For those who don’t know, I am 12 days away from graduating from a liberal arts college in the middle of the Midwest: Iowa. I am not even an arts major (minor though!). How did I end up finding my way to motion design and learning it?

the beginning

Rewind 1.5 years ago- I took an animation class that introduced us to After Effects (called Animation, Video, and Sound for those at UNI). Here I completed my first motion graphics video and it looks like what you would expect from a complete novice.

I had another video based in ae for my final, and this is where I started my inspiration folder for motion design. I was definitely hooked, but the line hadn’t pulled hard yet.

a 12-hour straight animation

A couple months later, I found myself concepting for a 15s motion ad for my agency’s campaign in the National Student Advertising Competition for AT&T (Advertising Campaign Development with Wilson). It was the week of the deadline and I needed to pump it out sooner than later. I ended up sitting down and working on it for 12 hours straight…before promptly calling it a night. The next morning I woke up to a page-length comment from my professor giving me feedback.

Needless to say, we got ‘er done.

Doing that animation + motion work for videos gave me more of a working ground with ae, and motion graphics overall. I ended up landing a local internship that allowed me to work more with motion design as a whole. The fall was no different even while studying abroad- I had time to develop even more of my craft. This landed me with a gold and bronze award (guess I’m not too bad after all).

Now in the spring, I’ve been fortunate enough to take one final class with motion design in the name. I’ve gone on to create a couple projects that I’m pretty proud of.

an honest moment.

My journey to motion design could be considered atypical. With a degree not centered around motion design, I ended up learning it the way many people do, spurred on by fascination and a love for making things move. It took practice, and a lot of stealing.

Not stealing in the traditional sense, like theft, but as in looking at someone else’s work and wondering ‘how did they do that?’ To then trying to figure it out by fiddling around in your programs.

A recent example:

I stumbled across Peter Cobo’s showreel that had this very fun text animation- instant desire to emulate. Along with chatting w/homies and garnering their advice, I grabbed the essence of the motion and molded it into what I needed for my animation.

I also found myself scouring across Instagram and came across Lucia Alonso (and promptly fell in love with her style). Through digging across her portfolio, I found out she went to Ringling College of Art and Design, which has a whole motion design program. More digging ensued, and I eventually figured out the gist of what skills they were learning, and so forth took it upon myself to figure that out for myself too.

A couple of essential tips:

• learn the animation basics. do NOT skip ahead because without the foundations, it will be harder.
• get better at design- I am still learning this. You can make motion look good, but if the design is terrible, it will ruin the whole piece.
• typography is everywhere in motion design. Very important to learn text animators and generally how to manipulate text.

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While I didn’t go to art school, nor be an art major, I wouldn’t trade my path to motion design for anything. Your path is your path. You can choose to supplement your path with professional training, but that doesn’t have to be the end all be all. Generally, having a passion, sense of timing, and consistency will get you a lot further than traditional schooling and no drive.

And that’s on learning! See you in another rendition of motion talks!