Motion Design: Where To Start?

hi welcome back to our channel for those who are new here i am marvinta i own a motion design studio based in the philippines and i'm also the creative director and today in this video i'm going to share with you some sort of road map if you want to get into motion design how i'm going to divide this video is first we are going to discuss the different roles in a motion design project and then i'm going to share with you what i think and believe that what each of those roles need to learn to be effective and then lastly i'm going to share resources where you could learn them from oh before we begin in the description there is some sort of table of contents so you could just click on the link and it would go forward in time in this video to the specific information that you would want okay so let's get to it so in a motion design project uh the very first thing that we would need is the script so that's one role that you could partake in to be a scriptwriter so explainer videos need script and commercial some of the commercials would also need a script a key term here that you could search for if you're interested to be a scriptwriter for motion is copywriting once the script is ready the next step would be the storyboard so basically a storyboard is just draft drawings uh that would help the client or the team this could also be used for internal use in the studio to help the team visualize how the video would go about so these are just draft drawings so that could be a rule for you to be a storyboard artist so once the storyboard is done what we would need next is the design the one in the storyboard is not the final look and feel of the video it's just a sketch draft so what we would need now is the actual look and feel the design the term here if you want to take this row is a designer part also of a designer's job is style frame so what is a style frame so basically what the style frames are you take that design and you apply that to the rest of the frames in the storyboard those are the style frames so depending on the project depending on the studio that would approach you sometimes you'll get projects that you'd only do the design and the style frames are done by a different designer or an in-house designer meaning a designer that works in that studio so sometimes you would only do the design sometimes you don't do the design you just do the style frames or sometimes you do both once we have the style frames the next step for this is uh to animate them the style frames would now be passed on to the animator so this could be a role that you'd be interested in to be an animator and there are a lot of different kinds of animator for one thing you could be a character animator where you animate characters or you could do motion graphics or you could also do visual effects or vfx as a character animator you could also be a frame by frame animator so the execution of this could be different uh it could be 2d meaning is it done by cut out so the difference between a cut out animation and frame by frame animation is a cut out is you get the illustration file you have the character design and then you splice the different parts and apply a rigging to it so you would animate the rig the other way to animate characters is to do it frame by frame next i'm going to discuss with you the different skills that i think each of those roles should learn i'm not ever gonna focus on copywriting and sound design because those are not my specialty i'm gonna focus uh with the roles that i'm most familiar with and which i interact with on a day-to-day basis um so uh let's get to it so as a storyboard artist um the skills that you need to learn are first basic design principles like how to use contrast to tell a story another skill that you need to learn is perspective and you might be wondering um but what if my style is flat then i don't need perspective uh well here's the thing you still need perspective because once you learn perspective you would know which rules to break and trust me this is going to give you an edge compared to other storyboard artists another thing that you would also need to learn is how to create visually interesting compositions and here's a skill that a storyboard artist should have is being able to create boards or frames that are coherent so you need to draw in a sequence that is coherent that frame one and frame two and frame 3 that they are related and that they would flow well now let's go to design as a designer what are the skills that you need to learn as a design and storyboard they are similar they have a similar skill set the only difference is as a storyboard artist uh you don't need to do the final render that is the the designer's job but basically if you analyze both of them they are very similar and they need or the skills that you need to learn in storyboard you also need to learn in in design so as a designer you need to learn the basic fundamentals of design so you need this more so than a storyboard artist would because now you are going to create the actual design you also need to learn perspective in the same way a sorbet artist would need to learn perspective and you also need to learn how to use colors um how to pick colors that are in harmony with each other um so you need to learn color theory if you're also going to do design another thing that you also need to learn is a basic typography because if you are going to design for commercials most likely you would encounter needing to design frames with text and having knowledge with basic in typography would help you a lot um another thing is to design for motion sometimes we design for for still like for print it's different when we design for motion because now we have to to think about how these things would move so it needs uh to be dynamic uh another branch of design another role that you could take is to be a character designer so what are the skills that you need to learn if you want to be a character designer so first and foremost you would need to learn the basic in human anatomy and proportion another skill that you would need to learn is perspective so you might be wondering i'm making characters and not buildings uh why do i need perspective well here's the thing a human body uh our skull you know our face exists in the 3d space even though we're going to look at it in a 2d or look look at it in a screen the human figure itself is exist in the 3d space and we need to communicate that and you need to still learn perspective and you also need to learn how to place your characters in perspective like if it's a high angle shot or low angle how would the character look like in those angles so you still need to learn perspective if you are going to be a character designer you also need to learn how to pose your characters in a dynamic way next i'm going to discuss being a character animator so if you are going to be a character animator you need to know how the body works our articulation you need to do to know uh how the movement of our arms uh the limit of of our movement so even if you're not gonna design characters you're just gonna animate them you need to know still the basics in human anatomy and proportions you need to know how our body would move another thing that you need to learn as character animator is you also need the skill to post your characters in a dynamic way now we could do character animation either in frame by frame or 2d cut out cut cut out so if it's going to be 2d cut out you need to learn how to use after effects there's also other software you could achieve this like toon boom and animate but what you need to learn is you need to learn the skills in rigging if you're going to want the more traditional route in character animation then you need to learn how to animate these in frame by frame so as motion graphics animator you would need to learn after effects for 2d or other similar software that can do 2d motion graphics now if you're going to do 3d cinema 4d is a software that you should learn if you are in the visual effects route or vfx you would also need to learn after effects or other software that is similar to it and within after effects there's a wide array of different plugins made by third parties and um one plug-in that i know of that you could do for vfx is trapcode it's just one of them there are a lot that you could learn in this role and you also need to learn how to composite a green screen and how to composite it to add graphics to it next i'm going to explain or show you where you can learn this from i'm first going to discuss with you the different uh websites uh or places you could learn this from and next the specific links all of the the links that i would mention in the uh resources i'm gonna link in the description below so where can you learn this from okay first you can learn this from a traditional school so if you are in the third world country um sad to say the schools would probably not catch up with industry standards just yet i don't know if that is the same with first world education i haven't tried yet but here especially in our city it's there's just a big gap uh if you want to go into uh motion design but there are now that's one way to learn motion design is to go to a traditional school but i wouldn't recommend it especially if you are in a third world country um the next place that you could learn it from is youtube uh there are a lot of channels that are also really great that you could learn from another place that you could learn uh this from all those skills i've mentioned is skillshare skillshare is a marketplace or a platform and it's subscription you pay monthly and you get access to a wide array of different teachers i for one teaches also on skillshare so for a monthly subscription you get access to all of the teachers who teach us on skillshare so you just choose a class once you have a subscription just choose a class and then take it another place where you could learn this from is school of motion school of motion is like um a traditional school but it's online it's like it revolutionized the traditional art school so think of it like they sell courses and these courses each of those courses would last about eight to twelve weeks and we've tried some of those courses and they've helped a lot they've helped us a lot in school of motion think of it like it's a mentorship program because there's a teacher there's a set of lessons that is worth uh eight to 12 weeks and you will be assigned to a teaching assistant where that teaching assistant would give feedback on your homework so it's really a great place to to learn another place to learn this from is motion design school in motion design school so they have similar names so we might be confused one is school of motion another the other uh another the other company is motion design school so motion design school they sell individual classes so they are like skillshare but it's not subscription they sell the classes separately the difference between motion design school and school of motion is in school of motion you could think of it like it's a full-blown course that would last eight to twelve weeks in motion design school the classes would last about one week um but the prices also would reflect that um in school of motion it's a bit more expensive than motion design school but you would also learn uh more because there's more content it's nine to 12 weeks worth of content in scope motion whereas in motion design school it's about what one week worth of content another place is a mograph mentor with mograph mentor they have this both models where they sell classes separately and they also have a mentorship program that would last about 9 to 12 weeks another place that you could learn this from is the future so the future their model is like a blend of skillshare a blend of school of motion and a blend of motion design school so what do i mean by this they have one course uh the business boot camp that would last about nine weeks or so they also sell a variety of different classes separately they also sell different templates and workbooks and frameworks and they also have a subscription type where you pay a subscription and you become part of this pro group and the difference between mograph mentor and the future is the future they're not only uh teaching creative skills but they also teach business skills so as a creative if you want to pursue this career and you are a freelancer you could also think of yourself as a business right and we don't know business naturally right and what the future does is they teach people the business side of the creative uh the creative path so they teach both creative skills and business skills um another place that you could learn all of these i just recently found out about this a creature art teacher um they are like motion design school where they sell different classes but they focus more on painting they uh drawing they focus more on drawing instead of of animation motion design school is focused on motion design whereas the creature art teacher focuses on concept art um drawing and painting and last but not the least uh where you could learn all of this from is from books uh so we're going to go each of those skills mentioned and i'm gonna now share specific uh classes and links that might help you so let's go to perspective so if you wanna learn perspective i recommend the book uh the art of perspective and growing perspective methods for artists if you are going to want to learn more about human anatomy and proportions there's this book by andrew lumis figure drawing and aaron blaze teaches a class called drawing human anatomy i have taken that class and it has also helped me with my drawing skills and if you you don't have a budget and uh you can't afford uh these classes you could also go to youtube and there's this channel of search him up proco who teaches the basic anatomy and proportions of the human body now uh if you want to learn storyboarding sarah beth morgan teaches a skillshare class about storyboarding for animation now if you want to read a book to learn more about compositions i would recommend frame inc now if you want to learn more about design school of motion has a course on design called design kickstart this is meant for beginners and if you are more advanced meaning you already know the basic fundamentals of design and you want to improve your skills further then school of motion has another course called design boot camp and school of motion has another course illustration for motion which is taught by sarah beth morgan so how do you choose which platform to to choose from uh so that would depend on the teacher so some of this teacher they teach on on motion design school some some of them teach on school of motion and some of them teach on skillshare or or they teach on skillshare and they also teach on school motion so what i would advise is um which platform to go from is to look for the teacher that you resonate with so wherever they they are in the platform if you resonate with those teacher then you take that class wherever that platform is so going back uh another uh thing that we you could learn from if you are looking to improve your design is uh the future has this class called style frames taught by matthew and cena which teaches you how to create these style frames and uh in mograph mentor there's this class mastering character design if you want to improve your character design now for colors if you want to improve your colors future teaches a class called callers for creatives taught by greg gunn and there's a skillshare class by victor nae which the title is called color master class now if you want to learn more about typography the future the future.com has a typography class taught by christo now if you want to learn more about frame by frame animation we have a frame by frame class that is meant for beginners and we have also a class that teaches you how to animate walk cycle frame by frame another class that you could look into if you want if you're interested in frame by frame animation is the hand effects course or class found in motion design school and if you are looking for a book for frame by frame animation there's uh i would recommend the animator survival kit now if you want to learn 2d character animation school of motion has this course the character animation boot camp now for motion graphics uh there's a youtube channel by ben mariot uh look him up he has a lot of tips and tricks in after effects and in motion graphics jake bartlett also teaches a lot of classes in skillshare about after effects now if you want to learn cinema 4d school of motion motion design school and mograph mentor has a lot of classes in that topic now if you want to learn visual effects school of motion has a course called vfx for motion so that's it i hope you uh you learned something uh today and i hope i pointed you to the right direction and i hope you'll you'll start learning if uh you think that motion design is for you again i'm going to link link everything in the description below if you like this video please don't forget to subscribe and give us thumbs up and leave some comments or if you have further questions uh we'll try our best to to answer them and that's it thank you for watching and see you on the next video um

Channel: Plainly Simple

Views: 105,296

Keywords: motion design, motion graphics, motion designer, mograph, after effects, animation, 2d animation, traditional animation, skillshare, where to learn motion design, graphic design, learn motion graphics, motion design inspiration, after effects motion graphics

Id: bKxuon6iGhg

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020