Hi Guys, today I want to talk about how to use a Motion Graphics Production Workflow,
what is the correct software to use, and then just let’s get started to work!
It is essential to provide a high-quality service to all your clients, and to do so an efficient and productive artist should spend some time in pre-production by planning all the stages in advance and developing ideas. A well-organised workflow will make the difference, though is not really easy when it comes to pre-plan a motion graphic and animation project.
This is the reason why I want to share with you an efficient way to plan ahead a project. Here’s how:
– Start with a storyboard
It is fundamental to start the project with a storyboard. So, before using any software just take some time to put together some sketches and ideas on how the animation would flow step by step. You can add notes to explain each stage of the animation, and also the reason for some choices rather than others (i.e explaining camera moves, motions and anything else).
Thanks to this stage of pre-production you will organise your thoughts and define the workflow, and consequently, this will save your time and will give to your client an idea of what you are working on.
– Motion Graphics software to use in production.
Ok, but which kind of software can we use?
Well, it is plenty of animation software to learn. It seems like every month a new software it is released with the promise to improve the way in which Motion Graphic designers do their work.
The problem is that it takes months to learn animation software and if you pick the wrong one you could waste a significant amount of time trying to learn sub-par software.
Below a list of The Essentials Software to use for Motion Graphic:
Photoshop
Illustrator
- Create Vectorial elements
- UX Design
- Type Design
After Effects is a 2.5D animation software that will allow you to animate and composite all of your Motion Graphics work together once you’ve designed the storyboards and elements in Photoshop and Illustrator.
After Effects
- Logo Reveals
- Title Animation
- 3D Compositing
- Motion Tracking
- VFX
- Kinetic Typography
- Object Removal
- Simulation Effects
- Template Creation
- Slideshow Design
- UX/UI Design Mockups
- Web Design Mockups
- Explainer Videos
Cinema 4D
Cinema 4D is used for modelling, animation, and simulation effects, with specialized tools for motion design animation (Mograph), though it’s far more common for major studios to use applications like Maya.
– Pre-rendering
A complex nested composition can take a long time to render, either for previews or for final output.
If you have a nested composition that you do not expect to work on further, you can save time during each rendering operation by pre-rendering the nested composition into a movie and replacing the composition with the rendered movie.
You can still modify the original nested composition because it remains in the Project panel. If you make a significant change to the original nested composition, render it again.
– Video Finalized and Video Converter for Web
During the editing and video export stages may be difficult to understand which are the best software and format to use.
We recommend you:
Freemake
- Download free MP4 to MP3 Converter for Windows
- Add MP4 Video or Web link
- Select “to MP3” format
- Make final changes
- Convert MP4 to MP3
As soon as you are done with creating your video, you might need to add an audio track to it and to save it to a particular video format. That’s where you will need a video converter. I recommend the one from Freemake. It’s fast, easy-to-use and provides a good number of output options. Besides that, the software comes with a built-in video editor that will let you perform final video editing, if necessary.
How to add music to your video
If you need to add a particular track to your video file, you can easily do it with Freemake. What you need to do is to download and install this software on a PC. Then add a video, choose “Add sound” in settings and add music file. It can be a song, voice recording, comments, and so on. The only thing to keep in mind here is that your music file should not be protected.
Then simply convert your video file to one of the video formats to apply changes and merge your sound with the clip.