Motion styles
Kinetic Scenes knows about two dozen motion-design styles by name. Ask AI assist to "make it synthwave" or "in a line-art style", or pick a style in the Style library, and you get a scene that someone would recognise as that style from any single frame: its colours, its type, its texture and the way things move.
Each style is a full style in the Studio: a palette, a pair of fonts, a motion personality (which presets carry the headline, the supporting text and the shapes, how they ease, how fast), a sound palette and a sample. On top of that, each motion style carries a short guide for AI assist: what makes the style recognisable, and how to build it from the Studio's layers and presets.
Where you use them
- Style library › New scene in this style: a short ready-made scene in the style, with its signature effect, to open and make your own. Every one passes Check scene.
- Style library › Apply to this scene: restyles colours and fonts, motion and sounds of the scene you have.
- AI assist › Settings › Style: every request is built in that style, and its guide goes with it.
- Just ask: name a style in your request ("a synthwave title for…") and AI assist follows that style's guide, even with no style selected.
The styles
The eight original looks (Night, Clean, Kinetic, Pastel, Neon, Editorial, Playful, Luxe) are still there. The motion styles:
| Style | In short | What makes it recognisable |
|---|---|---|
| Flat vector | Explainer-video flat: solid shapes, no shadows, a friendly rounded font and bouncy, overlapping moves. | Solid fills, no gradients or shadows; simple geometric icons and people; 3-4 saturated colours on a light, warm background; everything overshoots slightly and settles. |
| Line art | Single-weight lines drawing themselves on a clean ground, with a little hand-drawn boil. | Everything is an outline in one stroke weight, black (or one ink) on off-white; lines draw on from start to end; a single accent colour at most; a slight hand-drawn wobble. |
| Isometric | Tidy 30° worlds: blocks and platforms, soft pastel faces, things rising into place. | Objects on a 30° grid with three shaded faces (light top, mid left, dark right); no perspective; small worlds on platforms; pieces drop or slide in along the grid axes. |
| Toy 3D | Soft, glossy 3D objects like toys or clay: rounded shapes, bright colours, squash and bounce. | Rounded, glossy or matte "clay" objects with soft shadows and rim light; bright toy colours on a warm gradient; objects bounce, squash and land with weight. |
| Bauhaus | Primary colours, circles, squares and triangles on a strict grid; bold sans type and mechanical moves. | Red, blue, yellow and black on cream; perfect circles, squares, half-circles and bars arranged on a strict grid; heavy sans capitals; moves are straight, mechanical and precise. |
| Swiss grid | International typographic style: a strict grid, huge tight sans type, asymmetry and kinetic words. | A visible or implied column grid; very large, tightly tracked sans headlines, often flush left and cropped by the frame; lots of white; one red accent; words move as the design (kinetic type). |
| Synthwave | Neon on night purple: a glowing grid horizon, a striped sun, chrome type and scanlines. | Dusk gradient (deep purple to hot pink), a perspective grid floor in magenta or cyan running to the horizon, a sun with horizontal stripes, neon glow on type, chrome or outlined lettering, VHS scanlines. |
| Aurora glass | Frosted glass cards floating over soft, drifting aurora colours; calm and premium. | Large blurred colour fields (aurora blobs) drifting slowly behind translucent, frosted cards with a thin light border; white type; slow, soft blurs and floats; never busy. |
| Collage | Cut-paper collage: torn photos, tape, halftone print and hand-placed type that jumps in frame by frame. | Photos cut out with rough edges and slight rotations, paper texture, tape strips, halftone dots and mismatched type; pieces land in place on a few frames (stepped), not smoothly. |
| HUD and terminal | Sci-fi interface: thin cyan lines, brackets, readouts that count and type, scanning lines. | Thin cyan or amber lines on near-black; corner brackets, crosshairs, tick rulers, circular gauges; monospace readouts that type and count; scanning bars; data appears in bursts. |
| Dark tech keynote | Product-launch keynote: black stage, one huge line at a time, a hero product shot and slow, confident light. | Pure black, one short statement at a time, very large and centred; one hero image or product lit from the side; a gradient on the key word; long holds and slow crossfades; lots of empty space. |
| Data story | Charts that tell one point: numbers that count, bars that grow, one highlighted series and plain labels. | One clear claim per chart; bars or lines growing from the baseline, numbers counting up, one series in the accent and the rest grey; plain direct labels instead of legends; a takeaway headline. |
| Living UI | A product screen that works by itself: a cursor clicks, cards update, numbers tick, a notification lands. | A real-looking interface (cards, lists, buttons) in a browser or phone frame; a cursor moves and clicks; values update in place; a notification slides in; camera pushes to the detail that matters. |
| Vertical social | Talking-head reels: huge words one to three at a time, karaoke highlight, emoji pops and quick punch-ins. | 9:16 footage of a person; captions of one to three words in heavy capitals with a dark outline, the spoken word highlighted in yellow; emoji and stickers pop on key words; fast punch-ins (digital zoom) on jokes; cuts every 1-2 s. |
| Risograph | Two-ink print: grainy halftone, pink and blue slightly out of register, chunky type on off-white paper. | Two or three flat inks (fluorescent pink, blue, yellow) on off-white paper, visible halftone dots and grain, plates printed slightly out of register, chunky type; moves feel stepped, like flipping prints. |
| VHS and CRT | An old tape: scanlines, colour bleed, a rolling tracking band, timestamp text and jumpy cuts. | Scanlines, red/blue colour bleed at the edges, soft vignette, a tracking band rolling through, jittering frame; on-screen camcorder text (PLAY, REC, a date stamp) in a pixel font; cuts that glitch. |
| Pixel art | Retro game screens: chunky pixels, a pixel font, stepped moves and bleeps. | Everything on a coarse pixel grid; limited palette; a blocky pixel font; things move in whole steps (no smooth easing); sprites blink and bounce; 8-bit sounds. |
| Watercolour and ink | Hand-painted: soft washes and ink lines brushed onto textured paper, slow and quiet. | Soft, uneven colour washes with darker edges, ink outlines, visible paper texture; handwritten titles; things paint on in strokes rather than sliding; long, quiet pacing. |
| Hand-drawn cel | Traditional 2D animation: bold outlines that boil, flat colours, squash and stretch, on twos. | Thick black outlines that wobble slightly on every drawing (line boil), flat fills, squash-and-stretch on impacts, animation "on twos" (12 drawings a second) rather than perfectly smooth. |
| Liquid and morph | Fluid shapes that pour and merge, gradients that flow, everything morphing instead of cutting. | Organic blobs that wobble and merge, flowing gradients, one shape morphing into the next scene instead of a cut; soft blur on type; slow, continuous motion. |
Effects made for these styles
Some styles need looks that didn't exist before. They are ordinary presets, so you can use them in any scene:
| Preset | What it does |
|---|---|
Line boil (boil) | Hand-drawn cel animation: outlines wobble slightly on every drawing, a few times a second. |
Liquid blob (liquid) | A shape flows from one organic blob into the next, as if poured. |
Pixelate (pixelate) | Pixel art: the layer resolves out of big square pixels, or breaks up into them. |
Brush strokes (brush) | Watercolour and ink: the layer paints on in a few strokes with ragged ends. |
Risograph (halftone) | Halftone dots and a second ink printed slightly out of register. |
VHS / CRT (scanlines) | Scanlines, colour bleed, a vignette, a jittering frame and a rolling tracking band. |
Outline (text-outline) | The fill drains out of the letters, leaving their outline. |
3D offset (text-3d) | Solid layers stack under the letters, as if extruded. |
Gradient letters (text-gradient) | A gradient fills the letters and travels through them. |
Skew (text-skew) | The letters lean into the motion. |
All of them are exact in time (the same moment always looks the same), so they scrub, preview and export frame by frame.
How AI assist plans a scene
Every scene AI assist makes follows the same shape, the way motion designers build a film:
- A hook in the first half-second. Something visibly happens straight away; it never opens on an empty frame.
- One hero moment about two-thirds of the way in: the single most striking thing, with the strongest move and the biggest sound hit. Nothing else competes with it.
- A composed end frame, designed as a still and held for about a second with only gentle movement.
It decides those key frames first as layouts that already look good, then adds the motion between them. Sound hits sit on the same moments as the picture. Its rules also cover composition (one focal point, a grid, real empty space), cutting between parts on the beat, and restraint (one idea per frame, two or three kinds of entrance, effects as accents).
Look and fix, judged like a jury
When Look and fix is on, AI assist renders frames from across the whole scene (enough to judge how it moves, not one still) and scores them from 1 to 5 on seven points:
| Point | The question |
|---|---|
| Style | Does every frame look like the style asked for? |
| Idea | Is there one clear idea and a hero moment that lands? |
| Motion | Timing, easing and rhythm; a hook at the start and a held end frame. |
| Design | Hierarchy, composition, type and colour. |
| Finish | Alignment and detail; nothing rough or left as a placeholder. |
| Sound | Hits on the moves they belong to. |
| Technical | Nothing cut off, everything readable, words clear of the covered areas. |
It fixes the weakest points first, and every fix names its moment and its numbers ("at 4.2 s the headline holds 0.4 s: hold it 1.2 s"). What Check scene and the layout measurements found always comes first: the review never leaves a measured problem because a frame looks fine to it. The scores appear with the review's note.
Benchmarked against real films
AI assist was given the kinds of brief that people publish motion films for (an app launch, a logo reveal, a poster breaking out of its frame, a history in under thirty seconds, a wordless explainer), each in a matching style, and its results were compared with published films of that kind. The films were only a reference; nothing was copied. What it found is in the benchmark results below.
Benchmark results
Jury scores (1-5) on the first run, before the jury's own fixes:
| Brief | Style | Style | Idea | Motion | Design | Finish | Sound | Technical |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| App launch | Dark tech keynote | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| Logo reveal | Liquid and morph | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Poster breaking out | Collage | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| A history in 20 seconds | Swiss grid | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
| Wordless explainer | Flat vector | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
The style landed every time; finish, motion and technical were the gaps, mostly from four repeated mistakes: supporting text too small, two clips fighting on one layer, stacked lines colliding, and the same bouncy entrance on everything. Each became a rule with concrete numbers in what AI assist follows ("mistakes to avoid"), and the next run is compared against these scores.
The style descriptions are written in our own words from published motion-design style references, for what the Studio can build.