Cavalry app 101: A quickstart guide for new motion designers

If you’ve ever wished your static designs could just move, you’re going to love Cavalry! It’s a motion design app that feels like it was made for creatives. You’ll love how quickly you can bring your artwork to life. Whether it’s a logo, a looping social post, or a weird little character you doodled. 

In this quickstart guide, we’ll walk through the basics of the Cavalry app. From installing it to making your very first animation. Whether you’re a digital artist, graphic designer, or just curious, you’ll learn why this app has become many designers’ go to for animating everything from logos to weird late night doodles. Let’s dive in and get something moving.

What is Cavalry?

If you are a newbie in motion design, Cavalry might just be your favorite new tool. An app for creative users, just like you and me! So if you work in Illustrator, Photoshop, or Figma, you should feel right at home with it.

A motion design tool built for artists

Cavalry helps you bring it to life with movement, behaviours, and a whole lot of creative control. Features include:

• Easy versioning: Quickly duplicate and iterate on your work without disrupting the original. Perfect for experimenting.
• Design in real-time: Lightning fast viewport rendering means that you can see changes instantly as you animate. No delays, no guesswork.
• Creative playground: Mix procedural workflows with traditional techniques to iterate quickly and evolve concepts. It’s a space built for play, exploration, and happy accidents.
• End-to-end workflow: Go from artwork to animation without missing a beat. Build your vector designs and bring them to life, all in one place.

Native features of the Cavalry app

The Cavalry app includes all the fundamental features you need for professional motion design, fully integrated within the app itself, so you can reduce reliance on external plug-ins and streamline your creative workflow. These include:

• Rig control
• Lottie export (Pro version only)
• Forge dynamics (Pro version only)
• Text animation
• Magic easing
• Duplicator
• Cameras and 3D transforms

Getting set up

Step 1: Make an account

Head to cavalry.scenegroup.co and click on the download button. Before you can download the app, you’ll be prompted to make an account. Fill in your details and the download button will become available.

Step 2: Download Cavalry

Choose which version you would like to use. There’s a free version (which is surprisingly powerful), and a Pro version if you need more advanced export options and features. 

Step 3: Install and launch

Just run the installer like you would with any other app. Once it’s installed, open it up and you’ll land in the main workspace. If it’s your first time, you’ll be prompted to sign in to gain access to the app. 

Cavalry interface breakdown

Scene view (aka your canvas)

This is where the magic happens. It’s your main workspace, where shapes, text, and graphics live and move around. You’ll be zooming, dragging, and animating in here most of the time.

Timeline

Along the bottom, you’ve got your timeline. This is where your animation lives over time. You’ll see keyframes, layers, and the order of events here. It’s super helpful for scrubbing through and seeing how everything flows.

Scene window

Here’s where you can see the stacking order of your elements, kind of like in Photoshop. This is for organising your scene, color coding items, and making sure things are arranged just right.

Attribute editor

When you double click on an object in the Scene window, its properties pop up here. Things like position, scale, rotation, and colour. You’ll use this panel constantly to tweak how things look and behave.

Assets

This is kind of like your compositions in After Effects. You can drag assets into your scene whenever you need them, which makes it super easy to stay organised and build complex animations without starting from scratch every time.

Step-by-step: Create generative, abstract artwork

Step 1: Create the base ellipse

Create a new circle shape by using the Ellipse Tool, you can hold down the Shift key while dragging to keep it perfectly round. In the Shape tab uncheck the Bezier option and set the Divisions to 10.

In the Fill tab, set the color to white.

In the Stroke tab, enable it and then set the color to black.

Step 2: Stagger the radius

Right-click on the Radius property and then choose Add Behavior > Stagger.

Double click the Stagger in the Scene Window, and then In the Stagger settings do the following:

• Set Minimum to 100
• Set Maximum to 350

Open the Stagger Graph and click Flip Horizontal.

Step 3: Duplicate the shape

Make sure the ellipse is selected in the Scene Window, then click Create a Duplicator button located at the top.

In the Duplicator settings:

• Set Distribution to Point
• Set Count to 30

Step 4: Add deformation with an Oscillator

Double click the Ellipse Shape in the Scene Window to load the shape properties in the Attribute Editor. Add a Deformer > Oscillator. 

Double click the Oscillator in the Scene Window to load the Oscillator properties in the Attribute Editor. Then choose the following:

• Enable Use Normals
• Set Minimum to -50
• Set Maximum to 50
• Set Stagger to 5

Step 5: Play animation

Now all you have to do is click on the Play button on the timeline to see the animation rotate! Feel free to experiment with the settings in the Attribute Editor to adjust the look of your pattern.

Tips for graphic designers new to motion

If you’re coming from a still-image design background, stepping into motion design, even when using the Cavalry app, can feel like an overwhelming experience. However, your eye for composition, colour, and layout still applies. Here are a few tips to help you make the jump:

• Don’t animate everything: Just because you can make something move doesn’t mean you should. Use motion to highlight, support, or add meaning. Not to overwhelm.
• Let design principles guide your motion: Your existing skills still apply. Use contrast, alignment, and hierarchy to inform movement. Like animating scale or opacity to show importance.
• Experiment with behaviours: Behaviours like bounce, wiggle, or delay can create fun movement without keyframes. Drop them in and see what happens. You can always tweak or undo.
• Preview constantly: Cavalry plays back in real time, so make use of it. Watching your animation in motion helps you develop timing instincts faster than anything else.
• Be messy first, refine later: Don’t stress about being perfect from the start. Play around, try weird things, and polish as you go. Motion thrives on experimentation.
• Use online tutorials to your advantage: Sites like Envato and the Cavalry YouTube channel are packed with quick, clear tutorials that are perfect for beginners looking to build skills fast.