this is how I would learn motion design if I could start over for context I've been in the motion design industry for the past 15 years working with companies like Google the United Nations and the Gates Foundation so today in this video I'm going to share with you my seven principles for learning motion sign [Music] the first principle is don't get distracted and focus on one thing at a time now I know that this is easier said than done but I'm going to give you a few helpful tips throughout this video that will really help
you to do this and teach you what is best to focus on if you are really struggling to focus on one thing at a time are you struggling to make progress learning a new software or skill then I recommend finding a buddy who you can pair up with to learn the software or skill with let's best friends in our course client quests we pair you up with an accountability buddy and our students say that this is really effective for helping them to get the course done and making the most out of the course so I
recommend if you are learning a new software skill that you do find your own body to make progress and focus on one thing at a time so if I can just learn one thing at a time what shall I learn well a question I get asked a lot is if I'm a freelancer should I also know Cinema 4D no I think it's really important that we stay up to date with the tools and what is industry standard but as we know so many new AI tools are coming into the market as well I think it's
going to make it incredibly hard to stand out if more and more non-designers are starting to use AI tools to create their design animation and 3D work so how as motion designers do we stand out then so that brings me on to point two instead of focusing on software skills we should focus more on creative and marketing skills so I believe we should focus on animation and design skills yes of course but we should also focus on storytelling and copywriting skills now these are two skills I think are very underrated in our industry but actually
incredibly vital one reason is that they will help you to stand out to your clients and potential employers but also they will help you to Market yourself and it's really really important to learn how to Market yourself because if you are the best designer or animator in the world but no one knows who you are are you you're not gonna get much work so it's really incredibly important to learn how to do this if you want to learn more marketing and business skills I recommend you check out our free five-day course I'll leave the link
below this video in the description the next principle that I wanted to share with you today is to learn what you need to learn to make more personal work there is so much information out there and we can basically spend all of our Lives doing courses or going down YouTube tutorial rabbit holes you need to learn the skills to be a motion designer but you also need to learn to take action and Implement them skills into personal projects personal work is really important and clients and potential employers will often tell me that they'll look at
a person's personal work to figure out what they like doing and also to decide whether to hire them or not I remember when I was a junior motion designer I wanted to work on more creative projects and I would ask my employers all the time if I could be put onto those creative projects the problem was was I wasn't showing them any personal creative work what you need to do is you need to learn just enough and then you need to practice so much and by doing this and making personal work you will have more
work for your reel as well so you can show your potential clients and employers what you can do when you're first starting out I definitely recommend taking courses with the likes of school emotion Ben Maria and of course with ourselves at motion hatch but what you need to do is you need to implement on what you're actually learning and take action so how do you not get distracted and how do you do this well this brings me on to my next point which is to create yourself a learning plan so how do you make a
learning plan well I recommend that you break your year up into quarters so Q one two three and four and you assign different courses or different types of learning to each quarter so for example I want to learn even more about systems and processes in q1 in Q2 I'm going to learn more about storytelling and then in Q3 I'm going to take a little break and in Q4 I'm going to learn more about copywriting so I recommend you do the same thing for yourself and I'd love to hear below this video what you've chosen to
learn this year and if you're going to break them up into this learning plan so learning principle number five is to get around other professionals this is going to make your learning so much quicker I remember when I first started out as a motion designer I learned so fast by working with other motion designers now ideally what you would do is you would work in House at a studio or an agency around other motion designers but I know that this isn't possible for everyone so what I recommend if you can't do that is you get
involved with the community now we have some communities attached to our courses in motion hatch so you're always welcome to join those I'll pop the links below this video in the description you can also find communities online such as on LinkedIn I know a lot of our students are getting a lot out of LinkedIn right now and there's a big motion design Community there so I recommend you go on there start posting but more importantly start interacting with other people's posts and leaving them nice comments and not just an emoji and then after you've done
that for a while you feel like you've built a little bit of a relationship with them you can then reach out to them and ask them if they would like to jump on a quick coffee chat with you now I know this is scary but I promise if you do this on a regular basis and you concentrate on making long-term relationships with people then you will benefit and the best thing to do is to think about how you can offer value to them instead of thinking about what value you can take from them this will
help you to become a much better motion designer and also a valuable member of our community which I would love for you to become so if you want to connect with me over on LinkedIn I'll leave my link as well below this video the third thing that you can do to get around other professionals is of course go to Live in-person Events now if you could all all do me one big favor and post the events that are local to you then everybody watching this video can use those events below and hopefully meet up with
you in person so go on right now pop those links below this video and then that can help everyone who watches this video to attend Live Events and to meet each other so my sixth principle of learning motion design is to be a lifelong learner now as we know the software is changing on a daily basis so we should be constantly sharpening our tools and constantly improving our craft I don't get older I I just get better so how do we keep up with all of this well as well as doing a learning plan we
should also employ just in time learning which leads me on to learning principle number seven which is learned just in time what you need to achieve your goals so I heard this verse from entrepreneur Pat Flynn and I really like this idea and I do it myself often it's easy to just keep learning and feel like you're being productive but it can be counted productive sometimes to just keep learning and never take any action so let's say for example you need to learn about a plug-in for a particular project you're doing you might just learn
about it when you need to use it for an actual project or a job now this is just in time learning I'm a big fan of it because I think that a lot of us take course after course after course I never Implement like we've discussed in this video so now that you know how idle animation design you're probably wondering where are the best places to learn on YouTube well if you want to know you should watch these videos next and I'll see you next week for more tips and advice on how how to start
and scale your motion design career and business
