How To Be A Motion Designer in 2030

What will be the future skills that will make you succeed as a motion designer? Will AI replace my job? Does technical skill still matter?

Recently, I was part of an insightful panel talk hosted by Linearity — the creators of the popular iPad app Vectornator (now rebranded as Linearity Curve).

Part of the panel were 3 other motion artists with different backgrounds — Jenny Lewis, Magnus, and Yash (a UX and Motion Designer at Linearity for the new Linearity Move).

We got the topics and questions beforehand so we could prepare a little bit what we want to talk about and here are the answers that I was planning to give (even though the actual answers ended up being a bit different).

Unfortunately there is no surviving recording, so here are my thoughts on the topics we covered.

Level 1 — Who we are

How did it all start for you? How did you get into animation or motion design?

In my teens I was doing some Flash animation. What has now turned into Adobe Animator. Mainly to entertain myself and my friends. In the early days Flash animation seemed to be very accessible, something you could do in your own bedroom by yourself.

But then I studied computer science instead, because I didn’t think you can really earn a living with a creative job.

So, I didn’t touch animation for a very long time, up until my mid 20s when I got disenchanted with my job in tech. I wanted to start animating again. I remember the exact moment, as I watched a Ghibli movie that moved me to tears. It was “The Tale of Princess Kaguya”. At this point I knew, I have to give it a serious try to learn it.

I challenged myself to do 100 days of animation, to find out if I actually like animating.

I focused on animating walk cycles for 100 days. That taught me a lot of the basics of traditional animation that would help me later on.

This way of learning I recently put into my own unusual email course — The 30DayAnimator. That teaches the basic principles of animation in 30 days and provides a nice jumping off point to dive into animation.

It took me then another 5 years to actually start being a freelance animator. I got side tracked by working for a very successful startup.

How did you get into the industry?

I transitioned slowly from programming into UX/UI within my job and from there the jump didn’t seem too far to get into motion design and animation.

But in the end it was a leap of faith, I had no clients and I just went for it. I realized, I didn’t want to keep doing what I’m doing when the lockdowns during the pandemic started. Working from home felt unfulfilling, so I quit!

To start out I got a StartupHilfe grant from the German JobCenter, which helped me in the first few months to sustain myself.

I heavily utilized my network in the startup scene to get my first clients, but it was still tough.

What were your fears getting into the industry?

My fears were that nobody wants to pay high prices for animation or motion design and I will always have to justify my high prices. That ultimatively the creative business is a race to the bottom. The cheapest people win the clients and drive the price down.

I’ve often seen a toxic attitude towards artists who charge highly (especially with rise of AI). It always seems like people hate artists that charge highly because they do “what they love” and they should “stop complaining”. But any artistic and creative job comes with its own challenges that are not much different to any other job. The additional pressure that you have to always love what you do makes you almost question yourself. But the work you do for money is not always the work that you “love to do”.

Another fear was to only work on boring projects that actually drain my creativity and make me hate my hobby in the long run. Once it becomes a job it’s no longer a hobby, so your relationship to your creativity changes.

One of the main fears was the loneliness of working freelance. You don’t really have coworkers. Nobody who is down in the trenches with you and is by your side when things are bad or to celebrate the wins when things are going great. I still believe this is a challenge. I find my ways to connect to other creatives, but it’s something that needs constant effort.

Do you remember a specific animation or studio which fascinated you?

Initially I was inspired by Studio Ghibli. That gave me the push to learn traditional animation.

Once I started exploring motion design and how to earn money with animation I discovered many cool animation studio working in different styles. The ones that standout to me are:

• Buck.co especially their 3D work for Microsoft,
• Golden Wolf
• Alberto Mielgos work,
• Alex Grigg

My early inspirations were all about indie animations though. I will always hold the Newgrounds community dear to my heart. And there animations like Hyperboy by Gene Goldstein.

What were your first steps?

Before jumping into freelance I was doing some work on Fiverr, just to get some early client interaction and optimize my process and client communication.

After all, how you deal with clients is one of the most important skills as a freelancer.

Even from the start I knew that Fiverr is not sustainable. The platform itself discourages pricing high and you will compete with people who offer minutes of animation for 30 bucks. But if you are a hobbyist, it’s a decent way to start.

The thing that taught me the most about the animation and motion design as a business is The Freelance Manifesto by Joey Korenman, the Founder of School of Motion.

I recommend it to everyone who thinks about starting a creative freelance business.

Level 2 — Status Quo in Motion Design

Has it become easier today learning (animation) tools and develop as an artist?

Yes and no. There are more tools, more tutorials and more information out there than ever before. Information overload

But I think it becomes increasingly hard to focus on one thing and not get distracted all the time by the next shiny thing around the corner.

It has become so easy to move to something else the first time you meet some resistance or challenge, so I think the ability to focus becomes more important in the current age. Or at least continuously work on something and finish projects.

And that’s another reason why i’ve built the 30DayAnimator course and why I’m trying to push myself to focus. But it’s always a process of going wide and then focussing at something that I feel has the most potential in the current moment.

I often have weekly, quarterly and yearly focusses that I set for myself to stay on track. But also to allow enough flexibility to readjust and focus on something else, when things are not working as desired.

What do you feel that is still missing? What kind of tutorials, information, tools or content?

I think what is mostly missing is the business knowledge for artists.

• How to acquire clients for your creative business?
• How to keep clients?
• How to do expectation management?
• How to run creative projects?
• How to estimate creative work?
• How to work on it effectively on creative tasks?
• How to set the prices for creative work?!

And the knowledge about HOW creatives earn money.

There are many different ways and some of them are more lucrative than others. Not knowing about these things can lead to being taken advantage of.

Because you are young and naive and even happy and excited to work on projects with big clients. This creates bad patterns from the start of your career. Because I came from a different world — the tech world — where it’s normal to pay higher prices and not question everything, I see very clearly the problems in the creative industry. It comes down to self-worth, and the knowledge about the value that you are providing to the companies.

Online there is a skewed perception of how expensive something is or should be.

I once worked for a studio that was working with one of the top 5 tech companies in the world. Producing a short movie for them. And it was shocking and discouraging to hear HOW little of a budget they got from this tech giant. Of course they loved the work, it was like a passion project, but I just feel a great sense of injustice when a multi-billion dollar company can’t pay a decent budget…

…or if a studio of experienced artists that I admire can’t ask for a decent budget that is fair.

Coming from the tech world I know what these companies are capable of paying, and I also can compare the complexity of a tech project vs a creative project. And I don’t think a creative project is easier in any way. I think it’s much harder. There are many unknowns and many different egos and opinions to manage.

What makes an animation pop (in the endless streams of TikTok&Co) those days?

A good use of design and proper use of animation principles can make your work often standout. If design looks great but the animation feels stiff its detrimental.

Story and relatability seem to be increasingly relevant. If your story is relatable and communicated well than the technical ability of the animation is almost negligible.

That’s why I see many “simple” animations with huge followings and likes. But simple is not always easy. It takes a long time to arrive at something simple that works for you.

And sometimes beginner and intermediate animators make the mistake to want to animate something in the style of a Disney movie or established anime series. Failing to realize how much work goes into that. This then leads quickly to burnout or abandoning multiple started projects.

I myself fall into that trap too. What helps is always to go back to the basics. Start your animations with simple animatics and reduce the complexity as much as possible. A bouncing ball is a good example of an animation that can be applied a million different ways. A character jumping is essentially a bouncing ball. Once you have the timing right, all the details fall into place much easier and can be layered and iterated on top.

Is technical skills becoming less relevant in a world with better tools with flat learning curves and AI assistance? Is story-telling or other aspects becoming more relevant now?

I don’t think the technical aspect ever goes completely away. Even with AI-assisted workflows it is difficult to pull off a complete animation from start to finish. You still need to pull everything together in a way that has a consistent style. And there are more and more tools that keep popping up. The learning curve is not zero. Analysis paralysis can set in because you can’t decide which tools to use… Every week new ones are coming out.

But I think most stories online are OVER HYPED. When people say they made an animation in just a couple of hours or whatever with the help of AI.

They often don’t tell the full story … They don’t talk about how long it took with coming up with the idea, writing the script, storyboard, experiment with the tools to come up with a satisfying result etc.

But the titles have to be outrageous so people click on them.

Overall that leads to a wrong perception from the outside. Like everything becomes easy and is a click of a button. Which often leads to toxic attitude towards artists that try to paint a more realistic picture of what goes into the work of producing a video. Telling my clients why a 1min animation or motion design project can take a month or longer and a budget of 5k or 10k+ becomes increasingly difficult and turns often into multiple meetings of education.

This is ultimately unpaid work and part of the sales process every freelancer needs to account for.

Level 3 — Where are we heading?

I think it becomes easier for smaller teams to tell bigger stories. Which in turn allows stories to be told that couldn’t be told before. This gives minorities the chance to tell their personal stories, or everyone who wants to tell their personal story for that matter. In a level of quality that will rival big studios.

That leads to a greater variety of stories and products. I feel on the fence about it. For the longest time I haven’t actually felt like there is not enough quality content. I think there is too much quality to consume. Which leads to people having backlogs or pile of shames of movies, games, and series that they want to watch but can’t. It will become increasingly harder to break out of that mass.

I believe to standout we will have to dig deeper into ourselves. This requires greater introspection. But allows to tell stories that really resonate with our own feelings. Otherwise we run the risk to just produce another copy of a copy of a copy.

Do you see an increasing intersection of Motion Design with other areas of design, like graphic design, user interface design, or demand for interactive media?

I always believed all these different aspects go hand in hand. And I love acquiring basic knowledge in all of those areas to be able to communicate to all departments.

I often think games or interactive media is the pinnacle of arts .. or rather the culmination of all different art forms. It combines interactivity, storytelling, UX , writing, visuals, sound, music and so much more…

I love the intersection of all these different mediums and disciplines and when combined they can be used to achieve the greatest effect.

But I also believe that every individual discipline still has their right to exist and there are still innovations that can happen on any single level.

Like “into the spider verse” catapulted the stale 3D look of animated movies into a new creative direction..

Do you (still) consider yourself as a Motion Designer? (Or is it something more widespread/diverse than that?)

I consider myself as an “all in one creative service provider who can create, interactive experiences as well as animated movies, motion design, and VR interactive experience’s.”

It’s really hard to find a name for that… I’d like to call myself producer, because I am also not shy to get other people on board to get a job done. But I enjoy multiple aspects of the production process. From ideating to animating coding up to the final delivery.

I recently asked ChatGPT to give me a job title based on all the different kind of projects I did. It came up with Creative Technologist. Which made me look up what this term means.

The basic definition is that it’s someone who uses technology creatively to solve problems and complete projects. It seems the nature of the projects is not 100% defined, it could be a movie, a game, an interactive VR experience or anything else. I really liked this title, because it has the tech and the creative part in it.

How do you envision the future of motion design in the next decade (AI: opportunities vs being unemployed?

I think AI is a double edged sword. On the one hand there are the ethical issues that need to be resolved. Mainly the training data needs to be ethically sourced and not infringe on individuals copyrights.

Of course, I see also great potential for great efficiency improvements that will come with AI tools. It will make certain tedious tasks way easier. People will be able to create high quality things in shorter time.

But I don’t think our jobs as motion designers will get any easier.

Everyone will have the same tools. The boy in India working from his teenage bedroom, as well as someone in Europe. The expectation will rise, and we will have to deliver more work in a shorter time. Just like the computer revolution didn’t reduce our working hours. In fact, we are now more connected and almost always expected to be available when our work needs us.

This is in the end a political issue. We need to make sure that our work as artists doesn’t get de-valued.

What new skills do you think will be essential for motion designers in the coming years?

I think basic artistic skills will stay relevant.

Composition, basics of motion, design principles, color theory. That stuff doesn’t go away.

I doubt that “prompt engineering” will be a job. People like to call it that, but what they are doing is basic problem solving and iterating. That’s not a “skill” in the same way as knowing color theory and composition and copy writing.

Using AI tools might become very relevant, but it will just be another tool in your box. Just like After Effects or perhaps Linearity Move.

Working with AI to train models and adapt to a video and image generators to a certain style is already becoming a sought after skill. But this one leans much more into the tech world and sometimes deep knowledge with Machine Learning algorithms and Computer Science is needed to get these jobs. They are not the jobs that Motion Designers and Animators are doing, or want to do.

That’s not why most people are artistic…

Flexibility and adaptability to tools and new workflows will stay important though.

Or on the opposite spectrum, finding a niche that works for you and your clients.

Closing Statements

I believe there are two essential skills to be or become a great freelance motion designer.

1. Basic Principles

Learn the basics, of composition, motion and design. Those will stay relevant forever. Train your creative eye and so you can tell apart good work from bad work. If you want to get started with the basics of animation, you can try learning it with the 30DayAnimator

2. Business Skills
Learn the business skills. How to price yourself. What is your daily rate? How do you approach new clients. How do you onboard clients? What is your process to deliver client projects. Try to answer all your client questions before they even have them. Learn to be confident to tell big numbers. Read “The Freelance Manifesto” to get a good starting point.

Value yourself and your work!

And if you already know all of the above, then share it with others.

Teach what you know to others, especially the business skills. Don’t gatekeep your pricing or your process. It hurts everyone in the long run if we are not open about pricing. Don’t be ashamed to charge high.

We are not doing what we’re doing for money, but if we all burn out, because we can’t afford a living there will be no great art around us.