Motion Mondays April 20 2026 - Maxon Autograph free, showing excitement about After Effects alternative

Maxon Declares WAR on After Effects!?!? | Motion Mondays

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School of Motion

Create Procedural Animation with Cavalry

Learn procedural 2D animation with Cavalry's powerful toolset. Enroll in All-Access to unlock Cavalry Kickstart and 50+ other courses.

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Maxon made a $299 compositing app free, Premiere got a dedicated color workspace, and DaVinci Resolve added a full photo editing application that nobody saw coming.

This week, Autograph is now free for individual artists — Maxon's compositing app built around generators and modifiers instead of layers and effects. Cinema 4D 2026.2 landed alongside it with the Fabric Brush, OpenPBR as the new Redshift default, and a C4D for iPad beta. Premiere's new Color Mode is a three-year project aimed squarely at Resolve's color tools, and Resolve 21 fired back with Lightroom-style photo editing and more. After Effects beta got Curl Noise, a GPU-only organic noise effect, plus a long-overdue anchor point fix.

Also this week, INSYDIUM showed off NeXus rebuilt from scratch for Blender, and FrameRate launched student pricing alongside a preview of their synced multi-user review platform. Frame.io Drive now mounts cloud projects as a local drive, Rive shipped file sharing links and keyframe stagger, and Cavalry's plugin ecosystem keeps growing over at Scenery.io. Two new tools worth grabbing: Easy Torn Paper for After Effects and Retratone, a proper halftone engine for Photoshop. And new on All Access this week: Cinema 4D Insider with EJ Hassenfratz and Cavalry Kickstart with Greg Stewart.

New Course: Cavalry Kickstart

We are excited to release Cavalry Kickstart, a 13-hour foundational course taught by Greg Stewart for motion designers ready to think procedurally and build flexible animation systems that would take hours to set up in After Effects. Learn to create mograph-style effects, dynamic text animations, and responsive templates that update in real time.

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Please Note: Cavalry Kickstart is included as a part of our All-Access and Team Training programs.

New Course: Cinema 4D Insider

We are also excited to release Cinema 4D Insider, a 4-hour professional-level course taught by EJ Hassenfratz that transforms how you work in Cinema 4D — covering faster workflows, scene organization, Redshift mastery, and team-ready production techniques.

LEARN MORE

Please Note: Cinema 4D Insider is included as a part of our All-Access and Team Training programs.

Did you know?

School of Motion has two FREE courses!

Path to Mograph is an in-depth look at a career as a Motion Designer, aimed at students who are ready to start their mograph journey.

Level Up is for motion designers who've already gotten started, but need to figure out the next step in their career.

If you decide to take the plunge into All-Access, then you'll also get access to our Jobs Board, as well as monthly livestreams and workshops with industry experts!

All that on top of joining our amazing SOM Community, and access to ALL of our courses, with unlimited (real human!) coursework critiques!

🎓 School of Motion Courses Mentioned

🗒️ Show Notes

🎨 Artist Spotlight

The All-Access discount is SOLD OUT, but you can still get 25% off all individual courses! We’ve been quietly rolling out our new All-Access program, where you can get every course we make for one low price. It’s a crazy good deal even without this sale. But until Wednesday 12/4, you can get it for 25% off. For this sale we are opening up 100 spots. After those sell out, you’ll have to wait at least a few months until we open more. Don’t sleep on this deal. We expect it to sell out fast.

ENROLL NOW!

Acidbite ➔

50% off everything

ActionVFX ➔

30% off all plans and credit packs - starts 11/26

Adobe ➔

50% off all apps and plans through 11/29

aescripts ➔

25% off everything through 12/6

Affinity ➔

50% off all products

Battleaxe ➔

30% off from 11/29-12/7

Boom Library ➔

30% off Boom One, their 48,000+ file audio library

BorisFX ➔

25% off everything, 11/25-12/1

Cavalry ➔

33% off pro subscriptions (11/29 - 12/4)

FXFactory ➔

25% off with code BLACKFRIDAY until 12/3

Goodboyninja ➔

20% off everything

Happy Editing ➔

50% off with code BLACKFRIDAY

Huion ➔

Up to 50% off affordable, high-quality pen display tablets

Insydium ➔

50% off through 12/4

JangaFX ➔

30% off an indie annual license

Kitbash 3D ➔

$200 off Cargo Pro, their entire library

Knights of the Editing Table ➔

Up to 20% off Premiere Pro Extensions

Maxon ➔

25% off Maxon One, ZBrush, & Redshift - Annual Subscriptions (11/29 - 12/8)

Mode Designs ➔

Deals on premium keyboards and accessories

Motion Array ➔

10% off the Everything plan

Motion Hatch ➔

Perfect Your Pricing Toolkit - 50% off (11/29 - 12/2)

MotionVFX ➔

30% off Design/CineStudio, and PPro Resolve packs with code: BW30

Rocket Lasso ➔

50% off all plug-ins (11/29 - 12/2)

Rokoko ➔

45% off the indie creator bundle with code: RKK_SchoolOfMotion (revenue must be under $100K a year)

Shapefest ➔

80% off a Shapefest Pro annual subscription for life (11/29 - 12/2)

The Pixel Lab ➔

30% off everything

Toolfarm ➔

Various plugins and tools on sale

True Grit Texture ➔

50-70% off (starts Wednesday, runs for about a week)

Vincent Schwenk ➔

50% discount with code RENDERSALE

Wacom ➔

Up to $120 off new tablets + deals on refurbished items

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