“My heart is in the work”
Andrew Carnegie
In My design journey: 40+ useful resources & tools that help me daily, I explained how I went from a total noob to making motion designs.
What is motion design or motion graphics?
It’s about making graphic and typographic elements move around. Making animations out of these elements and telling a story or sending a message through these visual, moving objects. I’ve grown a lot since my first motion design and below are 3 ways learning to make motion design changed my mindset for the better.
3 ways learning to make motion designs changed my mindset for the better
1. I went from thinking “shmuck! This is impossible” to thinking “Hey this is so cool! Oh this is possible? How can I make this happen too?”
One of my toughest battles with Adobe Illustrator last year was drawing things and struggling to colour them only to find it “impossible” to colour because I didn’t close my shape paths (argh!). The same thing sort of happened with After Effects. The entire interface was intimidating but the more I practised (and the more YouTube videos I watched), the better I got. I didn’t have enough skills yet but seeing people animate things changed my mindset on what was doable and what was not. I’ve carried that same mindset of seeing possibilities in impossibilities into many other aspects of life.
2. After Effects will humble you and teach you patience
And with patience comes consistency in practice. With practice comes growth. Growth and time bring with them new discoveries. Discovery leads to creating magical things, and with that comes success which people think happened overnight. Whereas there was an entire process to it.
3. The value graph in After Effects is like the 20% effort that gets you 80% of the results
Being able to manipulate and adjust the bezier handles in the speed or value graph in After Effects is the small but mighty effort that gives my entire motion design that extra oomph and makes it look dope and exquisite! So when I work, I always wonder mhmm, how can I work smarter and what is that small but mighty task that may determine much more in my entire project? You should often ask yourself this too when working on any project.
Check out more of my designs either on Instagram @miras.view or my design page.