School of Motion Podcast

Have you ever had a director say 'I shouldn't have hired you...'? Our guest today is proof that hard work can get you anywhere. Andrew Vucko (pronounced Voo-co) is killing it in the Motion Design world. He's had big-name clients like Facebook, Toyota and Patreon. His work is consistently featured on Motionographer. And he's an all-around great guy. For Vucko, animation school was simply not an opt...

Motion Graphics covers a huge range of skills... Like design, animation, editing, directing, 3D, and much more. There's a lot of work that goes into one piece, and often there's a huge team behind some of the best work out there. But occasionally you'll find a Unicorn in this industry, someone who can do a lot more than just design or animate. In this episode of our Podcast we talk to  Onur Sentur...

Have you ever wanted to work with no pants on… No commuting, no clients, just you and your creativity cranking out cool stuff and then making tutorials. Sounds like the dream, right? It totally is, and School of Motion is not the only place where that dream is a reality. There are quite a few places with people making a living off of tutorials including our good buddy Nick Campbell, founder of Gre...

DP's are like real-world 3D artists. Think about it. They have to take a three-dimensional world and use cameras and lights and objects and people to produce an image that is two-dimensional. It's a difficult task, and anyone who's ever opened up Cinema 4D understands the challenge in using 3D tools to create an image that isn't 3D. Mike Pecci is a master of his craft. He's a Director and D.P. who...

Design sure is hard, ain't it? That's one of the reasons we built Design Bootcamp. In that course we dig into the principles of design but, more importantly, how to apply those principles in the real world. Knowing color theory is great, but when you're looking at a blank screen in Photoshop it's not enough to know what a triad color scheme is... you need to have some tricks up your sleeve to make...

We've all been there… You're working on a project in After Effects and BAM, brick wall. After Effects just doesn't have the feature that you need. It's times like this that we all turn to places like aescripts + aeplugins, and to the real MoGraph heros, the plugin and script developers. They create the tools that we Motion Designers need to get our jobs done, or maybe just make our lives easier. I...

Nuke is the better tool... ...for compositing. After Effects is king in many areas (like animation) that are important to us Motion Designers, but Nuke is a far more powerful tool for compositing things like VFX and 3D passes. Now, as a Motion Designer you might think that knowing compositing is a waste of your time, but if you've hung around School of Motion long enough you know that compositing...

There is a TON of MoGraph work out there. If you're only checking it out at places like Motionographer (who we love very dearly), you're only seeing the tip of a massive MoGraph iceberg. Our goal here at School of Motion is to expose you to as many sides of the industry as possible, not just the work that big MoGraph studios are putting out. Let's talk Television…. In this podcast episode Joey tal...

When it comes to location L.A. is undoubtedly the best place for a motion designer to network and thrive, but that's not to say that studios in other parts of the country are doing less-cool work. One great example is the team at Digital Kitchen. For years Digital Kitchen has been churning out incredible work and they just added one of the best MoGraph creative directors, Ryan Summers, to their te...

As a motion designer NAB isn't just a conference, it's really a rite of passage. With over 100,000 attendees there is no bigger platform to network with people from around the industry. It's an insanely huge event, and if you've never been to it you're going to want to listen to this Podcast. In this episode Amy, Joey, and Caleb talk all things NAB and Vegas giving you all the tips and tricks you...

Think back to the last time you cut a reel... It probably went something like this. You sat in front of the computer, picked out that perfect track of music, found all of your projects, brought them into After Effects, and then you had to make a TON of decisions.... What shot do I chose? When do I cut? Is there a better shot for this? Did I cut that too soon? What beat of the music do I cut on? Is...

Our Podcast has always been interviews, but in this episode we're going to shake things up. This time Joey will be flying solo, giving you his most tactical, actionable Freelance tips that you can start using right now. Some of these tips are from our course, Freelance U, and others are from our first book, The Freelance Manifesto, which you can look forward to adding to your summer reading list i...

If you don't already know who Chris Do is, you need to. He is the CEO of Blind, a studio which he founded 21 years ago that's still going strong today. He's also the creator of The Futur where he teaches MoGraphers like you how to be a creative entrepreneur. He has a TON of experience in the creative industry, and he's more than happy to share his wisdom with you. Our Industry is changing in big w...

Imagine a world without After Effects. Every time you sit down in front of the computer to animate you have to write code. Not just a few lines like you do with most expressions; hundreds of lines with variables, if-then statements, pixel dimensions, and crazy math formulas for your eases. This nightmarish way of animating has been, until very recently, the sad reality for app developers. Airbnb h...

Producers do more than budgets. They are the conductors of the MoGraph orchestra... they do the dirty work so the artists can give total focus to their craft. They have to master the art of telling clients "no" without saying "no," they have to read the tea-leaves when it comes to budgeting and scheduling. And, of course, they are often the gatekeepers to getting booked as a freelancer. Our guest...

Motionographer does a lot for our industry... They inspire us, interview industry professionals, educate us, and put on the amazing F5 Conference. In this interview Joey talks to Motionographer Co-Founder Justin Cone about their Patreon campaign and the latest project Motionographer is heading up, The Motion Awards. Justin and Joey get deep into the nitty gritty about this new award, why the indus...

Cinema 4D is one of those apps that you start learning and never stop. Frankly, most of the apps we Motion Designers use fall into that category. EJ Hassenfratz has built up a reputation as an amazing C4D artist and teacher. His tutorials have been featured on GreyScaleGorilla, he has presented for Maxon at various conferences, and his work shows that he can also walk the walk. Joey had the pleasu...

Lilian Darmono is an Australian / Indonesian-Chinese artist living in London. To say she has a diverse background is an understatement. She is not only multi-cultured and well traveled, her illustration style is a constant exploration of new styles. Yes, she tends to be on the cute side of things, but why not? Sometimes we just need to say "awwww" and feel a bit fuzzy inside. In this interview, I...

Want to know what it takes to be a pro at sound design? To say that Frank Serafine might know what he's talking about is probably a huge understatement. Frank has been around doing sound design since before many of you were born. He's seen technology change they way that things are done, not just in audio, but in film also. In this epic chat, Frank and Joey geek out over how he developed sounds su...

Ever hear of Houdini? No, not the magician, the software by SideFX. Joey got a chance to have a very nerdy talk with the super genius Christopher Hendryx about his work at Disney as an FX Animator. Christopher was the lead artist in charge of Elsa's ice magic on a little film you may have heard of called Frozen. He created a very flexible and powerful rig in Houdini to create the effect, and share...

Matt Frodsham is a Cinema 4D Black Belt. His reel is full of weird and wonderful work, much of it completed with his friends at the incredible Berlin-based Zeitguised. His work is abstract, provocative, playful, and extremely polished. Check out his reel to see what strange places his mind has been whilst sitting in front of an insanely powerful multi-GPU computer-beast with Cinema 4D opened up. h...

Want to know the secret to amazing work? Us too. Unfortunately, the secret is "work really really hard." Working out of his home office in the capital of Slovenia, Nejc Polovsak is consistently turning out some of the most creative, polished, and beautiful 3D work in the Motion Graphics world. What's really incredible about Nejc is that he's more or less self-taught. He never received a formal edu...

New Zealand-based 3D Artist extraordinaire Rich Nosworthy is about as humble a guy as you'll ever meet. He single-handedly makes some of the coolest photorealistic 3D animations you've ever seen, and still finds time to be pestered with all kinds of questions from people who want to discover his secrets to killer work. If you haven't already seen this... take a minute to check out this great piece...