Manim: How code can dance.

By Jonathan Reed
Read 4 min

A quick look at learning Manim, using Python to build cleaner technical animations, and where the tool helps explain complex ideas.

  • animation
  • development
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The problem

I needed a simple promo animation of my company logo.

I can’t draw to save my life. I’ve tried, I’ve practiced, and I’m still kind of shit. So when it came time to animate the logo, I had two options: get better at art or make it move in code. Given that I don’t plan on taking up any new hobbies, Manim was the obvious choice.

I also wasn’t interested in image-to-video AI. I wanted something I could control and actually own, and AI video still falls apart the second you need precise motion.

Manim Over Matter: Trading Sketch Pads for Python Scripts

This was my first time giving Manim a proper go. I had played around with it before but never actually tried to finish something.

First I cleaned up the SVG in Inkscape, simplified it, and made it grayscale.

Then I brought it into the IDE and started animating.

That’s where I got stuck.

The biggest problem was making the outline smooth. First I thought the SVG was bad. Then, when that didn’t fix it, I moved on to debugging the code.

I lost an embarrassing amount of time to that one problem.

It’s coming together. Kind of, but it is

After hours of banging my head against a brick wall, it was time to reset. Go back to square one with the SVG and redo it all.

This turned out to be what I needed. I still don’t know what caused the original problems. I don’t know what I did to cause the spikes, but after starting over, they are gone. Just like that, hours of effort are fixed. All I had to do was rewrite the entire file, but that only took about ten minutes.

Now that I had a functioning animation of the logo, it was time to make it look good. The glow and frosted glass effects were the fun part. I wanted the logo to look like it was sitting on a frosted glass card and glowing like a neon sign.

Making the glow effect and frosted card effect was much more intuitive, especially compared to fixing the animation. I knocked out both in under an hour. Getting the glow to interact with the card took a bit, but it sells the effect much better.

Creation: The fun part

Having finally gotten the animation to a point of good enough, it was time for editing and Foley. I know audio well and video barely at all, so I tackled the editing first. I decided to give CapCut a try since they have a free browser version.

This was surprisingly good. CapCut felt natural and not too obtuse or in the way. While I noticed it lacks some tools I would have liked, you can probably get around that with enough skill.

With the video blocked out, it was time for audio, my favorite part. I’ve been into music production since I was young, so I was already comfortable in Ableton Live. For the sound effects, I went for a stylized vintage CRT TV turning on and then off.

Having finished the sound effects from CapCut and the audio work in Ableton, it was time to combine everything.

Learnings: What’s been learned

  1. Manim is powerful but not as straightforward as I expected, and SVGs are annoying.
  2. The rise of CapCut makes sense after trying it. I honestly think a lot of other software could learn from the simple design language and UX.
  3. Using Python for motion and timing instead of logic changed how I think about it. It felt less like programming a tool and more like composing something.

Check out the finished video with audio at: Watch the Manim animation on Facebook

See It In Action

Thanks for reading!

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