View animations getting stopped by activity transi

Question

I'm building an app launcher and am exploring new app launch animations. I just ran into an issue that occurs when trying to run a view animation (using view.animate()) while launching a 3rd party activity. I've attached two videos below to demonstrate the problem:

1. Intended animation:

As you can see, the background scales up while the home screen UI scales down and it runs pretty smoothly!

2. Here's what happens when you launch an app at the same time:

As you can see in the above GIF, the animation just kinda jerks forward and then gets stuck, while the app launch animation runs perfectly well.

My goal is to 'combine' the two animations smoothly to create a similar effect as the app launch animations on iOS 11. It seems like maybe there should be a way to force the UI thread to keep running until the activity has disappeared completely.

Is this actually possible, or am I just crazy? Any help is appreciated!

(Similar question for reference: Android View Animation between activity transition)