I’ve been looking around for a way to do some simple motion graphics. I had a vision of mind of a simple animation of the bike rides that the charity I work with does during the summer. You can see the result at the bottom. I struggled with a bunch of other products. Adobe After Effects is the clear professional answer, but it has a bunch of flaws, the most relevant of which is that it’s a subscription-based piece of software, which I’m just fundamentally not a fan of. It’s also really expensive. And complicated. I wanted something simple; I didn’t mind paying for it, but not a subscription.

Luckily, I found exactly what I wanted, finally. It’s called Processing, and it’s basically a sandbox for doing motion graphics with programming. It’s not for everyone; it’s all done using scripting, there is no UI and no ability to drag stuff around. But for somebody like me who knew exactly what he wanted and knows how to code, it was a godsend: easy to install, easy to use, filled with documentation and examples. I immediately took to it, and the example below only took me about 2 hours to put together, including installing and learning how to use the thing. I love all the samples available in the community. It’s not going to be the perfect tool forever; for things that need hand animation or elaborate tweening, for example, it’s not the best fit. For that I will probably turn to Wick Editor; but Wick has a lot of limitations and issues; it’s so simple that it’s probably too simple.

http://www.processing.org