What is Reddit's opinion of Principle?

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They're usually made with a prototyping software - for example Principle, Atomic, Pixate, or just an animation in After Effects.
Then it's basically just a matter of recording the screen, or in AE case rendering out the video, and then making a gif in Photoshop.

For animating UI I usually use Principle. I think its easier to use because it focus on prototyping UI. Here you can find some tutorials but for the most part it speaks for itself.

Thanks !

I used Sketch App for the screens' design and Principle for the UI interactions. It's similar to After Effects (timeline, keypoints..) but allows interaction and integrates very well with Sketch

I love how easy Flinto is to use and how well connected it is with Sketch. If you're looking to create more complex animations than just simple tap-through prototypes, then I would highly recommend Flinto. It allows you to create scrolling areas, reusable animations, it gives you control of typical mobile gestures like swiping, and it's pretty stable.

A direct competitor would be Principle, which is also pretty easy to use, and it gives you a ton of control over your animations, but if you're trying to create complex prototypes, it can get pretty messy. I would recommend trying both and deciding for yourself which one you like :)

Shameless plug... I made crash courses on both apps and put them on YouTube, if want to check them out:

• Flinto Crash Course
  
• Principle Crash Course

I personally enjoy using Principle for animations. I'm not the biggest fan of having animations being done in Sketch because it often does not perform well. Principle is nice because you can export your animated prototype as a Mac .app file for other teams to play with.

For prototyping, I really like Principle. The animation and layer aspects are definitely there, and it imports directly from Sketch. As a heavy Flash user in my teens, I feel completely at home with their animation timeline-- a feature that sets the app apart from its competitors. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't have 3D animation yet. You'll have to use After Effects for that.

As far as the JSON aspect goes, you would use the Sketch Data Populator plugin to fill your Sketch files with the data, and then import the artboards into Principle for the animation and interaction design. With this approach, you can replace Principle with Origami or any other prototyping software that imports directly from Sketch.

I think Adobe kinda missed the ship and came out with XD a little too late but, there's always room and time for improvements. Variety doesn't hurt and the more options of tools there are, the better.

I did enjoy the prototyping in XD and how I was able to export it out as a movie, it was super easy but it's nothing new. Principle has had that feature for a while.

Personally, I think it comes down to choosing the software that works best for you and the one that you're most efficient with.

> I have access to the Adobe CC suite through my employer so software from there is fine to suggest.

Unfortunately, there's not much in the CC suite that's particularly well suited to wireframing. If you don't plan on spending any extra money, your best bet is to use Illustrator for this purpose. The flexibility of vector graphics will be a boon to handling your different responsive layouts anyway.

If you are interested in purpose-built software, or just software that's a bit easier to deal with for this purpose, I'd suggest Sketch on the cheap end (if you're using OS X), followed by Omnigraffle (again, OS X), followed by Axure RP (I recently convinced our fearless leader to spring for the license cost) at the higher end of the price spectrum (cross-platform).

Another OS X specific software to check out might be http://principleformac.com/, which is new to the market. For a web based solution (I believe they have an AIR based desktop version as well), check out https://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/.

There are other options on Windows as well, such as Microsoft Visio, but it's not particularly cheap at this point (unless it's included in an Office 365 pro subscription, in which case, it's well worth it).

No engineering here, just smoke & mirrors! This is a set of mockups stitched together with Principle into a prototype that runs on my iPad. It uses simple keyframing for most animations and is configured to react to different touch targets. Not a single line of code was harmed in the making of this prototype ;)

If you're curious and have about 25hrs to burn, I livestreamed the whole process on YouTube. Here's one from a couple days ago: https://youtu.be/zsaoO3-Helk?t=152

I prefer After Effects for creating GIFs, because I’m familiar with it – but if you’re designing in Sketch, I’d recommend checking out Principle (mac app). You can import your art boards and pretty easily make awesome interactive prototypes and export GIFs / MOVs.

Depends on what you mean by design. I personally like PaintCode for a lot of drawable items. There is also Lottie for animations. There are also apps to make clickable prototypes from designs like Principal.

But as /u/Arnold_iOSDev points out what you are really looking for is a Developer. The tools I mentioned can help but they won't convert a design to app.