Creating AnimatedVectorDrawables with Shape Shifter
Would you like to add custom AnimatedVectorDrawable animations to your Android app? Are you trying to this work without the help of a designer or Adobe tools? If so, check out Shape Shifter by Alex Lockwood.
In the attached video, I walk you through creating an AnimatedVectorDrawable using only Shape Shifter. I got the idea for this post after talking to some of Udacity's mobile devs about the use of Lottie animations in the app and thought: I can do that.
It's several years old now but IMHO Alex's Introduction to Icon Animation Techniques is required reading for both those who simply want to learn what AnimatedVectorDrawable is and those who want to design complex animations with them.
Shape Shifter has some rough edges here and there but its ease in getting started more than made up for any roadbumps I hit. Unlike Lottie, Shape Shifter's file format was easy to understand without documentation. After a brief perusal, I was able to reliably generate Shape Shifter files from other design tools.
Stay tuned for Part II where I'll be using other open source tools to offload some of the finicky design work.
Alex was recently interviewed on an episode of Android Dialogs. Check it out for the history behind the tool and its beginnings in Android Icon Animator.