Lottie Animations

Overview

Lottie is a library for rendering After Effects animations in real-time on web, iOS, Android, and React Native. Created by Airbnb, it allows designers to ship animations as easily as shipping static assets. Animations are exported from After Effects as JSON files using the Bodymovin plugin, then rendered natively with minimal performance overhead.

When to use Lottie:

• Designer-created animations that need pixel-perfect fidelity
• Complex animated icons and micro-interactions
• Loading animations and progress indicators
• Onboarding sequences and tutorial animations
• Marketing animations and promotional content
• Alternative to GIF/video with smaller file sizes and scalability

Key advantages:

• Vector-based (scalable without quality loss)
• Significantly smaller file sizes than GIF or video
• Editable at runtime (colors, speed, segments)
• Full designer control via After Effects
• Cross-platform rendering consistency
• Interactive controls (play, pause, seek, loop)

Core Concepts

Lottie Format Types

1. JSON Lottie (.json)

• Original Lottie format
• Exported from After Effects via Bodymovin plugin
• Human-readable JSON structure
• Larger file sizes (not compressed)
• Widely supported across all platforms

2. dotLottie (.lottie)

• Modern compressed format
• ZIP archive containing JSON + assets
• Supports multiple animations and themes in one file
• Smaller file sizes (up to 90% reduction)
• Recommended for production use

Library Options

lottie-web (original library):

import lottie from 'lottie-web';

lottie.loadAnimation({
  container: document.getElementById('lottie-container'),
  renderer: 'svg', // or 'canvas', 'html'
  loop: true,
  autoplay: true,
  path: 'animation.json' // or animationData: jsonData
});

@lottiefiles/dotlottie-web (modern, recommended):

import { DotLottie } from '@lottiefiles/dotlottie-web';