Of all the big American networks, which is the best client?Since I am currently working at NBC I need to be careful about what I say. I don’t want Jay Leno to get mad at me. Actually all of my experiences at the various networks have been rewarding. At some networks I created promotional work for their affiliates, at others I worked with specific shows. I’ve probably had the most fun with Comedy Central.

I had a great relationship with the west coast office and did graphics packages for many of their pilots. They often come to me to “fix” show graphics that other studios created, but weren’t working well with the show. I like designing for comedy and parody, and I’m currently doing a lot of work for various comedy webisodes.

Is it hard to be creative with such short time frames on your motion work?This is the subject of many discussions within my department. Because of our tight, daily deadlines, we have limited time to devote to our animations. I have the advantage of experience here. I’ve worked with daily deadlines for almost 30 years and I am able to design-on-the-fly very well.

Two years ago when I re-designed the graphics package for Access Hollywood, (In two weeks), I created a pretty limited color pallet and I limited the fonts to two families. Not having to come up with colors and fonts saves a lot of time. We also pre-rendered several elements into a “toolbox” folder that can be used for future projects. This also helps to keep a consistent look to the show over time. We occasionally have custom projects with 1-5 day deadlines. These are the types of projects that a large design studio might have 4-12 weeks or more to complete. We don’t have a lot of time to experiment with concepts, but we usually seem to come up with good designs.

Which celebrity would you like to be abducted by aliens?I’m a big David Bowie fan and I think he would enjoy being abducted by aliens. What, with song titles like The Man Who Fell to Earth, Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold The World, Spiders From Mars, Starman, and Life on Mars, he may have already had the pleasure. If you actually meant abducted and never returned, I would pull for every cast member of every reality show on television.

Any advice for people new to motion design?I hope that anyone interested in becoming a motion designer is in fact a talented and passionate designer to start. Having a good grasp of the necessary programs is important, but not the most important element in the process. A strong understanding of typography, color theory and layout are more important to successful and creative animation. This is a design field, so problem solving and creative thinking are essential. Don’t be a slave to your computer. Use your hands and put some ideas down on paper. Motion design can be a multi-media process.

Have you any personal design highlights?I would have to say that working with the veteran design firm Novocom for the first 10 years of my broadcast career was a major highlight. The projects were all collaborative efforts and I learned a lot working with teams of designers and animators. I worked on a project for Disney In the late 80′s with David Daniels; famous for his clay stratacut technique on Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” video. We did a stop motion/film optical animation for the 35th anniversary of Disneyland. http://bit.ly/531yzY . This took several weeks to shoot, effect and composite. This same project could probably be done In a few days now.

I enjoyed working with Magic Johnson to create the open for his short-lived talk show “The Magic Hour”. We had a fun live-action shoot with him where he pretended to pass a basketball, and we later added a CGI “energy ball”. I also enjoyed working on the Academy Awards graphics packages for three years in a row. I spent a few weeks in Singapore training the Channel 5 news graphics team and hiking nearby jungles, and just last week I created and animated some chalk drawings for the “Hope For Haiti Now” telethon http://bit.ly/4THJgN . It seems that my highlights are more about the process than the finished product.