Lottie Animation: What It Is, How It Works, and When to Use It

Designers want rich, responsive motion on web and mobile without the file-size penalty of video or the pixelation of GIFs. That's exactly what Lottie animation delivers. 

We've created Lottie animations for SaaS clients across a range of products, and in this guide, we'll share what we've learned from real-world projects.

Key takeaways

• Lottie is a JSON-based animation format that renders as vectors, so it stays sharp and small no matter the screen size.
• It's built in After Effects, exported with the Bodymovin plugin, and dropped into a codebase as a lightweight file, no video, no heavy assets.
• It's the right tool for micro-interactions, onboarding flows, and marketing motion. It's the wrong tool for anything that needs to respond to complex, branching user input, that's Rive's job.
• The same JSON file can power web and mobile simultaneously, which is part of why it's become the default for SaaS product motion.

What is a lottie animation?

A Lottie animation is a lightweight, JSON-based animation format that renders as vectors, staying sharp at any size while using a fraction of the file size of a GIF or video.

It's exported from After Effects using the Bodymovin plugin, and shared or hosted through LottieFiles.

Why Lottie files are so lightweight

A GIF or video stores every frame as pixel data, essentially a sequence of images played back quickly. 

Lottie takes a completely different approach: it stores the animation as a set of vector instructions in JSON, similar to how an SVG describes shapes mathematically instead of storing pixels. 

That's the real reason the file size difference is so dramatic, you're not compressing image data more efficiently, you're describing the animation as instructions rather than as a recording. 

It's also why a Lottie file stays crisp no matter what screen it plays on, there's no resolution to run out of, the way there is with a GIF or video that gets stretched past its native size.

Read More: Lottie vs Rive Animation: Which Tool Best Fits Your UI/UX Workflow?

Lottie vs GIF vs video

How does Lottie animation work?

The pipeline runs from After Effects, through the Bodymovin export, to a JSON file, which then renders at runtime on the web or in an app. 

A developer drops that JSON straight into the codebase, no video files, no heavy image assets.

Walking through why each step matters: the animation is still built in After Effects because that's where motion designers already work, and Lottie doesn't ask anyone to change their design tool. 

Bodymovin's job is to translate AE's layers, shapes, and keyframes into a JSON structure a rendering library can understand. 

That JSON then gets interpreted at runtime by a small player library on whatever device is displaying it, which is why the same file can play identically on a website and inside a native app, the rendering logic lives in the player, not in the file itself.

In our workflow, we animate in After Effects, export via Bodymovin, and hand developers a JSON file that goes directly into the build.

Lottie animation examples

A few of the most common places Lottie shows up, and why it fits each one:

Loading spinners and micro-interactions

A button press, a checkmark confirming an action, small moments that would look clunky as a static state change. 

These are usually a few kilobytes, small enough that load time is never a concern, which matters because a loading indicator that itself takes time to load defeats its own purpose.

Onboarding flows

App walkthroughs use Lottie to keep every screen transition and illustration lightweight, even across a multi-step flow. 

Because file size stays low across many animations, an entire onboarding sequence can ship without meaningfully affecting app size or load time, something a series of short videos never manages.

Website hero animations

A hero section animation that loads instantly and scales cleanly across every screen size, without the load time of a hero video. 

This is often the highest-visibility motion on a marketing site, so the performance cost of getting it wrong is high, a slow-loading hero animation actively hurts the first impression it's meant to create.

Icon animations

Hover states, toggles, and menu icons that shift shape or fill on interaction feel more polished with a Lottie file than a CSS transition alone can manage, particularly for anything involving shape morphing rather than simple property changes like color or opacity.

Product feature highlights

Short, looping animations that demonstrate a feature on a marketing or pricing page, doing the job a screenshot or static illustration can't: showing how something actually behaves rather than just what it looks like.

Every example above came from real client work, see our OpenMoney project and Sharpish case study for the full builds.

Simply put, Lottie works best anywhere you need real motion to load instantly and stay sharp, without the weight of video. 

While it's often used to animate micro-interactions such as button states, loading indicators, or success animations it's not the technology that defines the interaction itself. 

For experiences that need to respond dynamically to user input, multiple states, or complex logic, tools like Rive are generally a better fit.

When should you use Lottie animation?

In general, Lottie is a strong fit for timeline-based UI animation, where animations that play from start to finish without needing to constantly respond to user behaviour. 

Think onboarding illustrations, loading animations, feature highlights, empty states, success messages, or a button animating after it's been clicked. The animation is predefined, lightweight, and consistent every time it plays.

While Lottie covers many common UI animation needs, it isn't the only tool used for product interfaces. 

When animations need to respond dynamically to user input rather than simply play from start to finish, tools like Rive are often a better fit. 

The comparison below highlights where each one excels.

The distinction matters because they solve different problems. Lottie plays a predetermined animation efficiently, making it ideal for lightweight UI motion across web and mobile. 

Rive, on the other hand, is built for animations that branch and react in real time based on user input and application state.

A simple rule of thumb: if your animation follows a timeline, Lottie is probably the right choice. If it needs to make decisions based on what the user is doing, Rive is likely the better fit.

Not sure which approach suits your product? We'd be happy to point you in the right direction.

Lottie animation for web vs mobile

On the web

Lottie renders through lottie-web or the newer dotLottie player, and both work consistently across modern browsers.

On mobile

Native libraries exist for each platform, lottie-react-native, lottie-ios, and lottie-android, so the same JSON file can power animation across a cross-platform app with minimal extra work. 

This is one of the more underrated advantages of the format: a single export from After Effects can cover web, iOS, and Android without a designer or developer touching platform-specific animation code for each one.

Performance comes down to keeping the JSON lean and avoiding After Effects features that don't have a Lottie equivalent, since those tend to break or get dropped on export, things like certain blend modes, some text effects, and 3D layers commonly cause issues. 

Most of our Lottie work ships to the web, SaaS dashboards, marketing sites, product pages, and we optimize the JSON to keep files lean before handoff.

How to get custom Lottie animation for your brand

In-house

If you already have After Effects and Bodymovin set up, and someone with motion design skills on the team, this is the cheapest path. 

The tradeoff is time and a learning curve if motion isn't already part of your workflow, and getting export settings right to avoid the compatibility issues mentioned above takes some trial and error the first few times.

LottieFiles marketplace

Pre-built animations are fast and cheap, but generic, they weren't made for your product or brand, and it shows, especially anywhere the animation needs to reflect specific brand colors, characters, or a distinct visual style.

Work with a specialist

For something custom and on-brand, working with a studio gets you the full process, concept through to a production-ready JSON file your developers can drop straight in, without your team needing to build in-house motion design expertise just for a handful of animations.

Check out what we do with Lottie animation here.

Ready to explore Lottie animation?

Whether you're designing a new product or refining an existing experience, custom Lottie animations can add polish without compromising performance.

Motion The Agency creates production-ready Lottie animations that are designed for real products and easy for developers to implement. 

We'll even create a free sample so you can experience our approach before committing.

Book a quick call to get your free sample today so you can see what you’re getting before committing to a full service.

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