Alight Motion is a mobile animation app. It is not After Effects — and it does not try to be. But if you know how to use it, it is a genuinely powerful tool for 2D and collage animation.
I work in a style I call cosmic collage animation — building characters and scenes from separate image pieces, photos and textures, then bringing them to life frame by frame. Alight Motion is where all of that happens.
How I build a collage character
For every character, I cut separate pieces — parts of a body, a face, hands, whatever needs to move independently. Each piece becomes its own layer in the project. Then I animate each layer separately.
When a character needs to speak, I draw all the mouth positions frame by frame. Every sound requires a different mouth shape. It is slow, careful work — but it is the only way to get natural-looking lip sync. I am one of the first animators who created a 10-minute collage cartoon with full dialogues in Alight Motion, and I know exactly how labour-intensive this is.
When a character does not need to speak, I use keyframe animation — setting position, scale and rotation at different points in time and letting the app fill in the movement between them.
The features I use most
Movement and depth
The basic position tool is something I use in every single project. But what I love even more is the scale function — making an object larger or smaller over time. This creates a sense of depth, as if something is flying toward you or disappearing into the distance. It turns a flat image into a three-dimensional space.
The feature that changes everything
The parent layer is one of the most powerful things in Alight Motion. You attach objects to a control layer — and when the parent moves, everything attached to it follows. This is essential for character animation. You can move an entire arm as one unit while each finger still has its own movement. You can attach a character to a background and animate them together. It opens up enormous possibilities.
In Precomp you can also add null layers — invisible control objects that other layers follow along their own path. It gives you even more control over complex movement.
Making images feel like they belong together
Blend modes control how layers interact with each other visually. For collage animation this is crucial — you are combining images from completely different sources, and blend modes are what make them feel like one unified scene rather than a pile of cut-outs.
Making characters breathe
The distortion and deformation tools let you warp and bend an object's shape over time. I use this to make characters literally breathe in the frame — the body expands slightly, then contracts. It adds organic life to what would otherwise be a still image. A character that breathes feels present in a way that nothing else achieves.
The magic of light
I create cosmic surrealism — and the glow effect is one of my favourite tools for that. Apply it to any object and it begins to emit light. With the right settings you get a neon glow, a soft halo, or something that looks genuinely otherworldly.
Once, inspired by the holograms in Star Wars, I made a short video where my own head appeared as a hologram projected into a large hall. The glow effect was what made it look real. That is the kind of magic Alight Motion can produce when you push it.
Space in motion
The star field effect generates moving stars — flying left, right, or straight toward the viewer. You can adjust the size, speed and density. For cosmic animation this is an instant atmosphere — a living background that makes every scene feel like it exists somewhere in the universe.
The app has a vast library of effects beyond what I have described here. Colour grading, masks, tracking, audio sync — it covers more than most people expect from a mobile tool.
Is it limiting compared to desktop software? Sometimes. But limitation forces creativity. Some of my best work came from finding unexpected ways around what the app could not do.
If you are curious what collage animation in Alight Motion actually looks like, you can watch my work on YouTube and Instagram.