blur Designs » Motion Design http://blur-designs.com blur Designs The Crowdsourced Design Agency Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:38:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Surreal collage video from Emily Pfahl http://blur-designs.com/blog/surreal-collage-video-from-emily-pfahl/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/surreal-collage-video-from-emily-pfahl/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 08:33:18 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=1557

Crowd Designer Emily Pfahl’s cool & surreal “MadWorLD” makes video of the week

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]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/surreal-collage-video-from-emily-pfahl/feed/ 3 Crowd Video #8 http://blur-designs.com/blog/crowd-video-8/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/crowd-video-8/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:11:23 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=1256 Another great showreel, this one from crowd member Cooper Johnson

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]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/crowd-video-8/feed/ 2 Video of the week #7 http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-7/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-7/#comments Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:05:03 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=996 This week we have a cool showreel from crowd member Alex Epureanu-Buzera

]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-7/feed/ 1 Video of the week #5 http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-5/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-5/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:43:38 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=680 This weeks showreel is from designer, animator and director Glen Yeoh

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]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-5/feed/ 0 Designer spotlight: Laura Hulme http://blur-designs.com/blog/designer-spotlight-laura-hulme/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/designer-spotlight-laura-hulme/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:38:34 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=58

Laura Hulme is an established Broadcast Designer & Animator who has worked on some cool projects including title Sequences, idents & branding projects. She has very kindly answered some of our questions…

Where do you get your creativity from? Is it sitting in a jar on a shelf?I think creativity is innate within all of us (hopefully in a sweetie jar, on a shelf somewhere!), but the inspiration that lets it out comes in many forms for me. Often inspiration will strike when I’m not in a design environment (so I’m usually out cycling, or in the kitchen cooking because I love doing that). Often its idling minds come up with the best ideas! I’m not particularly disciplined in keeping a sketchbook/notebook so that is a habit I am trying to cultivate which I think will help give my ideas some permanence as I have a very disorganized list of projects buzzing around my head at the moment. I love the way that creativity is endless, and it always improves within you if you trust yourself a little more.

If you could be any animal what would you be? & Why?I’d definitely be a brown bear – for their love of berries, honey, their woodland surroundings and extreme snoozing abilities.

Do you feel the amount of technical knowledge needed in digital design restricts creativity, or makes more innovative designers?The amount of knowledge required to be a capable and employable designer can be very overwhelming, especially since software continues to march forwards at a relentless pace. Every designer should maintain a certain standard of knowledge, but it’s really important not to make technology the sole focus of your world – remember ideas transcend technology. I’ve already made this mistake by spending long periods of time just doing tutorials and not really creating. If you have great ideas and can demonstrate this, people will forgive the fact you may be less than perfect at After Effects or Cinema 4D.

Have you found freelancing more rewarding in the long term?Freelancing is a very different existence to having a staff job. It has made me get a lot better at what I do – and fast. You are expected to hold your own when you turn up at an animation studio, and be very professional. I enjoy the responsibility of controlling my own career on my own terms and there is undoubtedly the opportunity to make more money and work less (although saying no to work can be difficult). Freelancing keeps me on my toes – I’ll always be learning and improving as a designer, and I’m so grateful for that because many in-house designers quickly get stale and in a rut. It’s human nature to stay in a comfort zone – freelancing has no regard for comfort zones!

Is there any advice you would give to new motion/video designers?

1. Don’t just learn about what buttons to push – make sure you understand the anatomy and craft of animation and what elicits a response in the viewer. I also see a lot of young motion designers treat their screen space like a piece of paper (I used to be prime culprit of this when I started out), but remember you can put your viewer anywhere you like within infinite X, Y, and Z co-ordinates. So do!

2. Have a commercial awareness of what the industry is doing around you and what the industry needs. Being arty and cool is great – but can often be unsubstantial. Being arty, cool AND commercially viable gets you hired.

3. Learn a 3D package as well as any 2D packages you are using. Seriously. You will struggle to find work without a teeny-weeny bit of 3D in your skill-set.

4. “Hang your ego up at the door”. There’s a lot of people in the design industry waiting to give you their opinion and criticize your work so it’s useful to adopt a strategy to turn this sometimes challenging aspect of the job into a positive! Remember you can learn something from everyone you encounter in the business – even if its just tolerance! ; )

5. Which leads me onto: Be nice, be tenacious, and never, ever stop learning!

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]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/designer-spotlight-laura-hulme/feed/ 1 Video's of the week #4 http://blur-designs.com/blog/videos-of-the-week-4/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/videos-of-the-week-4/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:40:06 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=611 This weeks videos are from motion designer Davide Frusteri

“Lunatique”

5SP: “Start With A Photo”

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]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/videos-of-the-week-4/feed/ 0 Video of the week #3 http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-3/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-3/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:12:28 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=467 This weeks cool showreel is from top motion designer’s Ditroit

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]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-3/feed/ 0 Designer Spotlight: Harry Sherman http://blur-designs.com/blog/designer-spotlight-harry-sherman/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/designer-spotlight-harry-sherman/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:01:07 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=380

Harry Sherman Header

Harry Sherman is an established motion designer, having worked with many major American networks. We are grateful to Harry for answering our questions..


Harry ShermanOf 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.

Want Harry to work on your next project? Contact us here
]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/designer-spotlight-harry-sherman/feed/ 2 Video of the Week #2 http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-2/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-2/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:17:04 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=366 This week we showcase the cool motion work of crowd member Kevin Vaisman

]]> http://blur-designs.com/blog/video-of-the-week-2/feed/ 0 Video of the week #1 http://blur-designs.com/blog/video1/ http://blur-designs.com/blog/video1/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:09:56 +0000 Tom http://blur-designs.com/blog/?p=253 In the first of many, this weeks video comes from crowd member Laura Hulme.

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