Thoughts on easing

I’ve seen a lot of posts , gifs, iconographics online over the years on animation easing and it always bothered me the way some of them are structured… it always felt like a easy 1 2 3 setup which magically makes every movement look nice. E.g

• Place keys
• Add tween
• Press easy ease
• Done!

Oh you want it more bouncy?

• Place keys
• Add tween
• Use Flow/motion/code/insert plug-in’s “Elastic tween” button
• Done!

These all work fine but it bothered me that while these are all nice and straight forward all the animation looks like it’s made with the same AI template software to make fast animations. No one really seems to explain why you would use what ease or what the purpose of that ease was.

The foundation of easing goes back to the old Disney animation foundations (see the illusion of life) and there are some amazing buckets of information in there but it feels like we forget sometimes why we actually need something to be flowy or linear or bouncy and that it’s not just a aesthetic.

I might make some posts soon on breaking down every type of ease and why they’re own beautiful , how to customize and why to use each one (or not use one at all)

/ramble