For once, I will exceptionally use this blog for self-advertisement. As you might have realised, it is a sobdaimain of the www.emotion-designer.com website, which I own, and which is my online portfolio / show-reel. Why emotion designer ? Because I’m a freelance motion designer, but the domain name was not available. However the « e » stands for new technologies, and also for creating emotions through animated images. What is a motion designer? He / she is a creative person who uses the video media in order to convey messages, through a mix of images, animated elements and videos he / she puts into shape. He / she is an images specialist who searches for the best way to convey messages through images. If that seems very similar to being an art director, that’s normal… Most motion designers are their own art directors, the difference is that they also have the necessary technical knowledge, meaning they can go from idea to finished product by themselves, whereas an art director needs to use third parties.
But what can you do by mixing videos and graphic design? Many things. TV branding (for example the video jingles you see just before advertisement, which have a specific look typical of the TV channel they’re on, and that differentiate that channel from the other ones through graphical consistency, but also the opening and closing credits of a TV show which have their very own individual look, as the graphical consistency for them is in the show itself and not the channel). It can also be DVD / Blu-ray interfaces creation, or corporate movies / convention movies with a strong visual / graphical style. And advertisement of course. That’s the most frequent fields of motion design, but there are others.
Illustrating this article is an example of motion design, a video I made to wish a happy new year to my clients and my friends. Even though it looks like 3D animation, it actually isn’t, I didn’t use any 3D software, but Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects only.