That basically sums up my thoughts watching Harry Marks, Broadcast Designer, on the Lynda videos on motion type. I had never thought about how people did motion type prior to After Effects.
Let me just say, I will NEVER bitch about After Effects again. Setting keyframes is 10,000 times easier than what Marks had to do to set up motion type. Granted, his was much cooler, because it involved explosions and real lights being lit up in sequence. But I will never have the patience or creativity to do that. That’s not selling myself short. He’s probably one of 15 people in the world who can do things like that. But that’s ok. Because I got a lot of interesting creative process-ey things from it.
Like how to set up shots? He especially had to do that. The thought put into his things was so intricate that it kind of made me feel bad about how I structured my motion type. Although I had an an overarching idea, I was still trying to design sentence-by-sentence. It’s much easier when tackling a large project to do have everything mapped out like Marks did.
Basically, I found I really like motion typography. Half of the time when I listen to music now, I make weird After Effects sequences in my head. I think I’m weird. But I need to start seeing the big picture. Like they said in Animal House (if Animal House was set in graduate school) “Sentence-by-sentence is no way to go through creative life, son.”