Motion Graphics: The Affordable Marketing Tool
We've been very busy this year on many exciting and fun projects. Motion graphics is a large part of our workload. Motion-based projects are a broad discipline and can apply in many types of needs. A sliding scale of affordability makes motion graphics a great tool to tell complex stories for different needs. Motion graphics use both 2d and 3d animation and design techniques. They can be used for logo reveals, commercials, marketing campaigns, explainer videos, visual effects, and e-learning coursework. Design can be simple to incredibly complex, it all depends on what you need. The affordability scale is great because any budget can fit into the service. It just depends on what you'd like to do. A list of budget examples
eLearning Visual Development – Tips and Tricks
As someone who has been working in the e-learning industry for about three years now as both a visual designer and author of various courses, I've run into a few scenarios on the visual design side that I think may be of help to fellow designers. The following are a list of common problems I've run into as a designer. As well as some of the ways I've found that seem to work best in resolving said problems. Creating Effective Abstract Visuals: Problem: The visuals you're creating aren't working in getting across the point to your audience. Strategy: Try to brainstorm the scenario you're tasked with visually designing for into symbols that are both simple and easy to understand for everyday individuals. This includes using
Enjoy our recut motion graphics reel for 2016!
Essential Tools for Animators
So today I thought I'd write a post about some of the tools I use as an animator that I've really come to see as essential to doing my job well. Many of them are free resources, and others are pretty expensive. Let's just get right into it. Whether you're a 2d or 3d animator, or a little of both like me, a Cintiq has become a really essential tool to doing my job. I have tried both the small and large ones, and I honestly can't live without the big one. The reason being is that the smaller monitors just don't seem to give me enough space to work correctly. I'm always cramped into a small space to animate or draw. They
I had some extra time as well as motivation this last week to do some personal artwork. As a person who's always been a dork about dragons, I wanted to do some paintings about my beloved mythical beasts. I had so much fun that I'm decided to make this into an extended series of paintings. It's both helping me get better at using new photoshop brushes, but lighting / shadow, composition, and contrast in painting. Enjoy! Great Purple Dragon Great Red Dragon More to come next week if I have the time.
I thought I'd talk a little bit about the ins and outs of making freelancing easier and less stressful by structuring your invoices and finances in a way to make your life better. Cash flow as a freelancer is usually a big problem, because everything about your businesses risk, lead generation, sales, etc, comes from you. Usually you don't have an agent or a sales and marketing team to get you what you need in terms of jobs. So bad, uneven cash flow can be a real nightmare if you need to pay rent in a few days and have zero money to do so, and three of your invoices are due a week out from when you need them. That's why adequate
March was a very busy month for me, and now I have some nice personal and commercial work to show for it. Progress has been made on my short film NF Core 01. I completed a first round of a animatic for the short and am now in a cutting and restructuring phase to try and tighten it up and figure out how long it will ultimately end up being. I also worked with a small team with Bent Image Lab to complete a small series called Public School Superhero. Episode one can be viewed below. Episode 1 I also made progress with a personal digital illustration. It isn't complete yet, but you can enjoy a drag of it here.
I used to be one of those artists who didn't think thumbnailing was important or I was just too lazy to do it. My work suffered from this attitude for years. Now however thumbnailing ideas, layouts, compositing and designs for just about everything I do is essential. If I don't I lose a valuable ability to work faster, harder and with a small visual guide to help me remember how I wanted a design, scene or illustration to look. I also always do my thumbnailing on physical paper, and not on the computer. There seems to be something about physically drawing them that makes the ideas stick more overall. It's the same reason that I write all my initial internal revision notes