Motion design 2D

A new video trend, and above all a real opportunity for brands, motion design brings your digital projects to life.

This animation technique is a powerful tool for visualising data and concepts, bringing infographics to life and simplifying theoretical concepts.

What is motion design?

Animation design or 2D motion design is a graphic creation technique that involves animating graphic elements (shapes, characters, words, etc.).

All styles are possible, from the simplest to the most complex. Add to this music and sound effects, and you've got a creative, captivating and impactful rendering!

2D animation can be used for a variety of purposes. Whether it's a presentation video, an instructional video, a tutorial or a product video, motion design can be a real asset to your company's communications.

Motion design is particularly well suited to depicting abstract concepts that are hard to imagine. This technique makes a highly theoretical explanation attractive, easy to understand and memorable.

Why make a motion design video?

Vast creative possibilities
Easy-to-remember format
Low-cost animation technique
Vulgarizing complex information
Playful explanations
Modernized brand image

Interview and motion design

We can also add graphic inserts to a filmed video to energize and illustrate the video's content. This technique is particularly useful for interview videos. This can take the form of pictograms, drawings, wording, infographics, diagrams...

Anything is possible with 2D motion design. With the added touch of motion design, take your audience on an immersive experience and make your videos fun.

Your motion design corporate video

Corporate or institutional films often present more formal or complex information for an uninformed audience to assimilate. All the more reason to take care with your production!

Take care of the rhythm, the editing, and add dynamism by adding graphic elements created in line with your corporate identity. It's your message that comes to life, in your corporate colors.
Motion design makes a real impact on your target audience. In addition to being watched, your corporate film will be appreciated and your message memorized.

Present your product in motion design

Are you about to launch a new product on the market, or do you want to breathe new life into a campaign you've already launched? Motion design can help you stand out from the competition. Make a lasting impression with powerful images that match your brand image.

Discover our motion design animations

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Maybe you have already heard or read the term "Motion Design" but have no clear idea of this concept. Yet nowadays, this curious but fascinating bug is omnipresent in our daily life.

On today's menu, you will learn about motion design, its definition which keeps evolving over time, and a taste of its journey through its many pioneers. The 12 principles of motion design, preceded by the reasons for its success and its advantages. Finally, you will find a selection of 3 softwares that we recommend for 2D animation.

/MOTION_DESIGN

What is motion design?

The motion design ou l’animation 2D, ou encore « motif en mouvement » pour les adeptes de la langue de Molière, est un art graphique faisant appel à de l’animation 2D, des effets visuels ou toute autre forme animée pour des projets vidéo tels que des films, des publicités, des jeux vidéo ou des clips musicaux. Cet art intrigue et ne cesse d’évoluer dans toutes ses dimensions. La créativité n’y connaît aucune limite physique contrairement au cinéma ou à la photographie et c’est ce qui a certainement contribué à son immense pouvoir aujourd’hui.

/ORIGIN

The history of motion design

The origin of motion design is unclear since its first expressions were not yet considered a full-fledged art. Classic in history, it is its popularity and the first company to appropriate the specialization that will have the honor of naming it. The chosen one will be John Whitney, founding his company "Motion Graphics. Inc. in 1960.

If Picasso is credited with cubism, then so is Saul Bass with motion design. Mister Bass is the American graphic designer who marked the history of cinema and motion design by using movement in his film credits (a medium that was basically static) during the late 1950s. To quote one of them : Psychosis.

Back to our millennium (but not too far away), the birth of the Internet will be the big bang of the motion design galaxy we gravitate in today.

Les outils de création et de diffusion en expansion, pousseront les agences de publicités françaises à créer des « pôle motion » pour satisfaire la demande de créations de vidéos ou d’animations notamment pour YouTube. Les motion designers devront faire preuve de créativité et s’adapter aux contraintes des plateformes.

These constraints, added to the competition, becoming more and more complex and difficult, will call for the creation of training courses and motion design schools in order to promote efficient graphic designers within companies from the start.

"But Jamy, why do motion design?".
"Well Fred, it's very simple!"

/BENEFITS

The advantages

Pourquoi est-ce que le motion design est aussi tendance aujourd’hui ? Tout simplement, le cerveau à plusieurs « mémoires », les plus connues sont la mémoire visuelle et la mémoire auditive mais il en existe également une troisième, moins mise en avant, qui est : kinetic memory. En simple, c’est la capacité à enclencher la mémorisation en faisant appel au mouvement.

Et l’animation 2D va beaucoup la susciter. Nous vous épargnons les détails et termes du cours de bio, tout ce qu’il faut retenir, c’est que le mouvement des formes et des couleurs contribue au maintien de l’attention du spectateur car cela est stimulant. Ainsi, le public est plus enclin à enregistrer l’information qui lui est diffusée et à y adhérer !

The power of motion design varies depending on the situation. 2D animation can fulfill different objectives. Presentation video, explanatory video, tutorial, product video,... motion design can be a real asset for the communication of your company.

1. Commercial

In a commercial contextThe main interest of motion design is that it allows to better promote the content of a video. Thanks to the colors and the storytelling, the target audience finds it easier to identify and will be more sensitive. This greatly facilitates the relationship of trust between the advertiser and the client. Thus, motion design increases the chances that the client will take action.

Ce sont des éléments que l’on peut aisément identifier ici avec cette vidéo pour Bruxelles formations que la Duck team à produite avec soin :

2. Learning

In a pure learning environment, le motion design contribue à la vulgarisation de concepts ou de notions complexes. Rappelez-vous des petites animations dynamiques dans les reportages du journal tv ou dans des documentaires ! C’est de cela dont il s’agit. La stimulation par le mouvement et les couleurs favorisent l’apprentissage et la compréhension du spectateur. Adieu les textes rigides et les schémas immobiles ! Grâce au motion design, les informations sont plus accessibles et amusantes. Les vidéos tutoriels sont particulièrement adaptées au format.

For VOO, we made an explanatory video showing the different steps illustrated.

3. Business

In a business settingThere is a category of video designed for businesses calledcorporate video" or "company video". This type of video can take several different styles: motion design, film, interview, screencastetc.

Corporate videos in motion design are a good solution to present a company, its team, its objectives, its missions,... A large number of companies have become adept at corporate video animation.

Indeed, how not to become addicted to a concept that combines clarity, fun and performance as the corporate video in motion design?

Not sure what type of video to choose to promote your business? There are different types of videos that have different purposes. Discover them here.

All this is enhanced by different animation techniques such as: zoom, dolly but also by essential tools such as voice-over, rhythm associated with music, editing and animated diagrams in the video. Finally, in an era where video is one of the most sought after formats on the web, whether in YouTube or Tik Tok format, it facilitates referencing and thus reaches a much wider range of the public.

/PRINCIPLES

The 12 principles of motion design

1. Squash and stretch

It consists in deforming an animated object in movement in order to reinforce its strength, its speed and its weight. The more it stretches and crushes by the movement, the softer it is. The heavier it is, the less the movement will be accentuated.

2. Anticipation

In singles, it is to include a step that introduces the main movement. Before jumping, you take your swing. Before you hit, you swing your arm back. These are details that we don't see in the foreground in everyday life, but it is these details that mark the realism of an animation.

3. Staging

When using staging in cinema, it is important to know how to manage the appearance of different characters. This notion is also valid for motion design. The objects of the animation must appear in a well-defined order beforehand in order to guide the viewer's gaze. This step is essential for his immersion.

4. Straight ahead and pose to pose

Two animation methods in one step! Straight ahead consists in drawing the different stages of an animation one after the other. Whereas pose to pose is more like drawing the key phases first and then completing them with transitional phases in between.

5. Follow through and overlapping action

Also called Drag, it is a step that cares about the coherence of independent movements to the physics of the main element. A concrete example: when you make a character run with a cape, the cape is not subject to the same physics as the character. It must therefore be coordinated. That's the whole point of this step.

6. Slow in and slow out

Play with the number of frames to speed up or slow down an animation. Another step that contributes to the realism of 2D motion design.

7. Bows

To create a more harmonious movement, arcs can be used. This is a plus for almost any shape that can be animated.

8. Secondary action

Not to be confused with point 5, it is about taking care of the secondary elements that impact on the main movement. Another example, if you animate an annoyed character walking, the feet are the main element while the fists and the expression of irritation are the secondary elements. This phase will focus on the latter.

9. Timing

The speed of animation in motion design depends on the number of frames per second. Frames are the images used to create the animation. The more frames there are, the slower the animation will be and vice versa. It is important to note that the number of frames can greatly change the feeling that a motion design sequence should bring.

10. Exaggeration

It's all in the title, it's a step that consists in exaggerating the expressions of a character or the movement of objects present in a motion design animation to better reach the viewer.

11. Solid drawing

The eleventh technique in this list consists in giving volume and perspective to the drawing. It is necessary to master the volume, the mass and the weight of what you want to animate. These are important notions because this is what will give the viewer the impression that the character has a consistency and that it evolves in a physical world.

12. Appeal

Finally, what contributes a lot to a motion design animation is the attractiveness of its actors. This little step consists in making the characters "attractive". This does not necessarily mean beautiful, since we all have our own sense of aesthetics, but rather "dynamic" or "interesting". To do this, we exaggerate the attributes that characterize the character and remove the excess detail.

Have you been captivated by this topic? You'll find a nice explanatory video here which takes up all these principles in greater depth.

/LOGICALS

Our 3 favorite software to animate

Want to get started?

As you can see, motion design has become an essential (not to say indispensable) tool in the world of visual communication. This universe has seduced you and you are considering a project? Contact us, the team will gladly make it happen!