Custom Lottie Loader | Spring Health

I recently had the opportunity to animate this custom Lottie loader for Spring Health. These icons, wonderfully designed by @Bonnie Kate Wolf, were an absolute blast to work with. Read more about the process below!

Client: Spring Health

Icon design: @Bonnie Kate Wolf

Art direction: @Greg Sargent

Sketching animation

I start every animation project with an animatic. This functions like an animated sketch—showing rough ideas for how each element of the illustration can be animated, as well serving as the foundation for blocking out timing. Animatics give clients a sense of what to expect with the end product. This is also a great opportunity for the opportunity to make any high-impact change requests before any time-consuming keyframing has been done.

Animation rounds

The animation itself was completed within three rounds of feedback. With each round, the client asked for a slightly shorter time on the loader so their users could visualize more of the growth process even with short load times.

In each phase of the animation process, the keyframes get polished a bit more and more. In early rounds, small amounts of anticipation and follow-through were added, giving the growth a more natural feeling. As the rounds pass on, keyframes are nudged, easing is polished, creating a fine-tuned final option.

While it can sometimes be uncomfortable sharing unpolished keyframes, inviting clients into this process gives them more ownership of the final product.