Motion Graphic Assets are one of the uttermost essential needs for everyone, whether it’s a Large Organization or a Small Startup or even people who are Content Creators for living. If you’re in the designing Industry and want to make it big in here, Motion Graphic Designing is something worth pursuing for every Graphic Designer. This segment in the market has endless Demand and Supply chain because from brand endorsement to Digital Marketing everything requires a graphic asset which is the face of the brand or whatever you’re highlighting through it. Now what better than animated graphic assets which are more interesting to look at and gain quick popularity with ease. I’m going to assume that the you’re already passionate about Motion Graphics and know what you’re doing. So, the real question that arises is…
Where to start from? and What tools to use?
Well to start off its pretty simple I’d say. Animation is that type of Art which is not complex once you the key to do it properly which obviously comes from experience and right exposure. If you’re a rookie and want to create your portfolio start off with basic animations in Adobe After Effects. The tool looks like it has a complicated workspace but if you experiment the software for around an hour or two, you’ll the get knack to use it. Begin with shapes transforming to different size or syncing with the background and keep experimenting with it a few times until you get bored of the animation. Now modify it a little bit start off by adding minute detailing like tiny moving particles or background color switch with respect to your shapes transformation. Soon you’ll get the idea of making a smooth animation and now you just have to exploring your creative brain until you hit an idea to design something like this ⬇
If this looks too complicated don’t worry the software that you’re using also seemed to be very complicated when you started off as a novice. Just be invested enough in the design that you’re able to analyze the design and break it down into pieces before you start designing it.
A good designer is always a good analyst.
—Anonymous
Finally, if you’ve designed something like this you now know how to create clean and smooth animations. Nevertheless, great designs people would love to watch on loop. Keep making few more designs but now design objects with effects and relate to real world or look less superficial from the ones you designed before. Now this part is highly essential to understand because in the end the Motion Graphic Videos you’d design for anyone are selling/endorsing their Image through it thus, it needs to relate to the real world. Get on with a 3D Perspective now, understand the use of Camera’s and its parameters. If I sum up all of this together it gives you a straight outcome of making something like this ⬇
Now this looks pretty basic but it’s much more realistic from previous one. It’s still combination of multiple shapes just combined to create something realistic. Before, we added particles and similar stuff for detailing now we add dust animation near the tires of the car which makes it much more realistic. Surely it needs an engaging selling point so we should prioritize fiction more than realism and add that little hand to make it look interesting. Keep practicing and experimenting until you successfully design 2 to 3 such designs that would look good for your portfolio. Now I assume you’ve quite mastered these design patterns and made some creative designs so, we shall move to something more advanced from it.
The Elite Alphabet Art proudly presented as “Typography”
Typography is another essential part of a good Motion Graphic video. Usually, two-word headlines speak a lot more about the brand than a brief stanza in a static image i.e. Banners or Posters. First off start making Kinetic Typography Videos for your portfolio. Kinetic basically just means moving text to express an idea inside a video, just like in the gif above you can see how a word turns into a much more meaningful definition just by redefining its position with a smooth animation. Think of ideas how you can put the right effect on the right text and make its effort more meaningful. Start making prototypes for ads of random products. For reference purposes analyze the trailers and product launch videos of Apple. Start working on such relevant ideas and you’ll be good to go. There’s not much to explain a view point or a specific technique here but one can use their own creativity completely to design as creative as possible. A few healthy tips for typographic videos would be to use simpler font effects with smoother graph styles with regarding the keyframes, use Sans-Serif Fonts while designing such videos. Sync the motion with the audio, the part of audio syncing is not complex but might get Time consuming to gain perfection.
How important are “Effect Parameters“ of any video effect?
Before going further ahead with your portfolio its time you should get used to picking the accurate values for the effect parameters. Using the right effect at the right time is important but the right effect intensity defines its impact overall and solely decides how interesting your design is. Every effect has various parameters by now if you have designed anything that I’ve mentioned above you might have gotten the idea of how important it is to scale an element to its appropriate level or moving an element at a specific time so that 2 elements don’t collide and make a mess in your design.
A slight change in values of effect parameters can make a lot of positive or negative difference in your design. From the example mentioned above you can see how several parameters set at a specific value can make unique combination. If you understand this part carefully then you’ve mostly mastered something people waste a lot of time on that to at crucial times and make a huge mess. So just keep experimenting with the values and see what combination fits for your design. As time would pass and you would gain experience it’ll be a lot easier and quick to pick out the right values for keyframes of effects and its respective parameters.
Using Real life footage to design Motion Graphics Videos.
Now let’s come back to reality and implement whatever you’ve learnt in actual footage. If you’re a freelancer and strictly don’t work for a specific organization you’d probably have switch between complete Animated Videos and VFX Video like shown below.
So, it’s always better to have a video which has a base clip as camera recorded footage. Real Life Footage (RLF) unlocks countless opportunities for you to design your video and take it to the next level. Using a professional stock footage for making portfolio designs is always the best idea for anybody. If you’re in cinematography and come from a film making background you might record your own footage and mention that to show off your skills and make your portfolio more impressive. Learn to use Motion Tracking for better impression as well as makes your video look more memorable and satisfying to watch on repeat. Use Shake and Wiggle Effects in combination with the primary effect you’re using to make it look for real. Color grade the video accordingly and make it livelier. RLF is your chance to show off every skill you ever have by designing the perfectly detailed video.
Completing your portfolio with everything.
By now I’ve pretty much covered everything and you just need to play around with your ideas and design creative assets. Ideate your thoughts and every design is relevant until you’re designing something that’ll help you get you a job in this industry. The topics I mentioned above are just to give a basic idea about how to start with making a portfolio. You can have your own research regarding your expertise about what you specifically want to design in Motion Graphics, because Typography or Shape Sliding Videos are just vague topics to cover. Define your work to Industry Grade to show you have the idea of what you’re doing and this also shows you have good exposure.
