Motion Array turns down submissions for a short list of reasons that repeat across every category: work that is not entirely your own, files that sit below the stated technical floor, packages built differently from the example project, and tags or descriptions that do not actually describe the asset. Every one of them is visible before you upload, and most take minutes to fix.
Why Motion Array rejections feel stricter than other marketplaces
Motion Array is a curated marketplace rather than an open microstock library. Artists are admitted on the basis of past work, portfolio quality and what the catalogue currently needs, so the review you face after acceptance is a continuation of that filter rather than a simple technical pass. The practical consequence is that a file which would clear an open agency can still come back from Motion Array, because the reviewer is also judging whether the asset is good enough to sit in a subscription catalogue.
The upside is that the rules are published in full. Unlike agencies that reject with a one-word code and leave you guessing, Motion Array documents the requirement for each content type, and its curators publish the issues they see most often in template submissions. That makes the rejection list unusually auditable: you can hold a file against the written rule before anyone reviews it.
The rules that apply to everything you submit
Five universal rules sit above the category-specific requirements. They account for a large share of rejections, and none of them are negotiable on appeal.
- You must be the sole creator. Everything you upload has to be made by you. The only exceptions are template placeholder media and the preview music or sound effects, and placeholders have to be stripped out of the final upload.
- No replicas or copied parts. Work that mimics another asset, or reuses copied layers and components, is rejected, and that includes copying from your own approved items. Being inspired by something is fine; rebuilding it is not.
- No derivatives of approved work. You cannot take something already accepted, modify it and resubmit it as new in the same category. A template can be rebuilt for a different software category, but it then has to meet that category's standards in full.
- Standard Western characters only. Non-Western alphabets, accented characters and special symbols are not allowed in submissions or in filenames. This catches a lot of contributors whose working language is not English.
- Political and moral limits. Content advancing a specific political position is rejected, though general messages are acceptable. Imagery depicting human rights violations such as debt bondage, forced labour or child slavery is rejected outright.
The character rule deserves a second look if you keyword in your own language first and translate afterwards, because the restriction covers filenames as well as metadata fields. We covered how that plays out across agencies in accented characters and non-English keywords.
Motion Array rejection decoder
Eight rejection patterns drawn from Motion Array's published upload rules and its curators' most-reported template issues, each with what it means, the fix, and whether the same file can be resubmitted.
Stock video rejections
Footage has the tightest published specification of any Motion Array category, and most footage rejections trace back to one of six lines in it.
- Resolution and cleanliness. The floor is 1920x1080, and the clip must be free of noise, banding and compression artifacts. Grain that reads as texture on your monitor often reads as noise to a reviewer looking at it full screen.
- Codec. ProRes 4444 or 422 is preferred, while H.264, H.265 and Animation are also accepted. The file must be .mov or .mp4.
- Declared compression has to match the file. This is the single most avoidable footage rejection. The dropdown you pick at submission is checked against the uploaded file, so a ProRes selection on an H.264 export fails even though both codecs are individually acceptable.
- No audio. Footage is delivered silent. An embedded audio track, even a muted one, is a technical fail.
- One clip per submission. Packs, compilations, collages and edited sequences are rejected. If you have five angles of the same scene, that is five submissions, not one reel.
- Grading versus filters. Moderate colour correction is accepted. Filters are reviewed case by case, which in practice means a heavy stylised look is a coin toss and a neutral grade is not.
Releases apply to footage exactly as they do to stills. Identifiable people need a model release, minors need a parent or guardian release, and recognisable private property needs a property release. Anything with visible brands, logos or unreleased locations has to be marked editorial. If you are weighing Motion Array against other video marketplaces, the trade-offs are laid out in our comparison of stock footage sites for contributors.
Stock photo rejections
Motion Array's photo rules are noticeably stricter than those of the big microstock libraries, and two of them catch people out regularly.
- AI-generated images are not accepted. You must have created the photograph, and found or sourced images are rejected. This is a harder line than the agencies that accept AI stills with a declaration, so a mixed library needs separating before you submit anything here.
- The size floor is a pixel dimension, not a megapixel count. A photo needs a minimum of 3840 pixels on its width or its height, which is a different test from the megapixel minimums most agencies publish.
- JPG or PNG only, and a PNG has to have a transparent background. A PNG with a solid background is a format fail rather than a quality one.
- No composites or collages, one photo per submission, and processing kept light. Depictions of diverse people are expected to be accurate and respectful.
Stock motion graphics rejections
Animated elements share the 1920x1080 floor and the no-artifacts requirement with footage, then add their own rules. Transparency has to be an embedded alpha channel in ProRes 4444 or the Animation codec; a PNG or JPG QuickTime is rejected rather than converted. A recoloured version of an animation that was already approved will not pass as a new item, and genuinely similar animations are expected to go up together as a multi-clip pack instead of as separate submissions. Previews have to show everything in the package and may not use effects that are absent from the download, there is no audio, and a single asset uploads as an unzipped .mov or .mp4 while packs are zipped so that both the Mac and Windows default unzip tools can open them.
Template rejections: where most of the work is
Templates are the category with the longest list of failure modes, because the reviewer is judging the package as much as the animation. Motion Array's curators publish the issues they report most often, and they cluster into five groups.
The preview
A preview must not contain 4K or HD badges, rival site logos, software logos, third-party logos, icons or personal email addresses. Music and sound effects have to come from the Motion Array library, with the links listed in a text document inside the Help folder, and placeholder media may only come from Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, Gratisography or Motion Array assets you are licensed to use. Screen captures of an Adobe interface are not allowed, tracked elements are flagged, and leaving the actual placeholder media in the final upload is its own rejection.
File and folder structure
The project file has to be named after the submission title, and for Motion Graphics templates it belongs in a MOGRT folder, with multiple files numbered 01, 02, 03 and so on. A Fonts folder with a text document of font links is required, as is a Help folder holding a bespoke tutorial video, the current generic instructions PDF, and the links for every image, video and sound effect used in the preview. Motion Array suggests keeping that tutorial around 10MB. No personal email address or contact detail may appear anywhere in the package.
Controllers and project organisation
This is where experienced animators still get a Needs Work notice. The project structure has to match the example project and the naming convention has to match the package. Essential Graphics elements must be sorted and grouped, and editable elements named logically. A global position, scale and rotation controller linked to the final composition is required, with matted or masked elements parented to it. Text placeholders need every font property exposed, plus position, scale, rotation and line-spacing controls. Too many colour controllers triggers a request to consolidate them, and controllers that are disorganised, inconsistent between scenes, untested, or anchored off-centre all come back.
Technical checks you can run yourself
Two of these are pass-or-fail and cost nothing to verify. The expression checker has to be run before MOGRT conversion and must return a zero. Assets have to be gathered through File, then Dependencies, then Collect Files for all compositions, and the Collect Files report has to be deleted afterwards. Beyond that, a .mogrt is expected to produce at least five different graphics, title animations need both an in and an out animation, the submitted version must match the version stated in the description, and a template converted from an older release has to be re-saved and retested in the version you are submitting.
Performance, fonts and packaging
A template that performs poorly or is awkward to operate is sent back, and the suggested remedies are to remove heavy effects, split the project into smaller scenes, reduce resolution or pre-render elements. Fonts have to be confirmed as free for both personal and commercial use, with working links supplied and no installers included in the package. For package size, assets are expected to be converted to .mp4 or .mov using H.264 or ProRes compression rather than shipped as raw media. A music or sound effect link that has since gone dead on the site is also a reported reason.
Pre-submission check by content type
A pre-upload checklist built from Motion Array's published upload rules, with universal checks plus a separate group for footage, photos, motion graphics and template packages.
Graphics, icons and mockups: the numbers to hold files against
The graphics categories publish hard limits, which makes them the easiest rejections to prevent and the most frustrating to receive. A graphics package is capped at 3GB zipped. The preview is a JPG at 1920x1080 with no photographic background and no text beyond the graphic itself, and the same ban on 4K, HD, rival, software and third-party logos applies. Titles are capped at 40 characters with each word capitalised, and descriptions at 25 words, which still have to carry the asset count and bullet points covering digital or print use, colour space, format sizes and aspect ratios, resolution and any plugin used.
Icon packs have to contain between 5 and 30 icons, exported no smaller than 16x16 and no larger than 1024x1024 pixels, in RGB with global swatches and each icon grouped. Mockups are built from scratch in Photoshop and sit between 1080x1080 and 7200x7200 pixels, shipped as a layered PSD plus a 300 ppi JPEG. UI and UX files stay under 500MB per PSD at 150 ppi in RGB. Non-generic mockup devices are rejected, and so are logo templates and iconography intended as logos.
Description and tag rejections
Metadata is reported as a rejection reason in its own right. Descriptions copied from another template, descriptions built around version numbers or duplicate names, and descriptions that omit the art style or the placeholder count all come back. Incorrect dropdown information, such as the wrong resolution, is treated the same way. On tags, the reported fault is tags that are unrelated to the asset or that repeat each other. Audio submissions carry an explicit instruction against keyword stuffing and against obvious filler terms, which is the same instinct other agencies apply when they flag keyword stuffing.
Needs Work is not the same as a rejection
Motion Array's curators distinguish between an outright rejection and a Needs Work request. Consolidating too many colour controllers, for example, is raised as a change request rather than a refusal. That distinction matters for how you respond: a Needs Work notice is an instruction list, and the fastest way to convert it into a rejection is to resubmit without making the requested changes. Not updating fonts, effects, logos or icons after a change was asked for is itself one of the reported reasons, and the rules state plainly that repeated issues lead to rejection.
How to cut your rejection rate
Three habits remove most of this list. First, treat the published rules as a validation pass rather than background reading: resolution, codec, character set, file count and package contents are all checkable before you upload, and a file that fails one of them will fail review. Second, keep the declared metadata and the actual file in sync, because the compression dropdown and the version named in a description are both cross-checked against what you sent. Third, never reuse a description or a tag set, since duplicate metadata is reported as a rejection reason and the same copied wording across several submissions is what turns an isolated note into a pattern.
If you deliver to several marketplaces, the character set rule is the one that quietly breaks batches, because a filename that is fine at one agency is a rejection here. Working out which field limits differ before you export is the whole point of mapping your metadata fields to each agency's requirements, and the field-by-field reference for this marketplace sits in our guide to Motion Array metadata requirements.
Checking every rule by hand stops scaling somewhere around a few hundred files a month. Rastock AI writes metadata against each marketplace's own policy, flags banned and mandatory terms before delivery, and lets you roll a batch back if a rule turns out to have changed, then delivers over FTP or SFTP to 10+ agencies with per-file status. You can see how the policy checks work on the features page, and the pricing page lists the plans. There is a 14-day free trial and no card is required to start.
Frequently asked questions
Why was my Motion Array footage rejected when it looks fine?
The two most common causes are a declared-compression mismatch and a release problem. Motion Array checks the codec you pick in the submission dropdown against the file you actually uploaded, so a ProRes selection on an H.264 export fails even though both codecs are accepted on their own. Separately, any identifiable person or recognisable private property needs a signed release, or the clip can only be accepted as editorial.
Does Motion Array accept AI-generated images?
Its stock photo rules state that you must have created the photo yourself and that AI-generated images are not accepted, alongside a ban on found or sourced images. That is a harder line than several photo agencies take, since they accept AI stills as long as the asset is declared. If your library mixes generated and camera work, separate the two before submitting anything to this marketplace.
Can I resubmit the same file after a rejection?
It depends on what failed. Metadata faults, filename character problems and a wrong compression selection are fixable without touching the asset, so the corrected file can go back up. Ownership failures cannot be cleared by re-uploading, because a replica, a copied layer set or a derivative of already-approved work is refused on principle rather than on quality. Repeated issues across submissions do lead to rejection.
What does a Needs Work response mean?
It is a change request rather than a refusal, used when a submission is close but something needs adjusting. Consolidating too many colour controllers is handled this way, for instance. Treat it as an instruction list: failing to update the fonts, effects, logos or icons that were queried before resubmitting is itself one of the reported reasons a template is eventually turned down.
Why do my filenames keep failing?
Motion Array allows standard Western characters only, and the rule covers filenames as well as the content of a submission. Non-Western alphabets, accented characters and special symbols are all refused. If you name files in your own language before translating the metadata, or if your export preset carries an accented project name through to the filename, every file in that batch will trip the same rule.
How many tags should a Motion Array submission carry?
You can add up to 20 tags, and the published guidance is to use only the ones that genuinely represent the asset rather than filling the field. Tags that are unrelated to the item or that repeat each other are a reported rejection reason, as are generic terms like creative, design or animation and subjective ones like unique or amazing, because they pull in traffic that does not convert.