In Motion

I was just recently talking to a headhunting agency (for lack of a better word) about possibly gaining some employment somewhere and the recruiter asked me what areas of design I liked or worked in. I responded that I liked them all (print, web and of course motion) but took an interest in Motion Design. Her response was: What is Motion Design?

It got me thinking what I call Motion is completely different maybe to someone else. Do you base Motion Design (which I am labeling MD for the rest of this post ‘cause I am lazy) on the fact that it is in motion/animation? Does it need to have some kind of design quality to it above just moving stick figures? Or is it the overall imagery and mood that is set with the piece? I would like to think it is at any time a combination of all three but my tastes I tend to rely on the third option I listed above. Take a look at any movie you have seen lately and I am sure that the movie sucked yet there was something cool about it and that was perhaps the opening credits that helped build some suspense, tension, excitement making the movie look better than it was. Well in my book that qualifies as MD. A recent example of this is (in my opinion) “My Bloody Valentine”. Before I start, hands down yes the original was great and this one was bad but the opening credits by the PIC agency (also responsible for “The Kingdom”) made it look so COOL and it built suspense, plot and backgrounds that the movie never delivered on.

Then it got me thinking: What I consider applications of MD might not be the same to other people. I would also consider applications of MD to be something as mundane as the little “bugs” that crawl or zip or even gradient wipe on your TV screen while you are watching perhaps the most kick ass episode of “Lost”, “24” or even “The Big Bang Theory” all the way to FX used in movies (“Grindhouse”, not only for the zombies but also for that aged look), shows (openings yet again), music videos and all the way down to the TVs in Target that show those nifty little in-house commercials. Even trailers and teasers sometimes have MD going on, just look at any of Michael Bay movies and you get the idea. 

So where am I going on all this? Simple I just wanted to introduce MD a little more since I may be the one member of the collective that talks about it the most but also to allow other people visiting to chime in with what they think is MD and good examples of MD in film. I will start the ball rolling, here are two examples of awesome MD work. This first one is from “Alien”, long before the MD was used to describe this craft. The second one is from “Seven”… created by Kyle Cooper who is pretty much the Saul Bass of our artist generation. A great place to check out some other cool film openers (that also touch on what I have said about building suspense and such)  and closers is a site called The Art of the Title. 

OK, so that is my little deal for now. Thanks for reading!

MH