Special Effects Artists and Animators

Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations · Job Skills & Competencies · SOC 27-1014 · 9,445 skills

Occupation context

These O*NET tasks describe the occupation. They provide context for this SOC mapping, but do not mean every listed Skill performs every task.

Design complex graphics and animation, using independent judgment, creativity, and computer equipment.
Create basic designs, drawings, and illustrations for product labels, cartons, direct mail, or television.
Participate in design and production of multimedia campaigns, handling budgeting and scheduling, and assisting with such responsibilities as production coordination, background design, and progress tracking.

O*NET task statements are shown in their source language (English). Task data excerpted from the O*NET® 29.1 Database (USDOL/ETA) and used under CC BY 4.0.

Representative sources

A bounded sample of popular skills mapped to this occupation, with at most one Skill from each GitHub repository. The complete mapped list follows.

openclaw/openclaw

Generate spectrograms and feature-panel visualizations from audio with the songsee CLI.

Build reusable Manim explainers for technical concepts, graphs, system diagrams, and product walkthroughs, then hand off to the wider ECC video stack if needed. Use when the user wants a clean animated explainer rather than a generic talking-head script.

NousResearch/hermes-agent

Knowledge comics (知识漫画): educational, biography, tutorial.

nexu-io/open-design

Create video compositions, animations, title cards, overlays, captions, voiceovers, audio-reactive visuals, and scene transitions in HyperFrames HTML. Use when asked to build any HTML-based video content, add captions or subtitles synced to audio, generate text-to-speech narration, create audio-reactive animation (beat sync, glow, pulse driven by music), add animated text highlighting (marker sweeps, hand-drawn circles, burst lines, scribble, sketchout), or add transitions between scenes (crossfades, wipes, reveals, shader transitions). Covers composition authoring, timing, media, and the full video production workflow. For CLI commands (init, lint, preview, render, transcribe, tts) see the hyperframes-cli skill.

All mapped skills

Browse the complete catalog mapping by repository popularity or latest source activity.

Skill names and descriptions remain in the language supplied by their source repository.

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openclaw/openclaw

Generate spectrograms and feature-panel visualizations from audio with the songsee CLI.

Build reusable Manim explainers for technical concepts, graphs, system diagrams, and product walkthroughs, then hand off to the wider ECC video stack if needed. Use when the user wants a clean animated explainer rather than a generic talking-head script.

A creative-direction (taste) layer for music videos and short-form edits in the angelcore / cloud-trance / hyperpop visual family. Distills a named-genre aesthetic vocabulary, a mood + color + light system, and a beat-synced editing grammar, then chains ECC's video skills (video-editing, fal-ai-media, remotion-video-creation, motion-*, content-engine) into one production pipeline. Use when the work is not just making a video function but making it feel intentional, when building a music video, a fancam/edit, a moodboard-driven reel, or when choosing a coherent visual direction for AI-generated b-roll.

NousResearch/hermes-agent

Knowledge comics (知识漫画): educational, biography, tutorial.

nexu-io/open-design

Create video compositions, animations, title cards, overlays, captions, voiceovers, audio-reactive visuals, and scene transitions in HyperFrames HTML. Use when asked to build any HTML-based video content, add captions or subtitles synced to audio, generate text-to-speech narration, create audio-reactive animation (beat sync, glow, pulse driven by music), add animated text highlighting (marker sweeps, hand-drawn circles, burst lines, scribble, sketchout), or add transitions between scenes (crossfades, wipes, reveals, shader transitions). Covers composition authoring, timing, media, and the full video production workflow. For CLI commands (init, lint, preview, render, transcribe, tts) see the hyperframes-cli skill.

nexu-io/open-design

Single-image generation skill for posters, key art, and editorial illustrations. Defaults to gpt-image-2 but is provider-agnostic — the same workflow drives Flux, Imagen, or Midjourney via the active upstream tooling. Output is one or more PNG/JPEG files saved to the project folder.

nexu-io/open-design

A single-frame motion-design composition with looping CSS animations — rotating type ring, animated globe, ticking timer, parallax labels. Renders as a hero video poster you can hand straight to HyperFrames or any keyframe-based exporter. Use when the brief asks for "motion design", "animated hero", "loop", "video poster", "title card", or pairs Open Claude Design with HyperFrames for a kinetic export.

sprite-animation

nexu-io/open-design

A pixel / sprite-style animated explainer slide — full-bleed cream stage, bold display year, animated pixel-art mascot (e.g. Hanafuda card, mushroom, or 8-bit console), kinetic Japanese display type, ticking timeline ribbon. Reads like a single frame of an educational motion video — looping CSS keyframes, no JS, ready to be screen-recorded into a vertical video. Use when the brief asks for a "sprite animation", "pixel-art video", "8-bit explainer", "history of X explainer", "kinetic typography history", "Nintendo-style", "精灵图动画", "像素动画", or "复古动画".

video-shortform

nexu-io/open-design

Short-form video generation skill — 3-10 second clips for product reveals, motion teasers, ambient loops. Defaults to Seedance 2 but works the same with Kling 3 / 4, Veo 3 or Sora 2. Output is one MP4 saved to the project folder. When the workspace also ships an interactive-video / hyperframes skill, prefer composing several short shots into a single timeline rather than one long monolithic clip.

frame-data-chart-nyt

nexu-io/open-design

NYT-newsroom typography, staggered reveal animation, and editorial-grade charts (line, bar, or range band).

frame-flowchart-sticky

nexu-io/open-design

SVG curve connectors, sticky-note nodes, and cursor interaction with a whiteboard-brainstorm feel.

frame-glitch-title

nexu-io/open-design

Digital glitch, chromatic offset, and data-corruption title frame for video transitions or cyberpunk heroes.