Recently I launched my last work as a freelancer, one mobile app for a professional of the gym, he works with reduce weight for woman's and our deal was make a super simple mobile app for woman-public to train from home. As I always do, I started this project, making a prototype first using a pen and paper and more late to passing for Figma.

In the initial idea, I suggested to the client one person animated, and for that challenge Lottie was the better choice.

Installing the plugin

This project use Expo ejected, and the plugin that I choose was the https://github.com/lottie-react-native/lottie-react-native, the documentation is straightforward, but basically, you need to install and in the case of iOS, run the pod install:

pod install

The problem

Lottie is a plugin that provides the possibility to use After Effects animations on mobile apps through a JSON file exported, in the LottieFiles you can to find a lot animations for just to use, but I needed one animation customised, and then I called to my brother.

For the persons, I used the website https://www.flaticon.com/, and tried at least three ideas to share with my client.

After the final decision, I submitted the SVG files for my brother to create the animation using Adobe After Effects, he also have needed to install the plugin https://lottiefiles.com/plugins/after-effects, this process wasn't simples because Lottie not to accept all features of After Effects.

After many tests, my brother done it and sent to me the files JSON exported, all I have needed to do was copy into the folder assets in my project RN and set the path in the plugin.

The final result

I finished this project after 4 months (I calculated 2 months to do it), the result was really awesome, the app is available on App Store and Google Play today, and the idea of use Lottie certainly was a good choice, Lottie runs the animation too fluid, me and the client were satisfied.

Throughout my career UX always was a concerned, and Lottie brought new possibilities to put amazing animations without a hard work. Recently, I have been using Lottie as well with web, I recommend.