Motion Graphics | Animation | Motion Illustration

Our animators, motion graphic artists, and motion illustrators create award-winning motion and animated works that explore imaginary worlds. ​Everything is possible for our animation/motion graphic illustrators. They can animate narratives using something as simple as a basic shape or line, or bring complex concepts to life, animating characters and products, or combining video and photography with drawn animation.
If it can move or be imagined, we can animate it. ​The sky’s the limit.

We're your partner, Brandman University; Davide Bonazzi

Barilla, Intensely Italian; Joey Guidone

UC SanDiego; Federico Gastaldi

Be Here Now; Giulio Bonasera

Cool Beans; Michael DiMilo

Rising Utility Costs; Luisa Jung

Personal Project; Daria Kirpach

America; MIrko Cresta

The Unloveables; Debbie Tilley

Life Skills, Lesson One; Chris MacNeil

Donuts are Heavier Then You Think; Caldwell Bosch

Duckman, an animated TV show, created by Everett Peck

Animation, Motion Illustration Graphics

by SalzmanArt Staff

Animation is the art of creating the illusion of movement from still images.

Motion graphic artists, animators, and motion illustrators create film, animation, and video that is comprised of a series of still images - a series of photographs in a film, a sequence of hand-drawn images in an animation. Flip them one after another faster than the eye can perceive and the illusion of motion is created. Motion graphic artists, animators, and motion Illustrators take advantage of this illusion to create animation and motion graphics that communicate their unique ideas over the passage of time. They make images come to life, they are animated, a word which literally means instilled with life. Animators and motion illustrators use visual metaphor and simile, as do conceptual illustrators; many animation artists also create still images, and are conceptual illustrators, humorous illustrators, editorial illustrators.
Motion illustration is often used alongside still images in online editorial publications, tech magazines, lifestyle magazines; you will find them in use by healthcare publications, television and used in streaming commercials, etc. Many financial or technology articles incorporate or feature motion illustration and animation in their advertising campaigns, because images in motion makes a statement about the subject that goes beyond what is expected, and add the element of time and change. Animation and motion illustration bring life to a still image, and allow a story that develops over a period of time.

A motion artist brings their unique perspective to the animated work. They consider the physical characteristics of the subject, the same as if they were creating a still, un-animated illustration: the size and shape of any objects to be animated, the density and fragility of the objects, the space the objects or subjects operate within. The animator may focus on how the different objects or concepts relate to each other. Does the idea they are illustrating relate to other ideas, or to other subjects? Are there parallel subjects they could include in the animation to expand or shed more light on the concept the author is conveying in the copy? What pop culture references would work in the animation? Visual symbols, perhaps, modern, or possibly historical?

Each facet of an animation requires planning, visualizing, and most importantly creativity. Once the animation sequence is planned out, a script is written, then a storyboard is created, and only then does the drawing begin and the animation is created. The resultant motion illustration or animation, when completed takes on a life of it’s own.

​When someone views the animation, they story develops before their eyes, the correlations and juxtaposed ideas in a motion illustration are presented in a sequence, and the viewer often laugh; the animation revealed a different perspective about the subject, an insight into the topic that they hadn’t considered.

Each of us sees an image from our own, unique perspective. Motion illustration helps bridge that point-of-view gap by making the image come alive, and allowing a story that can be developed over time, regardless of how short the animation, to reveal a different perspective.

If a still picture tells a thousand-word story, how many words are the story a motion illustration tells?

Motion graphics are often combined with video footage, with still images and photography, or combined other of media to create a rich, varied and engrossing visual effects. Marketers, advertisers, and art directors choose animation, animated illustrations, and motion graphics to strengthen their campaigns and publications with exciting, humorous, or profound works of moving art.

Davide Bonazzi animation for Brandman University