A Rival for After Effects? We Talk to Zenzuke About Cavalry

The motion graphics director and animator shares his thoughts on Cavalry now that the open beta version is available

Adobe After Effects has established itself as the leading software for creating motion graphics, and with good reason: its variety of tools, stability, and ease of use have made it an essential program. But this robustness can make the app feel too rigid, or drift away from more organic or dynamic workflows. After Effects has almost everything you want, but it's not perfect.

To fill this gap, a few months ago, a new app emerged: Cavalry. Its marketing strategy has rested mainly on convincing us that it will be capable of doing some of the same tasks that After Effects does–working with a large number of objects, simplifying data graphics or creatively warping texts, for example–in a fraction of the time. Now, its creators have just announced that an open beta version is now available.

But we wanted to know first hand about the advantages and disadvantages of using this program created by Scene Group. So we turned to motion graphics director and animator Carlos "Zenzuke" Albarrán (@zenzuke), an everyday user of Adobe After Effects and one of the lucky ones who have been able to test the closed beta of Cavalry.

In a market largely dominated by Adobe After Effects, what do you think Cavalry brings to the table?

After Effects is a great program, but it's been lacking a bit of competition to get its engines started and innovate again, especially in terms of new ways to handle many elements at once or the overall speed of the application. Cavalry strikes in After Effects blind spots: automating actions with external data or procedural 2D generation, and it does so with more modern animation tools, focused 100 percent on motion graphics.

What are the tools that you liked the most, and why?

The duplicator. I have dreamed of having such a tool in After Effects thousands of times. Until now, we had to resort to Cinema 4D for scenes with hundreds of objects that need to be coordinated. In Cavalry, the duplicator and the procedural nature of everything open up incredible possibilities.

The fact that you can export in vector to SVG formats means that it also has many possibilities for designers who want to play around with generative design but don't want to learn to program or use more complex tools.

What aspects of the software have you found can be improved or what features have you missed?

Truth be told, right now, Cavalry is not a software you can rely on exclusively, like you can do with After Effects. It is rather an extra tool that allows you to make the type of animations that would be much more laborious or difficult with other tools.

Was the transition to this new software intuitive or does it have a steep learning curve?

We have been testing it in the studio for a year now, since it was very barebones. That means we have been exposed to it gradually. Being used to both After Effects and Cinema 4D–and other node-based programs–it has been really easy for us to do the switch.

What kind of projects could Cavalry be useful for?

Any design or animation project that requires procedural or data-driven generation.

Do you think it can be a real competitor against apps like After Effects?

Right now, you have to consider it more as a complement rather than as a real competitor, but if it continues to evolve at the same speed, with the advantage of a modern and completely new architecture, it could eventually replace After Effects for some use cases. We are far from that point, though.

Throughout your career as a motion graphic designer and creative, have you encountered other programs that tried to compete against After Effects? Do you think the Cavalry case is different?

The truth is that I started my career using Combustion, which emerged as a direct competitor to After Effects by Discreet. Combustion development stopped in 2008 after two or three versions; I don't know if this case will be different, but that period in which After Effects had a real competitor made it evolve much faster in the areas that Combustion was better at. So, whatever happens, the development of Cavalry will be good for us all, even if we never use the app.

Do you think it is worth mastering different 2D graphics and animation tools?

On any given day in the studio, I have Illustrator, Photoshop, Affinity Designer, Animate, Cavalry, Cinema 4D and After Effects open, so… yes.

You can download the open beta of Cavalry on its website.

If you liked this interview, remember that you can learn After Effects from scratch with Zenzuke and master the best motion graphics and post-production software on the market. Discover his six online courses in Domestika Basics: Introduction to After Effects.

You may also like:

- Vectorial Animation Frame by Frame Style with After Effects, a course by Pablo Cuello
- Express Animation for Social Media with After Effects, a course by Yimbo Escárrega
- Animation Techniques with 3D Effects in After Effects, a course by Moncho Massé