How to Make Custom Motion Graphics with Remotion and Claude Code (No Coding Required)

The motion graphics in the video below are custom. Nobody sold them to me, no template pack, no subscription. I briefed them in plain English and they rendered on my own computer in about five minutes. I made them with two tools: Remotion, a clever way of building video out of code, and Claude Code, an AI assistant that lives on your machine. If you want motion graphics like these for a fraction of what they used to cost, this is the whole process, step by step. And before you close the tab: I have never written a line of code in my life. People say they vibe code; I survive code. If I can do this, you can.

The short version: Remotion is a free, open-source engine that turns instructions into rendered motion graphics. Claude Code is the AI that writes those instructions for you from a plain-English brief. Together they handle lower thirds, stat callouts, kinetic type and chart animations brilliantly, with transparent backgrounds you can drag straight into Final Cut. Your job is not animator anymore. It is creative director.

What is Remotion?

Remotion is like a video graphics brain that you plug into your computer. It’s open source, which means some clever people built this incredible skill and made it free for everybody. (There are some small terms and conditions on the Remotion website, so do check those for your situation.)

Here’s the core idea: all motion graphics, underneath, are just code. Just instructions. In the past, we had to do all of that drawing by hand with keyframes, and you know how painful that process is if you’re a solo creator in a hurry without a big budget. Remotion draws with your computer instead. You describe what you want, and it makes it. That’s why it’s such a big deal for solo founders, solo creators and solo filmmakers.

What it’s genuinely good at (and what it isn’t)

Remotion takes creative direction really well. It excels at:

• Lower thirds
• Statistic callouts
• Animated tiles and cards
• Kinetic type
• Chart animations

Anything in that family, it will make over and over again, consistently. What it’s not good at: character animation and particle work. If you need those, hire a real motion graphics artist. This isn’t an After Effects killer, as much as I’d like it to be. But for a lot of us, it does 90% of what we’d open After Effects for anyway.

What is Claude Code?

Most people use Claude like a chatbot, the same way you might use ChatGPT. Claude Code is different: it’s a coding machine that syncs with your computer. It can access files, write them, run them, and make changes anywhere you give it permission, including your external drives. You can’t do that with the chat feature.

The way I think about Claude Code: it’s the world’s fastest intern. It lives on your computer, it’s read every technical manual ever created, it never gets tired and it never gets defensive, even after the fifth round of amendments. But it has zero taste. It doesn’t know what your channel or your client work looks like, and it will occasionally produce something diabolical and present it proudly. That’s where you come in. You’re not learning to code today. You’re learning to brief. If you’ve ever written a creative brief, you’ll be absolutely fine. If Remotion is the brain, Claude is the body that makes it move, and you are the taste and the vision.

Step 1: The setup

This step is super easy, but somehow also slightly confusing the first time, so here it is as simply as I can put it:

1. Go to the Remotion website and copy the install command shown there (it looks like npx create-video@latest).
2. Open Claude Code and say: “I’ve got this command from the Remotion website. I want you to download this so I can start using Remotion on this computer.” Paste the command in and press enter.
3. When it asks which template you want, pick the blank template for now. When it asks about agent skills, say yes.
4. If you see terms like Tailwind or Node.js, don’t be intimidated. They’re just scaffolding your computer needs for Remotion to work. Claude is essentially learning a new skill: making videos with Remotion.
5. Claude may ask where to store the files; pick any folder that’s convenient.

At the end, Claude will give you a command to start Remotion in the Terminal. Don’t be afraid of the Terminal; it’s just another way of talking to your computer. Paste the command in and it opens something called localhost, which looks like a web page but is actually running entirely on your machine, showing a video preview window. If you’d rather not deal with localhost at all, you can even ask Claude Code to play previews for you inside the chat.

Step 2: Give it taste (your design system)

This is the part most people skip, and it’s why their results look generic. Before briefing any animation, I feed Claude a design system for the brand I’m working with. Mine lives on Claude Design, but it doesn’t have to; a document describing your brand works too. Mine includes:

• My colours, so every animation stays consistent with the channel
• Film grain and a black-diffusion blur, for that slightly 80s, cinematic feel
• Motion at around 12 frames per second, deliberately a little jagged, because in a world of slick 60fps graphics that all feel like AI slop, the rougher look feels more natural and more human

If you want your motion graphics to feel consistent and on-brand, you must feed it that information. Then every brief can just say “follow my design system” and it does.

Step 3: Brief it like a creative director

Here’s my actual workflow. I give Claude the whole script for the video, point it at my design system, and ask it to suggest which parts of the script it would animate. Then I ask it to animate five to ten seconds of the moments that really stand out. It’ll happily produce five or ten of those in a batch, plus lower thirds with transparent backgrounds that you can drag straight onto your timeline.

For the video above, I gave it the opening of my script and asked for a beautiful title animation. Five minutes later it rendered out, and honestly, my reaction on camera was not acting. It looked amazing.

Step 4: Tweak in plain English

Revisions are the best part. I noticed the animation said “10 minutes” where it should have said “two minutes”, so my entire revision process was typing: “That’s fantastic, thank you. Can we change the bottom text to two minutes rather than 10 minutes?” Fire it off, it re-renders, done. You can ask for changes second by second, exactly like directing a (very fast, very patient) junior animator.

What this replaces

If you’re a content creator, videographer or filmmaker who needs great motion graphics over your videos, this is now the number one way to get something genuinely beautiful very quickly. There’s no need to pay monthly for template libraries and motion-graphics apps when you can do this yourself, for free, on your own machine. That’s the same thinking behind everything I build, including my own Pup apps: own your tools instead of renting them. If you want to see where this fits in the bigger picture, read The 7 Levels of AI Video Editing; this workflow is what level seven looks like in practice.

If you’d like my Remotion brief template and the design-system prompt I use, join the waitlist and I’ll send workflows like this every week.

Frequently asked questions

Is Remotion free?

Remotion is open source and free for individuals and small teams, with some licensing terms for larger companies. Check the terms on the Remotion website for your situation. Claude Code requires a Claude subscription, but there’s no per-video or per-render fee; everything renders on your own computer.

Do I need to know how to code?

No. I’ve never written a line of code in my life. Claude Code writes and runs all the code; your job is to brief it clearly in plain English and to judge the results.

Can I use the graphics in Final Cut Pro or Premiere?

Yes. Remotion can render with transparent backgrounds, so lower thirds, callouts and titles drop straight onto your timeline over your footage.

What kind of motion graphics can’t it do?

Character animation and particle-heavy work are its weak spots. For those, hire a motion designer. For lower thirds, kinetic type, stat callouts, cards and chart animations, it’s exceptional.

How do I keep the graphics on-brand?

Give Claude a design system before you brief it: colours, fonts, texture, frame rate, references. Then tell every brief to follow it. Without that context the results will work, but they won’t feel like yours.