What are /r/MotionDesign's favorite Products & Services?

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Thank you! I'm the OP of this. The grey is the original I saw, and the green is an intentionally clunky after-thought (I know it looks bad).

If any one is interested, these are available as live SVG animations for web-use thanks to Lottie/Bodymovin', seen in this live demo and available on GitHub here.

Here yah go. I keep meaning to try this out but never have the time to really sink my head in it.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion/motiongraphics

It's free as well, the buy version has some added stuff but probably nothing I'd ever dip into.

As always if you wanna know when I post these follow me on instagram!

https://www.instagram.com/jacobrmotion/

The project file can be downloaded here: https://dribbble.com/shots/5690286-Particles-with-Trim-Paths

cool, if you want to encourage them, you should introduce them to blender.org, it free and open source and oh so powerful (some may say challenging). check out r/blender to get an idea of what people are doing. There's tons of free tutorials on youtube and you can see some of them at r/blenderTutorials.

The cartoon shading posts might be the ones of more interest for them.

Whoa - thankyou so much for this, after a bit of feedback I've gotten today I think I'm going to have an other attempt at cutting this tonight, so this feedback is very nice to hear, and thanks for being so straightforward. I agree with a lot of your comments, and will help me focus on what I should cut and keep.

FYI i dont have GSG transform, it was a formula effector on a fractured sphere using the tan curve to animate it. you can see it better here looping: https://dribbble.com/shots/1706051-looping

all these sites are great, and I look at them occasionally, but to me, the absolute best way to keep up is just www.vimeo.com.

click follow on everyone you like, j scott, jr canest, studios like buck and punga, and 2veinte especially keeps their vimeo account likes constantly flowing through the home page news feed. this way, you can see every time one of your follows likes a video or uploads one. once you get a hefty amount of follows, the new and fresh and sometimes old videos that you might have missed will keep flowing. almost all mograph videos are posted on vimeo to embed anyways.

also subscribe to 'wine after coffee' group, admin'd by jr canest. you can follow me too, https://vimeo.com/sshawnkimm. i'm not as active as some of these people, but maybe you can see something that i liked that you can draw inspiration from.

Love your opener! Also great insight into your creative process. Thanks for that. Glad I’m not the only one using thesaurus to brainstorm. I find myself also looking up words on the nounproject in addition to giphy to get inspiration for symbols and icons for words.

> I've always had an Mac so I'm nervous about moving to a Windows

Once you're in the Adobe suite there's no difference, other than shortcut keys (CMD vs CTRL, etc)

A lot of OSX users seem to miss the spacebar preview function. You can get it back by installing something like Seer (The free version will do) or Quicklook .

https://dribbble.com/shots/1501507-Discover-The-Palm-Beaches-Logo-Animation?list=users&offset=5

Maybe not the best example because the coloring might have been achieved with vector but hopefully you get the idea. How can you animate something raster without it going pixellated.

Here's a better example. https://vimeo.com/95872973

Use of a frame by frame animation package is probably your safest bet. Illustrator isn't really built for that, photoshop has some functionality but sort of tacked on.

I'd try Krita (it has animation added into it since ~2015. It's also free (and open-sourced), fairly robust and made by designers / artists. Specifically designed for drawing stuff. If I were in your shoes I'd probably try that first.

https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/ There's a "apps" version which you can use to support the software with your money and a regular download for desktop which you can get without applying money. If you like newer, shinier but maybe somewhat more buggy versions of software: https://krita.org/en/item/4-0-development-update/ (or just scroll through their news feed for appropriate posts on "development builds")

I'm not much of an artist but from my brief experience, it's pretty robust and if I had to draw, I'd reinstall Krita and do it there and not attempt to muddle about in PS.

Do not feel like you have to show an entire piece all at once. Instead of showing pieces in order A B C D E F, switch it up and do D F A B F E D C A B or something like that. A good example of this is Jr. Canest's student reel. The work is good, especially for being student work thre years old, but more importantly it is cut very well. If you do keep all the work in order, cut the lengths down a bit. Most all of your pieces have static compositions and makes the reel feel a bit tired. A fourty-five second exciting reel will be better than one minute where some of the pieces get stale.

Donald K. Slayton is a bit of a cheat. The animated font is called Franchise and it is available for free here. I also recommend to check out other fonts from Animography, they are little works of art. Every other font was done manually.

Dribbble is an awesome place to get started. Its focused on design and all that encompasses. The jobs channel has internships, but are mixed in so you'll have to do some sifting. It's searchable for location. How I ended up landing my internship was through Instagram. I am on the social media team now and we use insta to connect not only with clients but also talent. So follow studios that are located near you. They will often post intern opportunities on social before any other since it will reach the community faster. The next best step is know your timing. Internships come in waves, summer being the largest. Most typically last for 3 - 6 months so don't turn down shorter ones. Instead think of it as trying on pants until you find the right pair. You may not find the perfect company right away so having a couple internships can help you truly know what you are looking for in a company.

Some very run of the mill advice, is ask your university career adviser, professors and alum for help. Your professors and alum have already been through it, so ask around. connections above all else will get you where you need to go.

https://dribbble.com/jobs

I hear ya. Sometimes certain skill sets match up surprisingly well. Marcus Eckert for example, created Wide Sky (a mobile game) and developed some unique coding to implement sleek motion graphics throughout. You may have seen it. His trailer for it is amazing: https://vimeo.com/57916203

Good luck in choosing how to spend that time man.

Awesome, thanks! Just followed you back.

I just finished a 1 minute promo for an author so I'll be making that public in a few weeks/whenever the book is ready!

EDIT: Here's the promo: https://vimeo.com/89406066

I took the long way in doing this since I also am new to motion design. All tutorials online taught numeral odometers using expressions but I have yet to learn that so I animated it all in the graph editor.

Since it might be hard to explain the process <em>here's</em> my after effects file. Hope it can help you better understand. It's CS6 also through dropbox.

Yeah, I've got some stuff on my Behance profile

Its a pretty haphazard collection of some work I've done in the past. Some of which I should probably be more judicious about in posting :) I'm still in the process of putting together a reel worth showing.

Anyway, feel free to look!

There are all kinds of options!

I started my career working for a larger agency that had a motion design department. After that I (very briefly) freelanced before starting a small motion design studio with a fellow animator. We're now 5 years old and there are 8 of us total.

So it's quite possible to find a gig at a large agency or a smaller shop like ours or, as you mentioned, through freelancing.

There are also several large companies that have internal motion teams like Headspace or Red Hat.

For the Mr. Meeseeks animation, I created the major points that I wanted to run through the Newton simulation. This included the head, shoulder (just one shape underneath the head), pelvis, both hands, and both feet. Once in Newton, I connected the shapes with spring joints, adjusted the tension to my liking, and applied a force (velocity magnitude and direction) which sent the rig flying down a static stair layer.

Once the sim was rendered, I created simple RubberHose limbs for their corresponding shapes. For example, I created the right arm and then parented the wrist controller to the hand shape and the shoulder controller to the shoulder shape. I made sure to turn on autoflop and let it go. In all, there were five RubberHose limbs: two arms, two legs and a torso.

The Fluid Animation was way more complex, and unfortunately, the short answer is that it took a long time. A lot of the "magic" was just done slowly by hand. For instance, you'll notice that the fluid is sitting within a cup and the cup then transforms to a check mark. Originally, I just animated a stroke path and threw that into Newton. Unfortunately, Newton does not notice the entire shape of strokes as an interactive object. It will only recognize the path. So, to get around this, I created a version of the same shape made up of small squares that animated the same way. This platform was used to collide with all the fluid particles.

As for the fluid itself, this was done by sending a couple hundred circles of various scale through the sim and then applying a simple choker to the comp they were nested in. I expanded the choke and then set a tint or fill over the top.

If I were to start that fluid example from scratch again, I'd probably opt for a fluid sim in an actual 3D package since you'd get better results quicker and you'd have more control.

Your arms are moving on some nice arcs. But your legs are really poppy towards the end of the loop. The head seems to move at the same rate of the arms and it’s making it feel robotic. When humans run there’s an up and down motion of the whole body. Like so: walk cycle If you’ve don’t have the Animators Survial Kit by Richard Willams, I highly recommend buying it in some form. Amazon link to paperbackIt has all sorts of useful information.

overall its a solid start. you just need to brush up on the 12 principles of animation.

hope it helps!

First time posting, this is my Lazy Lighthouse, part of a personal project where I make buildings. This image was initially made in Adobe Illustrator, I took it into After Effects to animate, then Photoshop to export as a GIF.

I had a heck of a lot of trouble with the windows where the clouds pass through, if anyone has tips on dithering I'm open to hearing them!

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it. I definitely want to keep it under a minute. I have watched wayyyyyyy too many reels that are far too long. It's kind of hard because I am trying to show a lot of work, from a variety of projects (there are very little repeats actually). The NY to LA clip itself is from this project, if you are interested-- https://vimeo.com/91336407 (not a lot of motion work here, sadly)

this will do you wonders in animation: https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=216PKFT03A0F3&amp;keywords=animators+survival+kit&amp;qid=1663944522&amp;sprefix=animators+survival+ki%2Caps%2C120&amp;sr=8-1

That's what drawing tablets are and they aren't actually that difficult to work with. It has a small learning curve, but you get used to it pretty quickly and there isn't really a lag from your laptop screen. This Wacom worked well for me through art school. It's small, portable, and everything you could need as a beginner.

Something to keep in mind is that the medium is only as good as you are.

I often spend long hours behind my desk, especially when deadlines are short. After a few years I started really feeling it in my wrist. I managed to pretty much stave off any issues, though, by changing my setup. What worked for me is to switch to a vertical mouse. Doesn't even have to be fancy, I tried a $10 one, pretty much like this one here.

It took me an hour or so to get used to it, but now I wouldn't go back to a regular mouse unless I absolutely had no other choice. I've not had a problem with my wrist ever since.

That might not be the panacea for you, of course, but don't underestimate how much a change of setup/equipment might help you. Try a few (cheap) options and see what works for you.

I do also agree with the other advise here about posture and positioning of your desk, chair, screen, all of that. Also don't neglect exercise. Stretching is also good, but think of it less as a solution and more of a prevention. If you're already feeling the pain, the stretch isn't going to do a hell of a lot.

I'm similar to you in age.

I'm similar to you in years of experience, give or take.

MY PERSONAL OPINION – which may not resonate with you – is to make your own short. This short could literally be anything that is right up your alley. It could be character. It could be a fake title sequence for a non-existent show/ movie. It could be an ALT fan-art title sequence to an existent show/ movie. It can be a music video. It can be a short narrative. It can be a series of 20 experimental VFX films.

Basically you're in a great position to take ALL THE SKILLS YOU HAVE ACQUIRED... and if you're ready to go for it... JUST SEE WHAT YOU CREATE ON YOUR OWN.

The reason I say to go for this is, no one in our field cares about degrees. We DO care about portfolio.

Maybe this book might even give you some... pointers? Or help whittle things down for you?

Art &amp; Fear, by David Bayles

Within your context, they refer to the same thing. But personally when I think of a mockup I think of something like this or this.

oh dude yes! lot of 1984 references in the entire project, I havent read or watched it, so I might get on that for inspiration.

Team leader person wants it to be quite dark in nature, kind of like Patrick Claires Division piece (https://vimeo.com/68215272). Recon thats doable for something 30's and dystopian? Im only really a beginner in after effects so I'd have to make a simpler, shorter version.

Thanks for the help though!

Thanks! I've been working with animation for about 13 years now.

I think the best way to start working with 3D coming from 2D animation would be basic modelling. You can download Blender for free, and follow a few beginner tutorials:

https://www.blender.org/

Thanks for the tip Jacob. About a month after I released this piece BLACKMEAL released something far better: https://vimeo.com/62452169

Long story short, I have some idea of things I'd do differently. Toning down/eliminating film grain would be one of them.

Everyone probably feels your dissatisfied sentiment about Adobe for one reason or another. There really isn't one tool that encompasses everything that After Effects can do so to find decent alternative options your probably going to be switching to multiple different programs just to replace After Effects for Motion Graphics. For 2d shape animations specifically I've heard and seen great things come out of a new software called Cavalry It's shaping up to be an even more powerful tool than After Effects for 2D animation. For compositing and other types of Motion Graphics maybe DaVinci Resolve would be a good replacement, specifically the Fusion Panel.

Sure thing! I'm by no means an expert or even competent with this stuff haha. I just posted on another comment some tut recommendations. If you have questions you think I'd be helpful with answering or anything else just message me. 👍

That's still way more than double the average: http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Motion+Designer&amp;l1=Los+Angeles

So yeah, they're at the top of the field for sure.

(Or you're mixing up hourly and salary, which is OP's mistake as well.)

awesome! would you mind sharing how to do it? when trying to put the puppet created with rubberhose on Newton it just shows errors!

Also would love to know more about how you did this https://dribbble.com/shots/1427186-Fluid?list=show trying to figure out how you did the circle, seems like trim paths but they also don't work on newton afaik.

thanks!

It’s up to you, but Quickbooks sounds like overkill for your purposes. For expenses, you can just use a spreadsheet. To keep receipts, save your digital ones as PDFs and scan your print ones. I like using the Fujitsu Snapscan S1300i for this because it has automatic OCR (optical character recognition) and turns all text into live text and outputs searchable PDFs.

There’s a number of online invoicing apps. I use Nutcache.com for invoicing because it USED to be free for years—until it suddenly wasn’t. By then all my invoices were already on there so now I pay for it. Do some googling and find the best option for you.

that's a good point - I think its really important to discuss work and getting solid feedback like yours is invaluable!

thanks for the compliment! If you're interested I used some brush packs from this dude: https://gumroad.com/kyletwebster

It should be available in 1080 because I uploaded it like this. But I know, if you try to download it via Youtube, it might be possible that you only can download 720.

But to be sure, just grab it at https://gumroad.com/l/vhs_video_clip (just type in zero if you "buy" it. You can also use a fake name...

if it was one of the official videos from the advertisement for the game they all can be found here on the official website : http://www.thinkwithportals.com/media_19.php

as well as 3 full albums of soundtracks for free...

I do a lot of AE and C4D and I use one of these. Does everything I need with little fuss. C4D renders tend to be an overnight thing. I've had it 3 years and it runs well if you keep maintaining it proper.

Hello, NCH Software has VideoPad Video Editor and PhotoStage Slideshow maker that you may find useful. Check them out: VideoPad: http://www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/index.html PhotoStage: http://www.nchsoftware.com/slideshow/index.html

Lot's of great work!

• However, a reel should always start and finish with your absolute top notch stuff. I'd swap the first scene out with one of your other ones. On second viewing I see it says Showreel, but that's not were your eyes are drawn. Also the colour scheme don't work very well in my opinion. And also don't like the lighting, texturing or render (sorry, if a bit harsh).

• That said I love some of your other stuff! The spiral at 08, and the tractor are awesome. So is the drone shot at 0:19. MAybe start with that? The next scene 0:21 is a nice breather and brings colours and some fun animation. Nice. The Santa Maria stuff is all pretty good - personally I'd like to see a little more scratches in the plastic (roughness if you're using c4d).

• The stuff from 0:40 is all pretty dope and nicely edited. I'd try and move this entire sequence a little earlier in the piece, and remove some of the first Santa Maria-stuff). Also the spice-in-the-air scene looks fantastic and could be a good ending.

• Why is the coke piece so short? It's a super powerful brand - and if you've done something official for them I'd defenately give that some more attention. If you've only done it like a personal project I'd still consider giving it a little more time. Regardless you can still change it now spesificaly for your reel as a " director's cut version".

• IF colour isn't your strong suit try using https://color.adobe.com/nb/explore/?filter=most-popular&amp;time=month Or simply steel something from Rembrandt, Van Gogh or whatever

Great job, keep it up!

That seems to be the general feel I'm getting from this thread. Do you have any good recommendations for the best graphic design schools? I'm thinking maybe ringling still because they have a really good graphic design program, and then I could possibly take a few of their motion design courses as well.

Usually to get into art school for illustration you have to be able to draw, which I absolutely can not do for the life of me :/

I'm good at creating vector illustrations (stuff like this in like illustrator for UI design but drawing is just not something I'm good at at all.

if you are interested in doing motion graphics for live electronic shows check out the software resolume as well as beeple.

if you don't end up doing live shows - the things you learn in the process will definitely position you for a job in the future doing stuff you like (interactive installations / projection mapping / motion design.)

You can also try mPeg stream clip. It compresses in batches so you can do multiple files, it's free, and super easy to use! Highly recommend it. http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Jesus what did they do to you? if you need a compositing program try Nuke. You also wont have to pay that shady Adobe monthly fee - you can buy it all at once and keep it forever!

https://www.foundry.com/products/nuke/try-nuke

Look into Black Magic Fusion, too. They have a free version that's nearly feature complete with the paid version. It is a node compositor but it includes plenty of motion graphics capabilities as well.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion

I first started looking at it to create proper fluid volumetric smoke simulations, instead of using something like particular in After Effects. Then looked at how you can influence Thinking Particle sims using TFD - and got some really nice results (some early tests - https://vimeo.com/30667187)

I think TFD could grow into something a lot bigger, I don't know maybe Maxon will buy it, like they did with Py4D. The developer (jawset) should look at adding water simulation to the plugin also.

oh it's good for explosions too :-)

Close, its a displacer deformer with an animated noise texture driving it.

Here is the project file if you're interested.

This is an incredibly useful resource written by the creator of School of Motion. It does a great job of showing you the business side of being a freelancer.

the freelance manifesto

Also to add to this point, if it is client work on your reel then mention it, add a little lower third to every piece saying what you did, who you did it for and maybe what software you used, its good to have personal projects in your work especially when its at the level you are producing it!
But people do like to see that you have worked professionally.

CV.

Have you read the freelance manifesto?
I feel it would be perfect for someone at your point in your carrer.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Freelance-Manifesto-Modern-Motion-Designer/dp/1619616718/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=&amp;sr=

This book really is incredible when it comes to finding studios and work and taking those next steps when you feel like otherwise you are shooting in the dark, Ive read it my self and would reccomend it to almost any motion designer who has not read it.

Its not just about freelancing solo ether, also talks about getting into studios as a freelancer which is far better than being on staff as far as pay and flexiblity goes.

Is yours relative to this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089NZCLHW?pf_rd_r=397JS7KYZ1S6W2DVBZXK&amp;pf_rd_p=5ae2c7f8-e0c6-4f35-9071-dc3240e894a8&amp;pd_rd_r=4d172767-5098-408f-9106-d0d1c9f07921&amp;pd_rd_w=T2R9S&amp;pd_rd_wg=DmWZV&amp;ref_=pd_gw_unk

&#x200B;

I'm sort of on a budget, as I've spent money on other upgrades as well, but I want to upgrade from my current dual 24" monitors. I've thought about the curved ultrawides, but I work heavily in AE, as well as Unity, C4D, and the Creative Suite and I'm accustom to quickly double clicking to maximize the interface on 1 screen and then place all my tools, menus, and Chrome on the other. Even though I like the idea of having an extra long timeline, I feel like I'm going to spend a lot of time getting the windows adjusted on a single ultrawide to match that of the dual screen setup.

Depends on the location and client. I charge anywhere from $75 to $100 dollars an hour. But you should be making over 100k a year (if you can hustle and network). That may be unrealistic considering covid and the current economy.

However, here is one way to get an estimate. How much do you need to live for a year? Figure out these things for a year:

Rent / mortgage Food Medical Internet Phone Car Clothing Gifts Spotify Netflix Water, gas, electric Savings Vacation Emergency

Figure out how much all this is a year, divide by 12 (months), divide by 30 (days), divide by 8 (hours). This will give you a starting point. If you think it’s too little add more.

I suggest this book for figuring out your MoGraph life.

The Freelance Manifesto: A Field Guide for the Modern Motion Designer https://www.amazon.com/dp/1619616718/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_b1bMFbJG91D6P

Check out this book, it covers how to calculate your rate and a ton of other super helpful things for designers. Talent is Not Enough Business Secrets for Designers

I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you're looking for correctly, but I think maybe this book could be helpful.

I'm not surprised that you're not finding anything very comprehensive through google. These kind of fundamental topics are not really done well in free tutorial videos, imo.

I like the idea and your animation but I think you should include some sort of identifier with the animation. I consider myself a rap fan, but I never would have known what song this was supposed to be from if you hadn't posted it in the comments. It looked to me like Mr.T at the bottom right stacking hamburgers with his friends. I don't think the Rej3ctz are that recognizable (assuming that's what the character models were based off of, or maybe you just randomly created those three gentlemen to represent your lyric). I feel that if you had SpongeBob at the top of that ladder instead, I would have caught on to the lyric. Maybe this will help as a reference. Take or leave what I said, but either way keep up the good work.