Get started in web animation with this crash course

Web motion designer Val Head will be hosting a session at Generate Sydney on motion in design systems, in which she'll be demonstrating all the things you need to make web animation work for you and your team: designing animation that fits your brand, making animation part of your design process, and documenting your animation decisions in your style guide for future use.

Just to whet your appetite for this feast of web animation knowledge, here's something we prepared earlier. It's Val's session from last year's Generate New York conference: a crash course in becoming a web animation pro.

Get started in web animation - Val Head

In this session from Generate NYC 2015, Val Head explains the basics of web animation

As a web designer or developer, you might not think that you need to know about animation, but as the animation capabilities of CSS and JavaScript increase, animation is swiftly becoming essential part of UI design. It helps to at least understand the principles of animation, and to think like a motion designer when adding animations and transitions to web work.

Generate Sydney - Val Head

Get to Generate Sydney on 5 September to see Val's session on motion in design systems

So to get you started, in this session Val breaks down the basics of animation for you, explaining key principles such as timing, offsets, arcs and more, as they apply to web UI work, and she also demonstrates how to pull off common CSS3 animation tricks.

It's the perfect introduction to one of the most exciting areas of web design and development; for the full experience you can see Val's notes here, and also check out this article in which she provides a crash course in motion design for the web.

If you want to catch Val at Generate Sydney – as well as other big web design names including Erika Hall, Jonathan Snook and John Allsopp – now's the time to buy your ticket. If you book now for an earlybird conference pass you can save 100AUD!

Can't make it to Sydney? Sarah Drasner will be demonstrating how to create intricate SVG animations at Generate San Francisco; she and other web pros reveal their tips for debugging web animation here.

Generate Sydney

Generate is now worldwide! Don't miss out on an event near you!

Generate Sydney takes place on 5 September; find out more here.

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Jim McCauley

Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.