in this video I'm gonna share with you five tips to help you learn motion design and animation
before we even make into the list I wanna make it clear up
front you did not need to go to art school or college or university to learn
motion design there's honestly much better resources online so don't worry
number five focus on one thing at a time motion design is a really broad
discipline that covers design illustration animation editing VFX
compositing there's so many things and it can be really overwhelming to kind of
be expected to master all of them especially at once I find you can start
to spread yourself a little too thin when trying to learn all these things at
once and you don't end up seeing any progression at all and either one of
them because it's so small and the worst thing about that is it can be motivating
to not see any results I'd say to focus on one thing for a short medium period
of time obviously the longer the better but I'd say a month is a good place to
start I just focus on to let's say designing an illustrator for one month
and then the next month you focus on typography and you do that for 12 months
and at the end of the year you're gonna have 12 skills that you've spent a
significant amount of time learning and that's gonna add up to a more
significant progress than just learning a different thing every day it doesn't
mean you can't learn other things during those periods but having one key thing
to focus on I think can really help and each one of those months can be a little
brick that you can start building your motion design house with number 4 have a
structure having a structure I think is the biggest indicator of whether or not
you gonna be successful in learning a new skill you could enroll in a course
or you could try to create a little course to yourself perhaps by collecting
20 tutorials on that subject matter and maybe a few podcasts from artists you
like in that area and then maybe assigning is off to short assignments to
maybe make two little looping gifts using those skills I do think an already
prepared course it's probably a better way to go but those of course vary in
how long they are and how much they are as well but one of their main benefits
is there'll be a nice linear progression where they start you out with the most
important information that's the simplest and it'll slowly get more
difficult and you'll be constantly tested on this new skill and this videos
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three focus on the fundamentals the fundamentals of any practice I think the
most important thing for any motion designer to have in almost all of my
commercial projects that I've worked on 80% of what I've done is just keyframing
the position the scale and the rotation in After Effects maybe shape path that is
by far the vast majority of what I spend my time doing so take time to learn
those it's gonna be far more useful than let's say the tempting new plugin that
adds all these you know particle systems and new shiny effects those are of
course more tempting but I think it's important to have your vegetables
understand the very basics and the fundamentals the 12 principles of
animation are a really good thing to focus on when I first heard about them I
dismissed them completely I thought this is not relevant to me at all I want to
be doing modern 2d motion design this stuff is only for traditional animators
animating Disney films by hand and that is not the case these principles can be
applied to every single project and everything you do After Effects and
motion design but understanding these and figuring out how to implement them
in my workflow with absolutely the biggest increase in skills that I've had
in my career number two follow your interests this might seem a bit at odds
with the last point but I think it is important to not get too dogmatic about
any of this the main reason to follow your interests and passions is that
you're gonna be more motivated and the more motivated you are the more you're
gonna learn if you're currently obsessed with a certain look or a certain skill
you want to learn go for it and dive into it
I think it's important to balance that out
learning the fundamentals of course but if you really enjoy it go do it
your own curiosity and the elements you choose to obsess over are really what's
going to paint a picture of you in your motion design career your unique variety
of skills is going to flavor all of your work and it's going to make it a lot
easier to find work that you want to do in the future
number one don't forget about design design is more important than animation
the more I learn about animation the more I understand that if the design
isn't good the animation won't be good you can put the wildest animation crazy
cell transitions and everything but if the structural elements aren't designed
well it's gonna look crap it's much better to have a really well thought out
design and then only have some subtle simple animations that's going to make
for a much more impactful scene of course great design and great
animation is the best combination but in every project you're going to have to
choose how much time you spend in design versus animation I think more time spent
in design is a better investment and the more time you spend in the design the
less you're gonna have to sell that concept in animation because if the
design is good you won't need much animation to keep people entertained and
hold their attention the design will do that all on its own I do think though
the design is a much harder skill to learn mainly because it's more
subjective and artistic I guess and whereas animation is a little more
technical maybe just starting out in design I think focusing on hierarchy and
structure composition and maybe column lighting are the best places to focus on
with the design the more you understand and implement those the better
everything you make is going to be I've made a short playlist of some related
videos they'll think you'll enjoy if you've made it this far and please
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Subtitle: Zoe J Marriott