Guide to Understanding a Motion Graphics Package
Ever considered getting a motion graphics package for your video game logo or brand? What does motion graphics really mean? Especially when you see it referenced in so different ways. WAYPOINT, your video game creative agency in Los Angeles, is here to help you get a clearer understanding.
What Is Motion Graphics?
Motion graphics is when we get the design knowledge and bring it to new medium adding the time and space factor to it. To put it simply, almost everything that moves and involves a graphic element is known as motion graphics.
Internet, TV, cinema, mobile apps, and video games – all of them come to life through motion graphics. Every text, every graphic you see moving in any of those platforms and any media is conceived by the Motion Artist’s work.
Motion graphics artists work for advertising companies, the film and video industry, and for digital design firms. They create the animations and visual effects in films, TV shows, video games, and commercials.
Motion graphic artists are needed to work on video games, movie and television special effects, and interactive media. They are also needed to work on 3D animated movies. In addition, growth will occur due to an increasing need for computer graphics in the growing number of mobile technologies. Occupational titles include animator, motion graphics artist, special effects designer, effects artists, digital artist, media designer, media artist, 3D designer, 3D artist, 3D animator, and concept artist.
Check out this awesome Motion Graphics Package we made for Assassin’s Creed!
Inside A Motion Graphics Package
A good motion graphics package is one that will have all the right elements to prepare your graphics team to animate your logo and other brand elements. There are several brand specific motion elements that a company could have in their collection to streamline the communication process. Templates for everything from calls to action, unique lower thirds, photo slideshows, but more importantly – the video game logo. This is something you can use for your gaming intros and outros and any other communication tool you can think of.
If you plan to hire a top illustrator to create or update your logo and your next step is to have someone animate it, be sure to get the vector file. The opposite type of file from a vector graphic would be a raster graphic, which is built on pixels. And as you enlarge a pixel-based image, the pixels become more dominant than the artwork. On the other hand, a vector image is when every line on your logo is anchored by a precise geographic coordinate, and the color, the width, the trajectory are all coded into the file. That means a vector image can scale to a billboard without being recreated, but more importantly, the information in these vector objects can be extracted for the animation process.
The logo designer should have a more intimate knowledge of your logo than anybody else. They should be aware of the relation between angles and trajectories of each line, or the delicate balance of color.
Your logo has a unique voice and wants to move a certain way. Some images are associated with their own evolution, in which case the different stages would benefit by being designed by the same illustrator. If your logo is more geometric, it wants to move mechanically; if the design leans more natural, it wants to move that way. Because you want to give your company a unique voice and movement this can influence how it’s received and perceived. The movement of your logo animation can influence the rest of your brand package. Check out some of the logo animations we’ve produced by clicking on the image below!
The goal of motion graphics is to breathe life into infographics (information graphics) by adding movement and sound, while promoting a company’s brand and message. The use of a time frame allows experienced motion graphics designers to convey a lot more than what an image can. A motion graphic allows the viewer to go on a visual journey using a narrative, instead of simply scrolling through data on a screen.
Motion graphics spread outside the most commonly used methods of frame-by-frame footage and animation. Motion is used to add interest, grab attention, or bring life to what may otherwise be uninteresting and hard to understand type of content.
There are a lot of complex ideas, concepts, and issues that can’t be simply understood through a single image. With motion graphics, you are able to bring your business and story to life with visuals and sounds. The use of visual effects and motion graphics allows data to meet design and merge into an incredible presentation. Check out more information on Motion Graphics Packages here!
Explainer Videos
Explainer Videos are the kind of videos that helps a company to explain how they work, or what a new product/service is.
It’s used a lot with start-ups and on a product’s launch. It replaces the need for a page full of text and graphics to explain a concept and add an engaging way to present something faster.
When working with Explainer Videos your focus should be on the story. You need to understand the product or company you’re working with, so the story can work the best way possible.
Logo Animations
This is the entrance point for many Motion Artists. Almost the first thing people tend to do when learning the skill is to apply it to their personal brand. Logo animations, as the name says, is the act of animating a logo. You can see a lot of this work at the end of advertising videos where we see the company logo with some tagline or call to action. They are short animations, but allow plenty of creativity and possibilities to work with.
Video Intros, Outros and Lower-Thirds
Intros are the animation that introduces a video (it’s usually used as the first thing on the screen) and outros are the animation that ends a video and shows some relevant information (like previous videos, social media channels, etc). Lower-Thirds are every kind of information you see in the middle of a video that tends to present who the person is, or where people are. They are those small “notes” that appear and go out over the video footage.
Games have a specific requirement in terms of animators to develop characters, special effects, and general movements. However, someone else or a different team makes their user interface interactions and sometimes even the game trailer. If you look at mobile games, there are plenty of new ones coming up to the app stores every single day!
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