When I hear the phrase “motion graphics” all I can think of is pretty movie title sequences.
I also recall the time I fired up Adobe After Effects once to try and add some text on top of a video I shot with my digital camera. After using Photoshop for ten years I figured it'd be a piece of cake, but I couldn't tell my timelines from my layers and I might have accidentally tweened myself in the process. The program's language might as well have been Russian to me.
This week we're going to pit Bran Dougherty-Johnson versus Jason Koxvold in a battle of motion graphics prowess that will stretch the limits of the Layer Tennis playing field. I'm already in awe of these two titans for trying to do video work with only 15 minutes per volley, and that's completely ignoring the uploading/downloading time for moving files around. God I hope they have crazy 100 megabit connections because they're going to need it.
The competitors, Bran and Jason, have client lists a mile long and some pretty impressive reels. I love Bran's work for Yo Gabba Gabba and the webbies but his 2007 reel is a great summary. I know Jason's work from the rock videos he's done for my friend's two bands and his reel from 2004 sums up a lot of his motion graphics chops. Both gladiators bring a lot of other skills to the table: Bran's got a love of dayglow, typography, and illustration that should come in handy during the match while Jason's work runs the gamut from websites to wine bottles. That's right, we're talking freakin' wine bottle design here.
Bran won the coin toss and will make the first volley, but Jason gets the last word. When asked for comment Bran said "I plan on keeping the game classy. And that also means I'm going to take Mr. Koxvold to school. AE 101." Those are some pretty big words, can't wait to see them both bring it on Friday.
Bran studied Film at Vassar College and then moved to San Francisco where he became a motion-graphics artist at pomegranit editorial. he moved back to New York and worked in staff positions at the Attik from 1999-2001 and Brand New School from 2002-2005. He's also done freelance work for Buck, Digital Kitchen, ESPN Classics, Imaginary Forces, loyalkaspar, National Television, Showtime, Transistor Studios and others. Now he lives in Shelter Island, NY with his family and also runs PSST! Pass it on... a yearly collaborative film series.
Jason Koxvold was born in Belgium of not-Belgian parents, but shortly relocated to the more buttery, less garlicky shores of England. Ten years of boarding school taught him nothing if not to fight dirty; the element of surprise will feature prominently in his battle strategy. With that said, he's sure that Bran is equally freaked out by the prospect of doing anything substantial in After Effects in the space of fifteen minutes. How do you spell train wreck? Oh, wait.
When not reporting from the soggy Northwest, Matt Haughey spends most of his time screwing around on the web (professionally). After eight years of running a silly little community blog called MetaFilter, it's now grown to thousands of users, millions of pageviews, and three employees. When not herding kittens in his community, he sporadically posts to half a dozen other small blogs. Strangers collected more than you ever wanted to know about him on Wikipedia.
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