Rick Morris is a creative and visual genius of motion graphics. While watching his videos I felt enlightened. His pieces are truly a work of art and I felt extremely inspired when looking at the sequences he has created. He has crafted pieces for many different clients such as Rhapsody and Toyota and they all are uniquely made. From the 3D look of the illustrations, to the colors and shapes of his work, those elements come together to create wonderful products.
The most compelling segment I watched was the Sources of Inspiration video in which Morris talks about some of the things he feels inspired by when creating his art. I personally find it hard to tap into my creative side when creating projects, and I often can’t find inspiration. Or, when I do find inspiration, I don’t know how to implement it into my own imagination and pieces. He talks about how several areas stimulate his creativity such as things around him. He also mentions music as a source of inspiration. Music is a very powerful medium that can invoke all sorts of emotion in a person. So when he spoke on creating a flow in his art from something he hears from a song, I thought that was very interesting. Listening to him talk about finding inspiration has encouraged me to look around and find inspiration in everything. From the movies I see, to nature, to interesting pieces on the web, design inspiration can come from anywhere.
He also talks about building reels as students. This reminded me of the importance of taking advantage of being a student. As a student, there are so many more opportunities to get your work out there for people to look at and critique, and sometimes it’s easier to get your foot in the door (for things such as internships) under the covering of being a student. During these times, one can receive free valuable insight into the industry
I also found it interesting that one of his “tools” of choice was a pen. He mentions how important it is to get thoughts and ideas down on a sheet of paper as quickly as possible. I found this interesting because in class professors stress the importance of writing ideas down. For some reason, I rarely do this, and I’ve had to learn the hard way that jotting ideas down is important. In fact it is probably one of the most important parts of the process. Morris mentioned that is the first thing he does, and Illustrator and Photoshop is the next stop. It made me think of my bad habits of designing backwards in many of my assignments. Instead of planning sketching and designing in Photoshop or Illustrator, I skip straight to Flash and design there only to realize how much more time it takes to design of the top of the head. My favorite is when he says he likes to think of his brain as the factory and his eyes and hands as the tools. Good Stuff!