Falling for Motion Design

There I was in the living room wondering, who out there cares about what I have to say?

Take me as a newborn when it comes to writing. I’ve played with the idea of being a writer in the past but the enthusiasm to pursue that path died an unnatural death. I now realize that what I love more than words are pictures and better still, moving pictures. Not just film but animation or to be precise, motion design.

As a young Nigerian child I had the privilege of owning a chinko phone and the big dream of recreating something I had seen on TV. It looked like a shiny golden object on Silverbird channel. Since I didn’t know how to do that, I settled for creating something within my strength, a rising fog.

Note: A chinko phone is a Nigerian slang for a low-grade phone imported from or made in China.

I asked, what could give me some smoke? My eyes swooshed over to my Father’s big aluminium cup. I filled it with water and left it in the freezer for hours till the water froze into impenetrable ice. I remember lifting the cup like an evil scientist with the exception of the comical evil laugh. I had to carry out this operation at night in order to have a black background on camera. I grabbed my Father’s torch, steadied it on a table, turned on the light and pointed it to the bottom of the frozen cup.

I made sure to capture the space between the bottom of the cup and the light source to get a footage of light beaming into smoking ice. I felt great. I did it. Then I placed that footage onto PowerPoint where I had lots of fancy text animations like fade in and fade out. I added end credits to the clip and felt satisfied watching the end of an absent movie with the smoke and light and stuff.

I’ve not stopped feeling this good about animation or motion design and I don’t see myself doing anything else. Well, except acting.

To see my works, please visit chizzyjames.com
Thank you for reading.
How did you step into the love of what you do?