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The Importance of Learning Illustrator as a Mograph Artist
Hi,
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on understanding concept development more and really planning out my ideas before opening up After Effects or Illustrator.
After you have an idea that you want to move forward with and have rough sketches drawn out on paper etc, your assets/elements listed, how do you then move forward to create or source these?
The two options I see are – create them yourself in illustrator or download somebody else’s vector artwork.
Now, downloading somebody else’s images has worked for me in order to practice animation, as I didn’t want to spend too much time in illustrator and I favoured more learning the basic principles of animation and getting familiar with After Effects.
However now that I’m really trying to push my own ideas and style by taking the time to come up with my own concepts, I feel limited by just using what free vector images are available online.
So am I correct in thinking it’s imperative for me to learn illustrator and how to create artwork inside of it?
I know I’m basically answering my own question but I’m still in the early stages of learning mograph and I’m continually trying to figure out what direction to go next. For example I haven’t touched 3d yet or been inside of cinema4d, it’s hard not to jump to this as almost all reels feature 3d and I’m eager to get going on it, however I feel thoroughly understanding 2d and the core principles of animation will give me a better foundation for learning 3d and 3d modelling. It’s just now I’m faced with Illustrator and it feels like I should go grab a tablet and learn how to create assets.
I’m aware I’ overthinking this but I’m interest in how other mograph artists went about their learning process when first getting involved in this creative field.
My process at the moment is to go from project to project and learn new skills as required. I’m just not trying to get too advanced and steer away from beginner animation, although in this field it seems there is no right way to go about it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
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2 Replies
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You could get paid stock vector artwork, too.
I do think that mograph artists should be very familiar with Illustrator, but you can do quite a bit staying entirely in Ae with shape layers — which have the added benefit of a host of easily-animated properties.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
“Imperative” might be too strong of a word, but yes I’m talking from the point of going it alone.. at least until I get an opportunity to be part of a creative team.
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