About this episode
In this episode, I ask Caleb and Shelby how motion designers can realistically utilise AI in their workflows, the best AI tools to use and how we can future-proof our careers against the rise of AI.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Caleb and Shelby went viral with their AI project
- How they formed Curious Refuge
- Will AI make roles in animation redundant?
- What AI tools should motion designers be using?
- How can you implement AI into your pipeline?
- How can you future-proof your motion design career against AI?
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Caleb: If you are a motion designer, and this is so important, you are not a keyframe setter alone.
[00:00:04] Shelby: I would challenge people to not be so black and white about it. Explore and play and let that shape your perspective.
[00:00:10] Hayley: That’s Caleb and Shelby from Curious Refuge. They made a fake trailer using AI and it went viral and got them millions of views, which changed their career overnight.
[00:00:21] Caleb: We very quickly were given a microphone basically about Oh my gosh, uh, this intersection of AI and film and storytelling, and what does this mean for the future.
[00:00:32] Hayley: In this episode, you’re going to learn how to future proof your career as a motion
[00:00:37] Caleb: designer. Number one, you have to test these tools to see what’s possible.
[00:00:41] Hayley: How AI is impacting the motion design industry.
[00:00:44] Caleb: Over the next two years. It will become the norm in motion design to accept AI as a tool in your creative pipeline.
[00:00:50] Hayley: And what the best AI tools are to use as a motion designer.
[00:00:54] Caleb: The best path right now is using AI to supplement the current workflow that you have.
[00:00:58] Hayley: So you made an AI film that got millions of views and I wanted to know like how that happened and how it came about.
[00:01:07] Caleb: Yeah, yes we did and in fact it was about one year ago exactly today that that happened. I think that the genesis of that project, and it was basically Wes Anderson does Star Wars. It was like a fun little parody trailer.
And the funny thing is, like, that was not created to go viral. That was not created for any other reason outside of just curiosity. I had been playing around with a lot of the AI tools that were coming out about a year ago. That’s whenever we saw, I believe is Mid Journey 5 and ChatGPT 4. They kind of came out on the same month.
And so it’s like you have these tools that can process language at a really high level now. And you have these tools that can create images that look photorealistic. You know, ChatGPT 5, or I’m sorry, Mid Journey 5. The fingers were like really messed up, but you know, if you kind of do a little fixing on the fingers and any weird parts, it looks barely realistic.
And so there were a few other tools like DID and, uh, just, you know, some voice tools, like 11 labs. And I was like, I want to do an experiment and I want to. Simulate what it would be like for the average creator to step into a creative project. So I told myself, I’m not going to use any high end tools or software that’s like super complicated to use.
And I’m only going to use like AI tools that are readily available. So not going to set up, you know, some crazy stable diffusion, comfy UI setup, or like something that’s like super complex that the average person wouldn’t find. And so I put that project together, put it out and went to bed. It had 200 views fast forward to the next morning.
It had 500, 000 views on like, it was like Reddit alone. It was going viral. And, uh, within the next two days, it was written about in most major news publications, news outlets were calling us. We very quickly were given a microphone basically about what was going on. Oh my gosh, this intersection of AI and film and storytelling and what does this mean for the future?
And we had already been playing around with AI and reading books about, you know, creativity and the future. So we already had quite a few opinions, but the thing that I think made our transition from a viral video to an online community very smooth is the fact that I had experience in the motion design world.
I used to work at school of motion. We were running rebel way, which is an online VFX school that does. Houdini and nuke training. And so it was very clear to me through those early experiments that there’s going to need to be a community that helps to support artists through this transition. And it was also very clear to me that traditional creative institutions were going to be hesitant because these tools changed the way that we.
Approach our craft and people do not like change. And so we wanted to be the place where people could press into the fear of change, where they could press into curiosity and have a place to explore the creative potential. And so now we offer courses in AI filmmaking and AI advertising, and we have students in over 109 countries.
We host meetups around the world. We’re speaking at CAN here in a couple weeks, and it’s just been a wild ride in the last 12 months. We were doing, we’re counting. We had a team meeting yesterday. We have 11 people on our team, and this was a side project of zero people exactly 12 months ago. So, like, wild growth, but it’s been incredible.
And so we’re just like really trying to figure out what to do. And, and push into serving people and, and serving people who are motion designers coming in, VFX artists, video editors, or just everyday people looking to find a new skill.
[00:04:57] Hayley: Yeah, it’s really fascinating. What kind of is interesting, you know, your company is called like Curious Refuge, right?
And you were like following your curiosity to like make a thing. You’re like, Hey, let’s. Just make a trailer, you know, and, and not really think much of it. I remember that I saw it. I think it was on Instagram. I’m not sure. Did you post it on Instagram and YouTube or? I
[00:05:18] Caleb: think we did it everywhere, basically.
[00:05:20] Hayley: Yeah, yeah. And I saw it on Instagram and I thought, that is genius. That is like so cool. so cool, just because it’s like a cool kind of looking thing too. And, you know, hopefully if people are watching it on YouTube and not listening to the podcast, they could see it. But if you are listening, you can also obviously go and look on the Curious Refuge YouTube channel and find it there.
But yeah, I think it’s just fascinating because I think that most people are kind of coming from, they’re a little bit scared, right, of AI. And it’s, it’s really interesting to me that you were like, Oh, okay. Well. Let’s just kind of like see what happens and then that like created a lot of opportunity for you.
Right. So I wanted to know from your perspective, how do you think about like how we use ai and I guess what would you say to some people who are out there kind of, I guess worrying about like, okay, well this take my job, or what’s, what am I supposed to do with it? Like, how does this all work?
[00:06:13] Shelby: I would love to hear what you have to say, Caleb as well, but I wanna speak to this.
If that’s all right. Um, I also worked at school of motion and then at rebel way. So we both worked at both companies, supporting artists, traditional artists in motion design and VFX. And so from my experience, when, when everything first started happening, well, what’s funny is Caleb was kind of the AI guy within our friend group.
It was like, we all had this like thing where it was like, how long until Caleb gets in a room that he’ll bring up AI? Cause it’s just like the fascination and the obsession, but then seeing like, Oh, the potential and how it will change the world. creative pipelines and workflows, right? Like it was quite overwhelming to me, to be honest, for a while.
I think I went through about two months of a paradigm shift in my own brain where I was like, Oh shoot. Like, what does this mean? I found it to be a little overwhelming, to be honest. I was like excited, but once seeing how, you know, really has a lot of potential for changing some creative fields, like I had some anxiety that I had to deal with, but what really helped me personally is.
Touching and playing around with the tools, like figuring out what are they? How do they actually work? You know, when I was just leaving my thoughts to make judgments about it, the fear was so present. But when I dove in myself and was building my own project and, and seeing how they work. It totally changed my perspective.
I think it gave me a lot of, I honestly had a lot of fun. I was like pulling all nighters, like exploring and creating, and it unlocked this like, I don’t know, like childlike creativity. Like I remember being like sixth, seventh grade, downloading, uh, Picasa and like editing for fun. You know, just photos of my friends, my space, like profile pictures.
Like I would just message people and say like, Hey, can I edit your photo for you? And then I would like use like pirated versions of Photoshop to do that. And it just kind of, it reminded me of that, that kid who was doing that. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so fun. I’m having the best time ever. I’m just like outing myself about.
Not having access to real Photoshop.
[00:08:10] Caleb: Everyone listening to this podcast, we’ve done it. We pay for it. Now we’re professionals. We love you. Adobe, every single person in the motion hash community has had a pirated version of an Adobe tool at one point.
[00:08:24] Shelby: Um, but for me, it took me a few months, but in, in that exploration and play, it relieved a lot of that anxiety I was feeling.
[00:08:32] Caleb: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I think there’s a lot of. of things to unpack there. You know, the first is the context in which all of this happened. So, for example, when we released the first AI trailer, the term AI filmmaking was like not a thing. There was like a couple blog articles that were talking about the intersection of AI and filmmaking.
But it’s very looking into the future, not very now focused. And then we released our trailer and it literally opened up conversation in the entire film industry about the future. And the timing is so interesting because that same week is when SAG the strikes started and it was Interesting because the strike started primarily because of streaming revenues and just negotiations about salaries and compensation regarding streaming rights and royalties, things like that.
And then by the end of the conversation, over the course of 3 months, AI was like the primary thing that everyone was talking about and putting the right guardrails in place. And I think it was great that, you know, putting the right guardrails in place. Place to protect people and, uh, to make sure that everybody gets a fair shake.
But what I think is so interesting, like to Shelby’s point is once you start messing around with these AI tools, you realize that it’s not just like copy, paste, type in a quick prompt, you get a thing. There is skill involved, and more specifically, there are skills that you can pull from your experience.
Traditionally, whether it is compositing and after effects, your video editing skills, your art direction skills, communication, any other creative skills that you currently have. Only magnify your creative potential with AI. And so to people who are afraid that AI is going to replace your job, go work on an AI project, and then tell me how you feel because all, every single time I start working on an AI project, um, in the back of my mind, sometimes I’m like, maybe it would have been easier to do this like a traditional way rather than using AI.
And of course, that’s like here where we are with the technology right now. It’ll progress, but it’ll continue to be this back and forth. Yeah. Creative assistant, because AI does not have taste and that’s what you’re drawing from. And ultimately that is what you get to bring to the table. It’s like your combination of your skill and your taste.
And so your skills are only going to be amplified. And I think that your taste with AI. Gets better too, because you can iterate and go through many more visualizations. And it’s like having the world’s most specific mood board to help you pick and choose and previs and do style frames. And just all of the typical process that you would use to create a motion design project can be supplemented through the use of AI.
And we, we both know that, uh, there are people that are working on AI tools that aren’t going to integrate directly into tools like after effects. And Photoshop, of course, already has AI tools that are really good and interesting and helpful and just a strictly utility perspective. So there’s, there’s so many opportunities.
And I would say, if you’re afraid the opposite of fear is not calm, it’s curiosity, suppressing the curiosity. And I think it will really, uh, alleviate a lot of fear.
[00:11:43] Hayley: Yeah, I guess what everybody is kind of worried about is if what happens if creative directors come in, they say, okay, you know, I got this. I can just use AI to kind of do what you were doing and I don’t need you anymore.
[00:11:57] Caleb: I think to address what you’re saying. So right now. We have pipelines, like we have pipelines that change pretty frequently, like, uh, you know, a TD’s role is to like figure out pipelines and, you know, to work through what the tech is going to be for a project, like a larger project. If you know you’re working on a VFX pipeline.
Uh, but motion design, same way, you know, we have pipelines. We go to, you know, mood boards to get inspiration. We go to illustrator to like do our style frames. We animate them in after effects. We do our animatic, you know, like, it’s like we have a definitive workflow and that workflow more or less has been kind of the same for the last 10, 15 years or so, you know, we get small little updates and after effects, but, but more or less, it’s been the same.
And AI is changing workflows, like it absolutely will change the way that we approach our work, but in light of that change, the skills that you currently have really have the ability to step into each one of these. New pipelines and get the most out of what is happening. And so if you are a motion designer, and this is so important, you are not a key frame setter alone.
I think a lot of people, you know, in the motion design world, they’re like, Oh, I get super excited about like the wiggle expression. And like, that makes me so, and I get it. Like I do too, like, it’s really fun to like, learn like expressions and setting key frames and drag the effect and connect the nodes and like, uh, you know, parent the thing.
That’s fun. I get it. But at the end of the day, you’re a storyteller. And I think elevating in thinking about yourself conceptually as how am I communicating visual information to an audience? And how am I telling a story through movement through animation? Through the script, through color, all of these things, that is where my hope is motion designers and really everyone can press into
[00:13:53] Shelby: at the HPA tech retreat.
We were listening to a team who worked on this animated short film and specifically the person who was in charge of like placing the bones in the character, right? Like he was talking about how this task would have taken him two days typically like to, to put these bones in and like really get. Get ready to direct the character.
I think it was an unreal engine they were using But basically he’s like in the amount of time it took me to refill my coffee I was able to put the bones into this character And so I made a coffee I came back and I was directing the character for the next scene Uh, which is so exciting and cool and like to have a day and a half Of his time now to be a storyteller and to see what he comes up with next.
It’s really cool. You know, it does save time and it will change things, but it’s elevating him to get to direct that story now, which is the fun part really. Right.
[00:14:44] Caleb: Yes. I think that nobody enjoys rotoscoping. So having AI come in and, uh, you know, take care of rotoscoping for you is going to be really helpful.
And a lot of times with AI, really what it gives you is a good first pass. And then you’re able to go in and kind of push it in and change things to make it exactly what you need. And so in so many instances, like we like saying that it’s like working with a hungover assistant, like they’re creative and they’re really great, but they also, you know, go down some weird rabbit holes that you have to like direct them and change things.
So really, at this point, it is in no way. A replacement for creatives. Again, it doesn’t really have taste and even the most advanced AI video tools like Sora, if you talk with people who are experimenting with Sora, they’re using it on high level projects. Uh, we, we talked with them all the time. They’re like, it’s hard.
It’s hard to use. You get weird stuff. It’s, you know, you, you get really interesting visuals. I’m sure a concert visuals will be really interesting, uh, with Sora, uh, here, because it’s like, you get crazy fever dream visuals, but that consistency and that, that control that’s so important whenever you’re directing a project, especially a motion design project, like motion design is.
Is one of the most nuanced creative disciplines when it comes to finessing movements and thinking about just the smallest details and how they play into the overall story, AI is not going to be very good at that. And so, you know, I think there’s some pretty immediate applications for motion designers, like of course, creative exploration on the pre production side, style frames.
You know, there’s great workflows that we talk about in our AI advertising course, where you can take style frames that are generated in AI and Convert them into vectors that you can bring into After Effects. Like, that’s pretty powerful. That’s interesting. But, it’s exploring those creative possibilities that I think will help you to understand and contextualize where it fits in your workflow.
[00:16:42] Hayley: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m glad you mentioned Sora, because a lot of people are talking about that. At the moment, obviously, because it’s like text to video and I saw the new, that airhead video and, and the kind of, I guess a lot of people are saying, Oh, you know, it’s like not consistent and things like that.
I just wondered kind of, I don’t know what you thought of Sora. I guess it’s not out yet technically, but like what you’re kind of thinking around that is, and do you think that’s kind of going to be a big disruptor?
[00:17:11] Caleb: That’s a great question. We talk with people all the time. We actually. Help open AI fine artists to give access like sore access to it.
So Sora right now in its current form is great for experimentation. I think it’s pretty good for music video. Like I, I think like music, like, you know, visuals where it’s like, can be much more experimental, experimental films, which is like the airheads film is like very experimental, like I’m not going to watch an hour and a half of airheads film, but, but two minutes, three minutes, like, okay, great.
Like that’s fun. I think that that technology. Is amazing from a technical perspective, like just like building the latent space and like just re imagining how diffusion models can work. Very interesting. But until we get the ability to upload an image and then the image gets animated, which Sora can do, but that’s not available to creatives right now.
Until we have the ability to extend clips with Sora. Uh, which is not available right now. Like right now you just type in a prompt and you get what you get. That’s very challenging to get consistency with. And so I think that Sora is interesting. I think that that style of model that does predictive animation is really interesting, but I think that.
It’s going to really be good for establishing shots and for details, but like for like hardcore animation outside of like, I don’t know, event titles, you know, you sit down at Adobe max and they have the three second, like cool low graph scene, you know, and it’s just like abstract nothingness or like some cool 3d, like a, that’s like has grass growing off of it or whatever.
Like, like that type of thing, it feels like you could do well with Sora, but if it’s something like for a client, if you’re working with old Navy and they need. 3d animated, cute little family that’s like walking into old Navy and picking out their clothes. That’s not, that’s not going to happen. Like that’s not going to be a good experience and traditional pipelines.
have to be the way you go, uh, at least for now, I don’t see technology like Sora being immediately a replacement to any sort of 3d workflow like that in the next 18 to 24 months.
[00:19:16] Hayley: Yeah. Um, I wanted to ask you about, I’m sorry, all the hard questions that you, um, but I wanted to ask you about like what you.
Think about the copyright issues with some of these tools, because I know, obviously it’s different. I think like from my limited knowledge, I think like Adobe is mostly using like their stock and stuff like that. But anyway, I’m sure there’s all sorts of stuff around it, but I just kind of wanted to get your general feel on that and like how you feel like it should be addressed.
[00:19:45] Caleb: A hundred percent. That’s like the best question as it relates to AI and how it works and how it generates imagery. Obviously tools like mid journey stable diffusion, and I’m pretty sure Dolly, which is open AI’s model were, they just scraped the internet. They just like took everything and they like created, you know, in an AI system that can replicate, you know, just any image that you can imagine.
And that would not have been possible without scraping the entirety of the internet that is problematic because for, for two, two reasons, the first reason We did not have laws that really, AI training as it relates to copyright, that wasn’t something that when copyright laws were written, that was on the radar of the people that were putting that stuff together.
And that’s why we see time and time again, the courts are throwing out these cases because they’re just like, There’s not legal precedent. And so we need to figure out as a society, what that legal precedent is. Different countries are taking different approaches. The UK is taking one approach that you use taking one approach.
Japan is taking a completely like you are not even allowed. To sue related to copyright. Like if you feel like your illustration was used in AI, you, you have no legal right to even begin a lawsuit because Japan is so freaked out about being left in the dust and so different countries are just taking dramatically different places and I think that for artists, like if I could dream up of like a perfect scenario, I would love.
For them to get like micro transactions of their work is like used to be trained inside of a model, you know, and so if you’re this incredible artist and you’ve developed these like really awesome, you know, images that have been scraped, you know, all, most of these tools have like subscription backends, you know, just like a Spotify models or Netflix or like anything else, or I’m sorry, YouTube, Netflix, like you get.
Amounts of money based on, you know, the percentage of your work that was used in that project. And so in many instances, the cat’s out of the bag, like, there’s not, you can, you can try to slow down tools like mid journey or open AI, because, you know, at least in the States, you can have a little more sway.
That’s not preventing AI models from other countries from slowing down and they have incentive to not slow down because, you know, a week in AI is like six months in previous industries. And so I think like there are companies like Adobe that are trying to go about it in ways that like are only using their own material that was trained on it.
I think there’s something to be said about. Not entirely sure if artists uploading their work to Adobe stock knew entirely that it would be used to train a model. Like I’m sure in the fine print, it’s like, we can use your image for anything anywhere, you know, at any time, which is fine, you know, but did anyone really imagine four years ago, like what AI generative AI would be like and how it would be training, like, no, like a few nerds in Silicon Valley did, but like the average creator absolutely did not, but you know, even Adobe Firefly for as like copyright clear as it is.
Was I think 5 to 10 percent of their library is trained on outside generated AI content and all of that is being ingested into the Firefly models. So it technically is not even fully copyright cleared either. Adobe will fight that tooth and nail in court, but like. It technically is not. And so I don’t see a scenario where going in the future, we will have the same copyright relationship that we had up to this point as it relates to AI.
There’s 100 percent an argument to be said that like all of us create artwork based on previous things that we’ve seen. Like whenever you sit down to work on a project that you typically go to Pinterest, you go to Behance, you go to the internet to search for, you know, creative styles and references.
You create mood boards. You blend them together. That is what AI tools do. They do it at a massive scale. That is completely beyond like the scope and our ability to like even synthesize that data. But at the end of the day, they work in a very similar way. It’s just, I think a lot of times as artists, we get upset because.
We can’t do that at that large of a scale. And so it feels like we’re getting left behind. And so in many ways to not get left behind is to embrace, to creatively explore, and then to inject your own humanity on top of that. So very long winded answer there. Sorry for the monologue, but
[00:24:02] Shelby: I think it’s interesting to, I was reading this medium article recently about AI and how it’s really challenging us to live in this.
Like liminal space, right? It’s because there’s going to be a lot of transition consistently as we figure out laws, as we figure out new technology, like there’s all we know about the future is change is going to continue to happen. I personally am trying to find comfort within that unknown and like learn to live there a bit more.
And so I thought that was a really interesting. Challenge that we’ll have to learn to embrace.
[00:24:36] Hayley: Yeah. So like moving on a little bit to like, okay, we’ve established that we’re a motion designer, maybe we’re thinking about using AI, what kind of tools would you recommend at the moment? Like how are you seeing people implement this into their pipeline?
[00:24:53] Caleb: Yeah, absolutely. There’s, there’s so many things that you can do. The best path right now is using AI to supplement the current workflow that you have. It’s not building an entirely. Crazy new AI workflow. I did some experiments with like AI logo resolves and like, let’s just take like popular logos and see how AI like uses MoGraph and it turns every single logo into like the cheesiest, I don’t know, off market news graphics imaginable, just like, it’s terrible, terrible stuff.
So it’s so bad at, at like traditional MoGraph. What it’s really good at is. Iteration and creative refinement. So just like multiple things, one, obviously style frames that makes a ton of sense, creatively exploring what is possible, letting your imagination, like using basically AI as Behance or using it as Google search, but like, you’re just like using, let’s say mid journey to like, just like, Come up with concepts.
And, you know, we’re, we’re so used to going to mood boards and style reference with specific art direction tags. Right. So it’s like a vintage 1980s color grading aesthetic with like pops of color and, you know, felt and, and like, we’ll type those things in and like, see what has happened over the years to like generate that aesthetic, but with AI, you know, A lot of times you’re able to inject actual emotion.
So you’re able to say, what would a vintage felt 1980s aesthetic look like with whimsy and a bit of angst? It’s like, Oh, I actually don’t know. Like, what would that look like? And they can begin to inject and creatively imagine what that would be like. And you can take certain ideas and implement them.
And that’s super fun. And like, I think that for me as a motion designer, I was always like, my ceiling was always. Stunted because of my ability to create really good style frames. And so, because I couldn’t create really great style frames. I just, that wasn’t like one of my giftings. And so I think that having that ability could unlock a lot for artists and, and, um, that could really help you.
And then there’s all just like the very practical things, you know, whether it’s. Script writing, and you’re just trying to, like, work through what the copy can be like for a commercial project that you’re working on, uh, generating, um, the voices, like if you need a voiceover, like a scratch track, AI is pretty good for that.
Uh, if you need to have some music for your project, that’s a specific duration and with this specific. Tone or style. There’s some great AI tools. I’ve been creating jingles like for my course, like if we’re having to wait on the, uh, software to do something, I have a song in there. It’s like a Western country song.
That’s the time lapse cover up song. And it’s just like this like guy singing and, and like AI can just do like really fun stuff like that. And so it’s like thinking with your clients, like, Oh, what would it look like to like take these tools and do new things and like, what would that look like for. You know, let’s say you’re working with a local client, they don’t have a budget to create jingles or like fun songs about their products, but like they actually can now, you know, and what would that look like?
You could pitch a new service, like it could drum up like new business for you. So there’s like all of those immediate things. And then on the backend with editing, you know, for, for motion designers specifically, having the ability to do like audio cleanup with the Adobe podcast enhanced tool is like really powerful.
Uh, we use Descript for like editing quite a bit, and that’s really powerful. I think the AI color grading tools are like, not the best just yet. They will be good, but they’re not good yet. And so I don’t have like a great recommendation on that front. But, um, yeah, AI is like really just changing every aspect of the creative workflow and directly inside of After Effects.
I think there’s a tool that does like stable diffusion images, or you can just like create an image and like drop it in really easily. So tons of opportunity there. And then if you’re doing like, Like, like typically it’s like you give an animatic to a client. They like, you know, give you some feedback.
You like go back and forth, but with your animatic. Now you actually can add some movement. If you use tools like runway or Pika.
[00:28:51] Shelby: And honestly, like simply using chat GPT for organization and helping to, um, make sense of your project. But also as like a, as a teacher, really like for tutorials, like I’m like needing to do something in premiere and I can’t quite remember the keyboard shortcut, I can just honestly go into chat and be like, what’s a keyboard shortcut for doing this thing.
And like. These seconds into habit.
[00:29:11] Hayley: Yeah, for sure. I think it’s things that we don’t think about as well. Like I think like, oh yeah, I’m not really using ai. And then I think about things that I do and I’m like, yeah, I totally use AI for some things. Like I use Grammarly a lot, and they like have AI in that, right?
They’re like, you know, do you wanna make your text more impactful? Like, do you, what about this? You know? And sometimes I read it and I’m like. Yeah, that’s not really how I would say it, but I don’t have to, like, accept it and be like, yeah, put that in there. Obviously, it’s primarily checking, like, spelling and grammar, but they, all these kind of text checker things all have AI in them now and, and you can, I feel like it’s just really helpful to look at the suggestions and be like, okay, does that make more sense?
Because I’m not the best writer, you know, as we said, as creatives, as motion designers, writing is definitely not a forte. So I think, like, using some of these kind of tools Transcribed To help with that sort of stuff, like emails and things like that is really, really helpful.
[00:30:05] Caleb: And honestly, like GASmotion designers, you kind of have to play double duty.
It’s like, you have the service that you provide and then it’s like, you have this whole like client relation side where, you know, you have to send emails and you have to have like a portfolio. And I know like, that’s like the entirety of like, that’s your thing is like helping folks like land clients and, uh, you know, develop their portfolios and add their presence and positioning and like all that good stuff.
Yeah. AI is really good at that. Yesterday, like I was putting together a landing page for a free course that we have. On our website. It’s like this like five module experience. I’m pretty sure motion hatch has the exact same thing, like a five module, like a welcome course experience, which is great, but the page, I wasn’t loving it and I was like, how can I make this better?
And I was like, I’m just going to take a screenshot. I just use the like Chrome extension. That’s like full page screen capture, took a picture, uploaded it to chat. How can I make this better? And it gave me like 20 ideas. I’d say like 18 of them were like. And so like I, I took it, injected my own humanity and I like really like the page now.
And so I really feel like there are some very practical things that you can do with like your portfolio, like my about page on your portfolio.
[00:31:10] Shelby: And even building a content schedule, right? Like I am a motion designer serving like restaurants in London and I need a social schedule for Instagram in Chattanooga.
Can you build me a, in a, in a table format, a week’s worth of content and how you recommend I schedule posts, right. And, and give me interesting ideas that are all unique and you could have in a few seconds. Interesting ideas to play around with and explore.
[00:31:35] Hayley: I wanted to ask about, you know, as motion designers and animators, how do you feel like we can help to future proof ourselves, like in this kind of new age of AI?
[00:31:46] Caleb: That’s a very important question. I think number one, you have to test these tools to see what’s possible. Whether you’re fearful, whether you. Don’t know how you feel about copyright. You just need to have a context for understanding what is and is not possible. And I really think you should be involved with an AI community.
It could be curious refuge, and we would love to have you. We have tons of motion designers in the program. That is the last time I’m going to pitch the program. It’s really fun, but even if it’s not, you need to embrace this evolving world and, and learn like ongoing learning is very important. I think like more than ever, you’re not going to be able to just rest on your laurels and, you know, Oh, I know how to use after effects.
I don’t need to learn anything more. I know how to use cinema 4d. I don’t know how I don’t like have to do anything else. That’s not true. Like lifelong learning is essential. If you’re in a creative. In a technological creative world. But I will say that if you begin to use these tools, like we’ve said time and time again, you’re going to realize that there’s a lot of work required to use them.
And so what’s going to be more important than ever is your taste, your ability to creative direct. And I think that the landscape and the offering that you can offer clients is going to be astounding. And so I’d say the opportunity is now, like you can, if we’re looking at the adoption curve, we’re like very early on with early adopters.
Like the whole world is pointing and saying that is a weird thing that we’re never going to use. Like we’re about to get into the early adoption cycle where for motion designers. And I tend, I tend to think that motion designers are people that adopt things fairly quickly. And I would say that over the next two years.
It will become the norm in motion design to accept AI as a tool in your creative pipeline. So if you embrace it now, you’re going to have so many more opportunities.
[00:33:35] Shelby: You’ve been on this side of like fear related to AI, maybe find some gray. I would challenge people to not be so black and white about it, but try to embrace that, that liminal space and look at it, explore and play and, and let that shape your perspective.
[00:33:52] Hayley: Yeah, for sure. And I really appreciate you both taking the time to talk to me about this. Cause you know, obviously on the motion hatch podcast, we’re hoping to have more conversations about AI and kind of. Navigate it with everyone and, and, you know, get people’s differing perspectives and stuff like that.
So I really appreciate you both for coming on the show today and, and, you know, talking more with us about AI and how we can utilize it as motion designers. Thanks for sticking around all the way to the end. You can check out all the links in the show notes. If you enjoyed this podcast, please do me a favor and head over to motionhatch.
com forward slash rate and leave us a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. This really helps to get the show out there to more motion designers. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you. See ya.
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