Hi! I’m Walker, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life until last spring. In high school, I was unsure and unmotivated to choose a career path for college, up until my senior year, when I took a class that taught us how to use the software Adobe After Effects to make motion graphics. It was then that I knew I wanted to pursue a career in animation. After I graduated, I decided to go to my local community college because I was still unsure about what college and specific animation path I wanted to pursue. My love of fiction, reptiles, animation, and special effects led me to choose a path in computer animation at Columbia College Chicago. I loved watching fictional creatures and monsters in movies such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic World, and I thought it would be amazing to learn how to model and animate something like that. I also liked watching movies like Iron Man and hyper-analyzing the models and special effects, such as Tony’s suits and the many explosions. I wondered how they created such intricate and realistic designs and made them fit into a realistic environment. These reasons were my main motivations for wanting to pursue a career in computer animation.

My first year at this school was spent learning how to use computer software to make simple 3d models and primitive animations. It wasn’t until my second year that I discovered that I liked the 3d modeling part more than the animation part of the 3d animation and modeling industry (for plenty of reasons), so I hoped I could somehow make a career out of that instead of animation being the main focus. I wanted to be the person who helped to create beautiful backgrounds for films and media instead of the characters that star in them, but I was still somewhat unsure and nervous about this career path due to the industry structure, the job market, and plenty of other things. It wasn’t until the end of my junior year that I really figured it out.

To say I loved my motion graphics class in high school was an understatement. I even went out of my way to buy the software at home so I could work on the final project outside of class, because I enjoyed the project and I wanted more time to make my project look as good as it could possibly be. We were supposed to choose 30 seconds of a song and use kinetic typography to animate the lyrics in a fun way that reflected the meaning of the words themselves, such as the word “tilt” being tilted, but also the meaning and emotion of the song as a whole. I chose to animate the first 30 seconds of Post Malone and Swae Lee’s Sunflower from the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse because I loved the movie and the song. It turned out amazing, and it’s still one of my favorite projects to date. We learned many different ways to use After Effects in this class, but creating animations with kinetic typography was by far my favorite, so I knew I definitely wanted to utilize this form of animation for future projects, and hopefully one day animate the next 30 seconds of Sunflower with what’s new motion graphics knowledge I acquired in the future. 

I was so passionate about this art form that I decided to make motion graphics my minor, and I started taking the required classes in my junior year at Columbia. I took Motion Graphics 1in the first semester of my junior year, and we had a lot of freedom in deciding what we wanted to do for our final project, so I decided to continue my Sunflower project and I used what I learned that semester to make the next 30 seconds even more diverse and interesting. I could’ve taken the easy way out and done something simple, which would’ve saved me so much time and effort those last few weeks but I really wanted to challenge myself and fulfill my goal of having animated the first minute of that song, and this was a perfect opportunity to do it. The results were amazing, and I’m so proud of myself for committing to it and putting in the hard work because it looks amazing, and it is an impressive piece to put in my portfolio. Here’s the link if you wanna take a look: Sunflower – Animated Lyric Video

Over winter break my parents were really pushing me to apply for internships and to try and gain experience outside of school so I would have a better chance of getting a job in my industry, so I decided to commit to making a promotional video for the school club that I’m in, as well as creating and running the official club instagram account for the next school year since our club had just became financially official and it didn’t have a proper social media page at the time. The club is Columbia’s Board Game Society (BGS), so I decided to create the promotional video for my final project in my Motion Graphics 2 class that spring. 

I didn’t have any luck with the internships, but the promotional video was going well, and I was learning more about the graphic design and advertising industry as the semester went on. I thought the idea of running a company’s or brand’s social media account and creating videos and graphics to promote it sounded like so much fun and something I’d love to do for a living, so I looked into jobs that might fit this criteria, and I found plenty. Of course, I did not possess the experience or credentials to actually apply for any of these jobs, but it was a good reference for what I may need to know for the future. I want to live in Chicago after I graduate, so I did extra research on motion design jobs in the city, and I found social media management jobs at the museums and aquarium here because I love those places so much. The jobs looked pretty interesting, and as of now, those specific jobs are my future goal. I was also taking a film editing class this semester, so I would have a better idea of how to use video editing software, but I still felt like my knowledge of graphic design and the softwares used to create it was lacking, so I decided to take a graphic design class the next fall to improve my skills. With more experience in graphic design, I will be able to create better motion graphics as well.

There are so many things in the graphic design and advertising world that I’ve always been interested in, and choosing this as my career path would allow me to utilize my fascinations and creativity to make a living doing something I genuinely enjoy. It felt very freeing to know what I wanted to do. I see motion graphics in so many advertisements and films, and I analyze everything I see and compare it to what I know, and if I could produce such a thing. For example, many film trailers nowadays utilize motion graphics, specifically kinetic typography, by taking clips from the film and placing words and shapes in a way that looks like they are actually in the film and interact with the environment. A word will be behind a character while they’re moving, or it will be placed at an angle so it looks like it is actually on the wall. These advertisements are so fascinating to me, and one day I want to be skilled and successful enough to actually be making these things for films, advertising agencies, and many more.

I’m a senior now, and I have been running the BGS account for a few weeks, and it is so much fun. My first post was the promotional video I made, and every two weeks, my graphic design major friend and I meet up to create graphics and posters for Instagram. I even created an official logo last week. I have to take extra time and effort out of my weeks to create these posts, but it is fun and a great learning experience. I’ve been utilizing the things I’ve learned from my ongoing graphic design class to create these graphics, and although it is very tedious and tiring at times, it has all been worth it so far, and it looks great on my portfolio. Here’s the first post we made for the fall semester, informing students when and where to go for the club.

Another thing I’ve learned from my graphic design class is that I am good at and I enjoy graphic design as a whole. I can totally see myself designing posters and graphics for large corporations to promote a product or an event. I like the act of designing streamlined, colorful shapes and combining them with text and images to create art. Graphic design is smooth, cut, clean, and extremely expressive, and it is just so fun to make something that captures the eye and satisfies the brain. This is highly beneficial for me because a career in motion design will certainly involve graphic design, so it is crucial for me to possess this knowledge. 

In the meantime, though, I will keep creating graphics and videos for the club’s social media, and I hope to even get around to making some more lyric videos using kinetic typography this semester. It’s nice to know what you wanna do, ya know?