation so you can just arrange the elements at different points in time and update any properties, and then just animate in between when you play it back. It could be doable with the current system, but I do wonder if that would be particularly useful.
Anyway, I've got nothing else. I feel like I am at a point where I've been steadily losing my motivation for the product (which tends to happen when it drags for too long), and I don't know if I'll get enough of it back to be able to wrap it all up and launch soon. It's also been so warm these past days, it's absolutely unbearable. Had a couple nights I couldn't even sleep, it gets boiling hot in my flat.
See you next week,
Alyssa X