Animating on the Apple Watch
This is a repost of an article I wrote for the company I work at, Tumult.
Subtle animations are a great way to add fun and personality to an Apple Watch App. Whether its a custom loading indicator or part of a game, animations can bring your watch app to the next level. To add an animation you simply need to create a png image sequence and tell an Image or Group to start animating.
Hype can greatly simplify the process of creating image sequences by allowing you to build complex keyframe based animations and export them as image sequences.
When creating an image sequence for a watch app here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Apple has strict limits on how large your watch app can be (currently 20 MB), so keep your animations simple and optimize your images (more on this later)
- Store animations locally on the watch so they load quickly
- The 38mm and 42mm displays are different sizes...