Jitter Didn't Die, People Just Got Bored

Hello hello.

The second Figma Motion launched, my feed turned into a funeral. "Jitter is dead." "RIP Adobe After Effects, we hardly knew anyway." Every designer had a hot take, and the hot take was always the same: one tool wins, the others can go home.

I get the instinct. Figma Motion is genuinely good, and "no more context switching" is a hell of a pitch. But announcing a tool's death because a shinier one showed up is the same energy as saying nobody needs a bike anymore because cars exist. Different job, different trip.

So let's actually break this down instead of screaming into the void.

Jitter: the fast food of motion design

What it's good at:

• The interface is stupidly simple. You open it, you get it, no onboarding video required.

• Premade effects do 80% of the work for you. Tweak a few sliders and you're done.

• Fewer tools means fewer decisions, which means you're not five tabs deep in a settings panel when you just wanted a fade-in.

• Adjusting stuff after the fact — duration, anchor points, position — doesn't feel like defusing a bomb. You can nudge things without breaking the whole animation.

What it's not good at:

• No vector animation. If your idea involves anything more custom than moving shapes around, Jitter shrugs at you.

• The UI is kind of ugly to work in. I'm sorry someone had to say it.

• Very limited ceiling. Great for quick stuff, but the second you want something fancy, it starts looking cheap. Good enough is the slogan here.

Figma Motion: more power, more homework

What it's good at:

• You never leave Figma. Your components, your variables, your whole design system, right there. No exporting, no re-importing, no "wait which version did I animate."

• Shaders, effects, way more granular control. If you want to get weird with it, you can.

• The ceiling is genuinely high. What you can build here just isn't in the same category as Jitter.

What it's not good at:

• All that power comes with a learning curve. This is not a five-minute tool.

• More possibilities also means more ways to get lost. It takes longer to get to "done" than it does in Jitter, even for stuff that doesn't need the extra horsepower.

Figma agent vs Jitter agent

Let's run a small experiment instead of just arguing about it. Same frame, the simplest illustration I could make in Figma, and both tools get the exact same prompt.

Since the design was made in Figma, my money was on Figma's agent before I even started. It has context on components, it knows how the frames and vectors are actually built. Jitter only sees the exported design, not the one that was made there. Home field advantage, or so I thought.

The prompt:

"Create a blooming effect for this plant. Start with the stem, and move on to the leaves growing from small to their current size. Use gentle, bouncy animations."

Figma:

Jitter:

To my surprise, Jitter did the better job. The animation is smoother, and the stem doesn't overlap the pot. You can see it for yourself.

Okay, round two. Let's use a design where the plant isn't just a bunch of rectangles.

Figma:

Jitter:

And here, Figma pulls ahead. It took me a couple of iterations to get the stripes appearing after the leaves, but Jitter just refused to listen, apparently it knows better than me how plants work.

So here's where I landed: if the design is simple, try both, Jitter might genuinely surprise you. But the second you're working with vectors or anything more complex, Figma's agent is your friend.

What I actually use each one for

Jitter → Feature Friday posts on LinkedIn.

Nobody is pausing on a LinkedIn scroll to admire your easing curves. People give your post about one second before their thumb keeps moving. In a feed built for speed, spending three hours perfecting an animation nobody will properly look at is just self-inflicted pain. Jitter gets you something clean and quick, and that's exactly the point.

Figma Motion → logo animations, shader experiments, the "we only do this once" stuff.

Anything that's going to represent the brand, live somewhere permanent, or just deserves better than "good enough" gets the Figma Motion treatment. This is where the extra time is worth it, because the output actually needs to hold up.

Adobe After Effects → still the boss for the heavy stuff and meant to be used by professional motion designers.
I'll be honest, I opened the tool once, got overstimulated and closed it. But product videos, liquidy transitions, anything genuinely complex — Figma Motion isn't there yet, especially with fluid-style animation. So if that's what you're going for, worth taking a second to learn it.

So, what do you actually use?

• Need something quick, simple, and gone from people's memory in a second? Jitter.

• Need to work with vectors, shaders, or want more control over the outcome? Figma Motion.

• Already know your way around After Effects and the animation is important enough that the time investment pays for itself? After Effects. If you don't already know the tool, this is not the day to learn it — the learning curve is brutal and not every project needs to be the hill you die on.

None of these tools killed each other. They're just better at different jobs. Figma Motion didn't kill Jitter, it just took away the projects Jitter was never the right choice for in the first place. The rest of us are still out here reaching for whichever tool matches how much the animation actually matters, and shockingly, that's not always the fanciest one.