The face of design is changing and the fear of becoming outdated or obsolete becomes ever more apparent for developing designers. With the ever expanding techniques involved in all areas of design becoming larger and larger the traditional skills required by the average designer aren't going to be enough to cut it in the not too distant future. We are starting to see a shift towards more technical skills becoming commonplace in branding outcomes, things like 3D implications, motion graphics, illustration and bespoke typography to name a few. This is a lot of technical knowledge for one person to obtain, especially to be able to do them all at a professional level.
This fear of becoming outdated as a designer has festered in my mind for some time now and I'm beginning to think of ways in which I can combat this looming fate. A skill I have thought about learning for a while now is motion graphics. I feel that this is a step into a whole new world of possibilities while maintaining transferable skills from my background in graphic design. As opposed to 3D design where the skills required are vastly different to that of my current skill set, I feel motion graphics plays more into my strengths. (Not to say I would rule out learning anything 3D in the future). Motion graphics is just one of many skills I plan on learning to help avoid becoming irrelevant in a more diverse design world.
Over the past few months I have become increasingly interested in animation and motion graphics. It's something that in the past has scared me because I had no idea how I would go about learning these skills or applying animation to my skillset. Also seeing some of the super high quality animations on Dribbble, Instagram and Pinterest makes the thought of even throwing your hat into the animation ring even more daunting. However, having seen a colleague who produces motion graphics at a professional level create some amazing things it inspired me to overcome the fear of trying and to begin dabbling in animation.
I wanted to write this post as both a time capsule to capture my progress and to track how I am (hopefully) improving as time goes on and to also inspire anyone who is considering taking up a new skill, like animation, to see that it's not as hard as it seems and given enough time and practice it can become a marketable asset and maybe even a bit of fun. Also, adding extra skills to your portfolio is a sure fire way of avoiding becoming obsolete.
An Intro to Motion Graphics
I began this campaign into motion graphics by asking my boss if they would help fund me learning this new skill. It's beneficial to the company to have me be a competent animator as I would be able to cover for my colleague if they were away or overloaded with work. Not only is it a benefit to the company but also myself as having this skill is something I can always have with me, wherever I go with my career. Quite fortunately my boss was more than happy to help support me in learning animation and has purchased an online course for me to complete and allowed me set time every week to work through it.
The course I am taking is one from Udemy called After Effects CC 2019: Complete Course from Novice to Expert, it's a very comprehensive course that covers the very basics all the way up to advanced level stuff. The teacher is very friendly, engaging and knowledgeable and moves at a suitable pace so that you can learn at a speed that best fits you. My only criticism of the course is that the teacher isn't the best at design, so I spend a lot of time thinking how I would make his examples look better rather than paying proper attention to the lectures. However, this is a small issue, as all of the examples he shows aren't to show off his creativity and he'll often encourage you to do better when you take on the tasks yourself.
As well as this course I have watched a few other tutorials on Youtube, which are a little more advanced, but give much more specific details on certain techniques. Below are a few links so that you can check these out for yourself.
Down and Dirty
Right, so you know what material I've been using to learn these skills but what have I managed to produce? Having gone through the basics of After Effects and learnt key elements such as easy ease, key framing paths, value and speed graph manipulation and pre-composing I thought I would try some character animation. The Udemy course I am taking doesn't really touch on character animation and is more aimed at motion graphics but I wanted to try my hand at character animation as it looks like a lot of fun and would test a lot of technical skill.
I thought I would start with something relatively simple and have a character playing the guitar, this would only require upper body movement and I could animate noodle like arms in a simple fashion. I could have created the character in Illustrator and then brought the elements into After Effects, but I wanted to practice building shapes and playing with shape layers in After Effects. The animation itself consists of a man strumming a guitar then rising up and then quickly crouching down to begin furiously playing the guitar (with some added fire in the background). Overall, not too tricky, it was simply a case of moving shape paths and keyframing them with small adjustments to the easy ease.
I learnt some important things to keep in mind for future animations while creating this animation. Firstly, I found out that it's paramount to know exactly what your animation is going to consist of, I found that I went into this animation with a general idea that he was going to play the guitar but not much else. I then continued to make it up as I went, which isn't the best workflow, a way to have avoided this would have been to create a simple storyboard. I guess I am used to flat design where you can sort of make it up as you go and make last minute changes however you see fit, but this work flow isn't ideal for animation as there are a lot of moving parts that need considering from the get go. The next thing I learnt was the importance of secondary movement, secondary movement is where something moves or reacts as a result of other movements, for example the bobbing of the guitar as it's played.
There are still places in this animation which require extra attention, including more movement on the guitar strap, more accurate hand movements and just some general tiding up. However, these all serve as learning points for me to improve upon as I continue to develop.
Having completed this simple animation it gave me the confidence to try some other animations applying the skills and lessons I learnt from this one. Below are the two animations I have created since. One takes a different approach and uses shape paths for limbs instead of strokes (Hellboy walk cycle) and the other is more in line with the guitar animation style (skateboarder). Both of these still require refinement but a obvious improvements from my first attempt.
I will continue to play around with motion graphics and character animation and hopefully keep improving. What's important to take away from this is that as a designer I am trying to diversify my skills and become a more valuable asset to any design team going forward. This isn't tied to just animation but any skills you can bring to your roll will put you above the next designer. Hopefully this has both inspired you to take up that skill you've been thinking of trying and given you a glimpse into the things I am learning and the progress I am making.
Let me know your thoughts on these animations and what skills you are developing.
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