How to Become a Good Motion Designer

Found on my friend Nikko's blog, here’s a short video by Nick Campbell, who works at Digital Kitchen. In it, he explains everything you need to learn to become a good motion designer — how to learn it, how to promote yourself, find a job, and get paid:

Nick Campbell
How to Be A Motion Designer and GET PAID

There’s a lot of interesting and accurate advice in there, so here’s a quick, non-exhaustive summary for those who don’t speak English.

The Basics

• Beyond the software, foundational concepts such as typography, color, and other “school fundamentals” are essential before mastering the technical tools.
• Typography is everywhere in motion design.

Always Accept Criticism

• Ask for feedback from friends and teachers. After looping your animation endlessly in a project, you lose all objectivity about your work. A critical and neutral eye is invaluable.
• Remember, clients are clients — they’ll always want a ton of changes and will never be fully satisfied ;) Don’t take their feedback personally. If a client doesn’t like your animation, they’re not criticizing you. Accept to adjust until the client is happy. It may end up less beautiful than what you envisioned, but hey — you’ll have a job ;)
• If you want to make cool, creative projects no one can criticize because they’re totally free, do them — but do them at home :)

Work on Very Short Projects

• Create lots of animations — 5 seconds, 10 seconds long…
• Every weekend, set a small goal — a new technique to explore.
• Your demo reel will be much richer with 20 different 5-second clips than with a single 3-minute one that took you the same amount of time to make ;)

Promote Yourself — The Internet Is the Best Way to Sell Your Work

• "What do I think is the best way to market yourself? WEBSITES!" And I couldn’t agree more :)
• It’s so much easier to click a link and watch a reel than to insert a DVD ;) When you update your reel online, it’s instant — no need to resend dozens of DVDs two months later.

When Creating Your Website, Nick’s Key Tips:

• Keep your demo reel short (no more than one minute, especially for students).
• Make it easy to update, with a simple site designed to drive as much traffic as possible.
• No need to build a complex Flash site — always slow and hard to update. A clean, simple HTML site that’s easy to maintain will be far more effective in keeping your latest work visible.
  “When people visit your site, they don’t want to see your web design. They want to see your demo reel, and your email.”

Meet People

• Meet lots of people who share your interests.
• Designers, animators, and others in your field — they can recommend you to their clients. A huge part of work comes from word-of-mouth and personal recommendations ;)
• How to meet them? Through motion design communities (mograph.net, motionographer.com, etc.), conferences, and blogs!

"Be Cool. Be Passionate."

Thanks, Nick, for this great and inspiring presentation!