Motion North Manchester 2018.

Motion-Go and Motion North

On Wednesdays after our process and production sessions, there is a motion graphics and animation club with Sara Nesturuk called 'Motion Go'. Anyone can attend and get involved with additional little side projects, experiment with Adobe Aftereffects as well as collaborate and share ideas, inspirations, critique and network with one another. Majority if not all of the Motion Go team are part of the Graphic Design and Animation course however there have been a couple of people from other courses such as illustration who have attended for a session or two to see what it's like. It would be nice if the club did expand a little bit and perhaps more students from our course popped their head in for a session but it can be considered as extra work load on top of the existing projects which is understandable.  

Although I regularly attend the session i'm usually too busy documenting the process and production session prior onto blogger, this means sometimes I opt out of the little side projects. Even though I have created some work for some projects such as the '5 Second Introduction' and 'Christmas Carol', I haven't actually submitted anything to be showcased in the final show reels.

During a session before Christmas we were discussing about any art and design conferences and conventions taking place in 2018, it just so happens that on January 17th there was a showcase at a venue in Manchester for a group called Motion North. Motion North is a Manchester based group for motion designers, animators, film makers and vfx artists that reside within the upper regions of the UK, the group allows people to get together and share their love for making things move through animation and motion graphics. The venue took place at Federation House in Manchester so after the motion-go session a couple of us including Sara Nesturuk hopped onto a train and hightailed it up to Manchester. The venue showcased three companies, Boutique, Mainframe North and Animade.

I absolutely adored the bold typography that was dotted around Federation House. We sat up against this wall and i just had to get a picture of it. 

 Boutique

The first talk was by Boutique, an animation and design studio based in Helsinki, Finland. Below is a link to their website and I strongly suggest anyone reading this to have a look at their work. 

Boutique

A project of theirs that I like in particular are two music videos for a band called Studio Killers. I've never heard of them before but after watching these videos and listening to their music I quite enjoyed it and became a bit of a fan. The two videos that Boutique created were 'Ode to the bouncer' and 'Eros and Apollo' which can be found below.

Studio Killers - Ode To The Bouncer from Studio Killers on Vimeo.


Studio Killers - Eros and Apollo from Studio Killers on Vimeo.

The work by Boutique varies in style and design which is something I would personally love to achieve with my work. The one thing I fear with my portfolio is that my work suffers with looking too similar to one another or have the same theme, that theme usually being Cyberpunk related. It's something that I intend to improve and expand upon. Another project that I thought was really interesting by Boutique was for a Finnish VOD/TV channel RUUTU. The brief they received was to create an indent concept for their re-branding. They had full creative freedom and a request for something unexpected, this allowed them to conjure 'Otherworldly abstract visuals' The colour scheme is lovely, the pink coincides so well with the blues and the abstract shapes reacting to audio looks and feels so therapeutic.


Ruutu TV Channel Idents from Boutique on Vimeo.

Mainframe North

Mainframe north was the next company to showcase at the venue, I already knew about this design company due to the extremely popular video 'For Approval'. This video became an internet sensation last year to a point where i would see people sharing it at least twice a day. The video is essentially about objects and items that have properties and interacting in a way that they supposed to, an example being a bunch of eggs dropping onto a plate and not a single one of them cracking. I'm actually doing the theory behind why we feel discomfort from stuff like this for my genealogies project and this was mentioned and featured in my research. A link to their website can be found below

Mainframe


For Approval from Mainframe (North) on Vimeo.

Mainframe North talked about Maya Mash which is a dynamics mode for procedural effects that are used to created versatile motion design animations with procedural node networks. I don't know much about Maya and I have never tried the software out before, but the show reel that they showed at the venue was very impressive. Perhaps if i ever get the chance to try Maya i'd like to have a go at this and see if I could make something really bizarre with it. 


Mainframe's MASH Reel from Mainframe (North) on Vimeo.

Mainframe North also showcased some 10 second Idents that they created for Virgin media which can be found on their Vimeo. What's fascinating is how they were able to maintain the infinity symbol of Virgin whilst it transitions between representations. 


Virgin - Discovery Ident #1 from Mainframe (North) on Vimeo.

Animade

The final showcase was for Animade. Animade are a London based animation studio and their work is very colourful, playful and illustrative. Sara actually introduced us to some work by Animade in our first year. She showed us a video series by them called 'Animade Lernz' which was a comical visual tutorial on animating motion to in the form of 'do it like this, not like this.' You can find a link to their website below.

Animade


The Complete Animade Lernz from Animade on Vimeo.

Animade created some really cool interactive projects such as a little game to see how quickly you can crash a party by interacting with objects to get party goers to leave. My record So far is 24 seconds! I am an "excellent party pooper". you can give this little fun interactive game a try by following this link below. 

Animade Party


Party Pooper gameplay with sound! from Animade on Vimeo.

Additionally Animade created a mobile game called 'Ready Steady Bang' which can be picked up on IOS and Android. The game stars a tiny little cowboy in a minimal monotone series of wild west games, It's absolutely adorable. 

Ready Steady Bang from Animade on Vimeo.

This venue was brilliant to attend to and I was so glad that I heard about it when I did and actually went. It was great to sit there and listen to these companies talk about their process and their work for a couple of hours and I personally thought it was a great way to end the day. Although I am more of a graphic designer than an animator or motion graphics artist I really enjoyed the event and I found the work to be inspiring. After the event I spent the following day going through the websites of these companies and looking at the work that they had produced and it gave me inspiration on how I want my work to look and be presented. 

In my next personal development blog post I will be talking about one of my favourite artists who goes by the name of ArtemSolop on Instagram. An example of his work can be found below.