Cavalry has gone from a small Manchester-based motion tool to one of the most talked-about names in the industry, acquired by Canva in February and then made entirely free in April. This is the story straight from the founders.

Adam Jenns and Chris Hardcastle, two of Cavalry's co-founders, join us to talk through the journey, what's changed since the Canva acquisition, why they made the entire app free with no restrictions, and where Cavalry sits next to After Effects, Affinity and the wider Canva pro suite. We also get into the web player, AI integration, the Discord community, and what this all means for the next generation of motion designers.

Topics covered:
00:00 Daily downloads up 10x since the acquisition
00:21 Intro: from Mainframe to Cavalry to Canva
01:50 How Mash, an Oscar nomination and Ben Black's moan started it all
06:00 Cavalry vs After Effects: procedural, node-based, and why it matters
08:00 A million renders in a single project
13:00 How feature requests get filtered: scars from real projects
14:58 Inside the Canva acquisition
19:15 Why Cavalry is now completely free
27:00 Beer-can tutorials and the community keeping Cavalry alive
35:14 The web player: the future of motion handoff
42:43 AI, MCP, and the line between craft and generation

About Cavalry
Cavalry is a procedural, node-based motion design application built in Manchester. Founded by Adam Jenns, Chris Hardcastle and Ian Waters out of motion studio Mainframe, the team previously built the MASH plugin acquired by Autodesk in 2015. Cavalry launched in 2019, was acquired by Canva in February 2026, and made entirely free with full commercial usage in April 2026.

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Months in Motion is produced by OK Social, a London-based motion design studio.

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