Blog posts filed under Motion Graphics
A collection of articles on motion graphics, the businesses of freelancing as a motion designer, inspirational design pieces, and general tips.
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Custom logo animation
Creating a custom logo animation for your business is a great way to enhance your brand image and make your logo more memorable, especially when it’s being used in video content, and on your website.
Take this custom animation for Dropkick Jonnys, it now serves as a great animated... Read more →
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Every motion design project needs a statement of work
Before starting a new motion design project you should absolutely be putting together a statement of work: a simple document that puts down in writing exactly what is going to be done throughout the project and the deliverables to be produced along the way.
Having a written log of... Read more →
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How much does it cost to animate a logo?
Animating your logo is a great way to present your company online and in film. When done correctly, logo animation can actually enhance your logo, adding interest and intrigue through motion.
So, how much does it cost to animate a logo? Well, to answer that... Read more →
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A Radial Repeater for After Effects
I’ve just launched my latest project for made by loop called Spoke! It’s a radial layer repeater script for After Effects that provides a quick and simple way to repeat any layer, not just shaper layers, around a circle in After Effects.
Let’s say you wanted 10 copies of... Read more →
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Create your own animation
As a professional motion designer it’s my job to create wonderful animations for my clients and help them get their message out to their audience. It’s a job I love doing, and it’s a job that takes time to get right.
Sometimes though, time is of the essence and budgets... Read more →
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Creating a glitch effect in After Effects with the Fragment script
Creating a glitch transition or adding some digital distortion in After Effects can take time to get right, there’s multiple layers and effects involved and even with something like the glitch presets for After Effects I made for Loop, it can be a bit of an effort to... Read more →
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How much does an animation cost?
I’d love to be able to give a single figure answer to the this question, but the truth is; costs vary from project to project depending on client needs and style considerations.
As a very rough ballpark figure, projects tend to start from around £6000. This sort of budget allows... Read more →
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Creating a number counter in After Effects just got a lot easier
Update: The Numero Script has now been updated to include a Beta version which includes the ability to add commas and decimals!
The first version of the Numero script was designed to take a lot of the legwork out of creating a... Read more →
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Comparing your work to others
On the last day of my week long takeover of the Motion Hatch podcast Instagram account, I had an idea to post my latest motion design reel alongside the first ever reel/promo I did… all the way back from 2010!
For those of you that weren’t following here... Read more →
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Guest appearance on the motion hatch podcast
A couple of weeks ago, Hayley Akins from the motion hatch podcast got in touch to see if I’d be a guest on the show and I just had to jump at the opportunity.
For those of you who haven’t heard it before, the motion hatch... Read more →
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Animating paragraph text in After Effects
Throughout my motion design work I’ve animated a fair few paragraphs for explainer and social media videos - much like the example you see here for trivago:
Although simple on the surface, the technique to... Read more →
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Creating a sliding number counter in After Effects
UPDATE: The script has now been updated to make it easier than ever to create a sliding number counter in After Effects
My latest project for Loop is a brand new script for creating odometers or sliding number counters in After Effects like the one below:
Read more →
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Motion Design Reel
Yep, it’s that time again! I’ve managed to put together a brand new motion design showreel for 2018, featuring projects from the past year and beyond.
Take a look:
I really enjoyed putting this reel together, it really made me stop and... Read more →
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Freelance Motion Design Update
2017 was a great year, I’ve been lucky enough to work on some wonderful projects with some ace clients and agencies, if 2018 is as good then I’ll be a happy motion designer!
As it was a busy one, I’ve only now had the chance to update my portfolio with... Read more →
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Creating an animated explainer video for your business
According to the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, Video was the fastest growing format in 2016, Up 56% on a like-for-like basis since 2015. With statistics like that it’s not hard to see why companies are turning to motion design and animation to... Read more →
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Creating Chronos - a futuristic interface kit for After Effects
I’ve always loved sci-fi, it’s my favourite genre by far. The world building, the rules, the foresight, just the wonderful creativity involved in creating something out of this world is what fascinates me the most.
As a motion designer, I’ve always wanted to have a go at creating a futuristic... Read more →
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Glitch effect presets for After Effects
Fragment is the latest project I’ve made for Loop - a set of 15 glitchy transitions and presets for After Effects.
Had a lot of fun making the promo for this one too:
Making the... Read more →
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Skylights Pro - Vintage filters for After Effects
Following on from the ever popular Instagram style Skylights filters I made a while back, I decided to make a pro version - 30 brand new filters, plus an additional 15 noise and grain overlays to... Read more →
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Handicons icon pack
Throughout a lot of my motion design work I find myself needing different hand icons; perhaps a hand pointing to something, or swiping on a phone screen.
That’s why I’ve made Handicons! A set of 30 different hand icons, perfect for all sorts of projects.
Here’s a quick look at... Read more →
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Motion design at The Guardian
Over the past couple of weeks I swapped Manchester for a freelance motion design contract at The Guardian in London.
I had a great time working there, as you can imagine the projects are pretty varied. In the first week I worked on this from the 99 seconds series:
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More motion design for The Guardian
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been down in London working freelance on some more motion design projects at The Guardian.
This time I worked on a couple of different projects, the first of which was a video detailing what the Ebola virus is, how it’s transferred, and what... Read more →
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Creating a 3D blueprint in Cinema 4D
Ever since Adobe added Cinema 4D to After Effects I’ve been trying to use it more and more in my motion graphics work. Every now and then I’ll discover something cool & I just can’t help experimenting with it!
The most recent thing I’ve found is the ‘Cel Render’ effect... Read more →
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A motion graphics business card
I had a random idea the other day while I was looking at my current business card design - why not create a business card with a bit of a difference? Something which showcases the motion graphics work I do, something which could act as a little introduction to... Read more →
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A motion graphics design gif!
After creating a few different motion design gif experiments, I decided to incorporate one into my site to help advertise what I do.
This is the result:
It’s now helping to liven up the services page, I think it... Read more →
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Another motion graphics gif experiment
Following on from my previous motion graphics gif project I decided to create a new experiment, this time with shape layers!
Read more →
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Animating a still photograph in After Effects
I was looking through some of the pictures on my phone from last summer and decided to have a go at creating a short animation from a still photograph. Here’s the result:
Here’s the original photograph:
Read more →
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Motion graphics project: gifs
I’ve been working on a motion graphics project recently that involved creating an animated gif version of a client logo in After Effects.
Before taking on the project, I decided to experiment slightly and put some trial animations together to help get a feel for the gif making process:
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Creating different shape masks in After Effects
I’ve always loved watching video tutorials on the web, I find having someone talk you through how to do something and being able to watch them do it is far more engaging than simply following a blog post with some screenshots.
So I’ve decided to have a go myself! I’ve... Read more →
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Motion graphics promotional video
To go along with my website redesign I thought it was time for a brand new promotional video as well. Here’s the finished video:
Once again the music was provided by my good friend Andy - http://andyhudsonmusic.com
When I... Read more →
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Motion graphics experiment: 'Annotation'
As a little experiment into mixing live action footage with motion graphics I created the short sample videos below. The process involved tracking the motion of the video in After Effects and linking the position of the graphics to the tracked keyframes - this basically helps to keep the titles... Read more →
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Motion graphics: kinetic titles.
With the phase 1 changes to my site now live, I finally had the chance to work on some motion design work.
To get back into the swing of using After Effects I created the video below, it showcases some ‘kinetic titles’ as well as some other cool visuals,... Read more →
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Visually stunning: Gorey Castle besieged by projection
Now this is how you attack a castle in the 21st Century!
The effect was achieved by mapping out the castle and then creating the various animations to fit the map - it was then projected onto the castle using a very high intensity projecter: the Christie 25K projector.
The... Read more →