Shape Studies

This is an ongoing project where I want to explore the simple shapes I work with all the time, and having some kind of restriction with my personal work helps me be creative.

I’ll be updating this project every now and then when I add to it, after all, if supposedly all things in life can be broken down into shapes then I’d better cozy up tot them.

Squares

For a client called "The Cubehouse" I was tasked with creating some case study material keeping in mind the prompt "creating new dimensions". In response I jumped at the chance to do some experimenting. Our perception of depth and what triggers that effect ended up grabbing my interest and suited the brief well.

As you can probably guess, the fourth and final video is one of the deliverables for the job, I chose to switch to grayscale for my own experiments because I don't want to muddy the effect for the proof of concept.

Circles

Needing some work that could pull my showreel together and finish it with a bang I wanted to return to the absolute basics for geometrically styled videos.

As i went on, it became harder and harder for me to constrain myself to just circles, basic geometric shapes are popular building blocks for very obvious reasons, and easy to work with from a technical perspective. I did run into some trouble on a few of the zoomed in shots, when the circles are cut off they transform into compositional elements only. Eventually though, with some styling and match cutting you can imply their form and let the universality of the shape do a lot of work for you.

Strokes

This is the first short in the series and I work with tapered strokes quite a lot, so it made sense to start with a strokes.

The final frames ended up completely different than the very first ideas and sketches. I choose to call it part of the learning process, but I was repeatedly confronted with my stroke looking like a worm when it was animated. If I were to come back to it, I'd like to add a few shots that have more simultaneous movement and perhaps even work in a 3D program for the movement, and style it to look 2D.

ICUC Retargeting ads

End of 2022 I was lucky enough to be entrusted with a project that included 4 videos, 30 seconds each. A big deal for me, as I have never attended any formal education for design or motion graphics, and had only done small gigs or pro-bono work before.

Most of my takeaways from doing this project weren't necessarily animation based, but rather how to handle projects as a freelancer and professional. It was a trial by fire for me, but -perhaps conceitedly- I feel I came out the other end with minimal burns.

References were provided to me, as well as a masterfile with stock illustrations, with the stipulation that they wanted to iterate on the style established in the reference videos, not recreate it.

Without showing before and after examples: in short they wanted more micro animations, less clutter in the background, and some character work. For me, considering I had deadlines and time constraints, combined with the ask of 4 videos, the micro animations and character work meant that I had to work and design around the opportunity to create a set of assets and animations that I could re-purpose or re-use.

As I moved from video to video my asset collection grew and I knew better and better where their priorities lied, turnover times sped up significantly, and revisions became smaller & simpler. I've selected two of the four videos below that I think are least alike one another.

Community Challenges

Considering how inviting, supportive and friendly the international Mograph community is, i'd be seriously kneecapping myself by not engaging with it, below is a selection of videos that I have made in community challenges that will hopefully keep growing.

Ravie Challenge 2

The second instalment of the Ravie discord challenge, this time working in teams of up to 4 was allowed. I reached out in the Discord, and found myself a teammate, Vicci Entefellner.

The Challenge entailed 10 days of working time with the keyword prompt "Glint" to create a 10-30 seconds long video in vertical format, we took our inspiration from the word "Glint" as both an association with objects of desire, and the glint of an eye, eventually that resulted in the following video:

Although I'd love to take credit, my teammate did all the cel animation for the bird (named charcoal by the discord afterwards), my work was in the prism, the frame, texturing, and sound design.

Ravie Challenge 1

This was the first animation challenge hosted by the Ravie team for their new discord server, signing up meant choosing one of 3 keywords: "Triumph", "Childhood" and "Warmth", with the full prompt being revealed upon the start of the challenge. Like many others I chose "Triumph".

The full prompt was to "convey the feeling of victory after hours of trying" in a video no more than 10 seconds, we had 7 days time. My time working on it came down to about 2 1/2 days with me working deep into the night due to other obligations, but this was the result:

Het Koffielokaal

Het Koffielokaal and I worked together on making the cafe's online presence move. To do so we settled on two main components, a logo animation, and a motion graphics template to easily create slick, brand consistent, animated content for social media.

Render explainer

Originally I had planned to enter the world of motion graphics freelancing with a different approach. The plan was to give a price estimation alongside the video, which would serve as both an example of what to expect, as well as a sales pitch.

After speaking with multiple freelancers and agencies I chose not to follow this route, but I believe the video is still worth sharing.

Veruna

Veruna was made as the result of a School of Motion course called "explainer camp", a course that was challenging me more professionally rather than technically. On the technical side though: it mostly involved me getting very friendly with the new tapered strokes, some math that I only partially grasp even now to create and work the gears and with hindsight I would tackle the grainy shading differently now.

The set-up is for you to get assigned a TA who will double function as your 'client' as well. Then the teacher walks you through his personal best practices for the creation of an explainer video start to finish (excluding writing the script), notably the most valuable thing this course offers is probably the creation process they introduce you to and how it helps both the client and the creative.

The Veruna task came with a brand guide outlining colours, a few simple guidelines and a script. From a concept standpoint though, the challenge of the task in my opinion was accurately depicting the severity of the situation, without painting such a bleak picture that people mentally tap out, rather than being called to action.

To combat this, I wanted to play into the change of tone in the script as much as possible and focus on the good that could be done rather than the suffering that is happening without underplaying the repercussions of unclean drinking water, hence the analogy of a sickly plant vs a healthy thriving plant. To further the distinction I made sure to create a tonal shift using the brands' colours as well when the script flips.

2022 Reel

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