This week, in order to add some more flavor and life to my project, I chose to increase my knowledge of motion graphics, a field that I am largely unfamiliar with. I watched the “Learning Motion Graphics (2015)” course on LinkedIn learning in order to get an understanding of the basic concepts, as well as a YouTube tutorial by TipTut called “Intro to Motion Graphics” (which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcHq9XjGuzc&t=1114s).

The “Learning Motion Graphics” course was meant to be an introduction to the concept of motion graphics and a guide to which other courses to watch in order to learn more advanced techniques. According to the course, motion graphics is communication using animation and graphic design, the most important part of that definition being communication. Motion graphics involves the use of text and visual effects in order to convey a message or sell a product or idea. Rob Garrett, the host of the course, describes the work of Saul Bass as one of the first important milestones in motion graphics. Bass created moving titles for films such as The Man with the Golden Arm, Vertigo, and North By Northwest, which helped to show audiences that titles could add personality and character to a film instead of simply existing as text. In modern times, the most common tools for creating motion graphics are Adobe After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D. I have used After Effects before to create a project, but never delved deep enough to master it. I also have never used Cinema 4D, but I have used Maya, so I know some 3D animation techniques.

In the tutorial from TipTut, we learn basic techniques for animating text in After Effects, such as transforming the text into shapes, keyframing, easing, scaling, and tying layers to others so they are animated together. I found the tutorial very helpful because for me, the 3D animation techniques described in LinkedIn Learning tutorials confused me and I did not want to get that advanced when I am just starting out with motion graphics. I want to be able to make interesting animations with simple techniques, and I found this tutorial very helpful for that.

Overall, motion graphics is much different than I expected it to be. I expected it to just involve moving text, but 3D text and visual effects apply the same concepts. However, I will probably be sticking mostly to 2D for my thesis project.