Interview with Kyle Hamrick, Motion Designer
Q&A with Kyle Hamrick, who is presenting at the CreativePro Week 2024
Kyle Hamrick is an Emmy-winning motion designer, video editor, Adobe-Certified software trainer and all-around After Effects/Premiere nerd who loves sharing knowledge. He’s also speaking at CreativePro Week 2024, which takes place July 8-12 in Washington, DC, with sessions on video for designers, and animation in After Effects.
We thought it would be fun to get to know him better with some Q&A.
When did you first realize that animation was your jam?
I definitely wouldn’t have guessed this is where my career would end up (my industry barely even existed 20 years ago), and I don’t believe there was any singular moment where I knew this would be my path. I always loved movies growing up, and used to make a lot of them with friends. (I’m fortunately just old enough that these are safely locked away on old VHS tapes instead of on YouTube…) Making movies turned largely into video editing, which turned into adding graphics and green screen work to do special effects, and all of that JUST KEPT GOING, and here we are.
Favorite feature in After Effects that you wouldn’t want to live without?
“Favorite feature” implies that I have to pick … just one?! This is a total cop-out, but my favorite feature about After Effects is … basically all of it. It’s a giant playground that allows you to do everything from animating an illustration, manipulate video footage, create elements from scratch…. It’s a big Swiss Army knife of a program (which, yes, can make it intimidating when you’re starting out, but). If you can imagine it, you can probably make it.
Biggest mistake new animators are prone to make?
With the endless firehose of online tutorials these days, it’s very easy to piecemeal your way into a new software without ever getting an understanding of the fundamental concepts upon which all of those techniques are based. At a certain point, you’re going to realize you only know how to do a handful of very specific tasks, but will totally hit a wall when you get outside those exact steps—and often won’t even know what to search for to solve these new troubles. When you hit that moment, that’s your cue to step back and “eat your vegetables,” by actually learning the why behind what you’ve been doing. Whether that’s finding a structured course, or seeking out instructors who try to teach those fundamentals from the beginning (ahem!), that’s the path to actually getting the software out of your way so you can truly be creative.
Your top three sources of inspiration?
Social media makes it pretty easy to create these large extended networks of creatives (and meeting them at conferences makes those connections real). There are websites I occasionally look at for inspiration, but honestly, I’ve built up a huge network of talented folks across all kinds of different specialties and mediums, and all of them are constantly sharing things, right? This keeps me pretty well-stocked in terms of art and design inspiration, and I have an ever-growing folder of screen grabs and links of all the stuff that catches my eye day-to-day. Beyond that, I really try to get AWAY from screens and the whole realm of digital design when I can (never often enough), and find a lot of inspiration in hikes/nature, real-world materials and textures, weird street art, etc.
What are you most excited to share in your CreativePro Week sessions?
I love introducing folks to new possibilities, and I suspect I’ll be doing a lot of that in my sessions. Many of the attendees are likely much better visual designers than I am, so I look forward to arming them with new ideas about adding time and movement into their already impressive work. One of the things I really love about teaching in-person is getting to see that “aha” moment when you can see it really click for someone. There’s obviously only so much I can cover in our short time together, but if I can equip people with a few useful everyday techniques, help them understand some of the fundamentals I mentioned above and get them excited to learn more? Mission accomplished.
This article was last modified on March 13, 2024
This article was first published on March 7, 2024
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