Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Dustin Novacek. I am an introvert that likes to work behind the scenes instead of in front of a camera. Many people will recognize my avatar with my alias name Ision Industries, early on during my motion design journey I decided to use an alias name on social media to post the content I was creating. The reason for this is I had a strong vision for who I wanted to become as a creator. This strong vision stuck with me day and night which eventually I found a name that sounds like a professional studio or agency. I didn’t want to show a face to the content I was creating, I want the focus to be solely on the content. I am a very inquisitive person that loves to learn new things and everything I have learned about motion design/video production was self taught over the years.
Tell us about your journey from a self-taught designer to becoming a visual storyteller
During my college years I bounced around between different majors and I wasn’t really interested in any of them. I discovered the world of motion design on my own late in my college career and once I learned about mograph I fell in love immediately. I started my creative journey in video production. I worked with a bass music label here in the USA called Bassroots Records. I worked on many different video production projects for them like shooting photography and video of Artist/DJ performances, concert event recaps, and musicians. While collaborating with the label I worked on a multitude of audio visualizer projects and other forms of motion graphics projects for promotion of the songs released on the label. I started using After Effects during this time and I had no idea what I was doing at first. I had ambition about what I needed to learn in order to accomplish my ideas, and over the course of many different projects through the years, I developed a deep understanding of how After Effects functions.
I produced over 200 videos for the label over the course of 5 years of working with them and I knew it was time for something different. I wanted to learn new things, experiment with new ideas and take my mograph skills to the next level. I wen’t down the rabbit hole of learning the fundamentals of motion, learning new techniques in After Effects and building new concepts. I was heavily into working with expressions in After Effects as well as kinetic typography at the time. I made some animation presets and templates available for public download and I submitted a few kinetic typography animations to the DEMO festival, which was a motion design festival at Amsterdam Central Station in 2019. Unfortunately, none of my animations were accepted though I had fun working on animating words and gaining deeper knowledge on new techniques in After Effects that I didn’t know before.
Then, I switched my focus and dedicated my entire time and energy to learning about Lottie animations and UI animations in general. It was a complete shift of how I thought about motion design as a whole but it was a shift that I needed because it brought on new challenges for me to learn and problem solve. When I make videos/animations I like to work within my own time limit keep it time appropriate, I don’t make long form videos usually. Lately, I have been focusing on producing tutorial-type content mainly for myself as a reference for what I have been learning at the time, because it takes me quite a while to learn something, and I often go through a long research and discovery phase until I finally grasp the concept. I produce the tutorial, breakdown/overview video in such a way that I can publish it online for others to discover, in hopes that they will find some useful information from it and learn something new. There are many ways motion design can be utilized to tell a story I just take it one project at a time.
Why is creating your own animation so mind-blowing?
After I take the time to research all my questions and learn the context of the idea I am trying to build I begin to brain dump ideas out as rough animations. As I continue to build from the rough animations eventually everything comes together piece by piece as a finished project. Since I am a visual learner it’s a refreshing feeling to see everything that I have been learning about built into an animation as a visual reference that I can understand.
How has the LottieFiles platform helped for your own portfolio development?
I’m grateful for discovering the Lottie platform because during that time I was stuck in a “creators block” hole and the whole process of learning about Lottie animations and building some in the beginning helped me find new inspiration and new meaning to what I was creating. When browsing through my Lottie library you can see my learning journey through time as there are incremental improvements in every animation I have published. When I first started publishing Lottie I was still building projects with my motion for video production workflow. As I started learning more about the context in which Lottie animations will be used as well as working within the limits of what is supported for Lottie compatibility I had to shift how I normally built motion design projects. Motion for video production and motion for UI/UX have entirely different use cases and it was a challenge at first because it was a complete new world for me.
I was used to rendering animations as mp4 files for video production now I was shifted to building and rendering motion projects as JSON files intended for developmental use cases. Instead of publishing motion videos for viewer experiences the focus was on building motion projects for interactive user experiences. I knew how to build animations in general though I didn’t want to make a Lottie animation for the sake of creating something fun. I needed to find out what the intended use will be for these type of animations and the limitations so I can produce a final render that causes no problems for the people who download and utilize my animations. The LottieFiles platform was the first place to allow me to publish marketplace items and opened the door for clients to contact me about collaboration projects. That door opened my mind to the many different and unexpected ideas that people have for their own projects. I feel like I was getting stuck in a “creators block” hole because I became stagnant in the ideas I had for my own personal motion design projects. Discovering the LottieFiles platform gave me momentum again because client collaboration is always a fun and enlightening which keeps my mograph learning journey growing.
What is your primary source of inspiration, and what is your creative process in creating these awesome, fun designs? How would you describe your style?
I am a visual learner so I take in information and inspiration from many different areas. I get inspiration from modern architecture and just every day life. After I visualize some ideas then I research, read books, read articles, and watch videos/documentaries trying to understand the context of what my animations should reference. For example, when I was learning about isometric design I knew there were tools out there to help with easy creation of isometric designs. I wanted to learn what isometric design is and how it is built. Once I understand how something works then I design the static graphic assets and build an animation as a reference to what I have been learning. I would classify my style as agile and functional, I tend to overthink and make my projects more complex than they need to and I get lost in them.
Overtime, I have learned that keeping it simple can be more effective and still provide a meaningful experience than over complicating designs with unnecessary elements. During the final render preparation process I like to clean up the final idea and remove all of the redundant ideas that don’t have a function. The motion needs to be just right in order for me to final render a project. Meaning the motion needs to feel natural without thinking why or what is happening. I like to design my animations with agile dynamics that still feels natural. The motion shouldn’t feel too abrupt or too slow, it is a finely tuned process that relies on balancing multiple elements such as choreography between objects, easing, timing and much more. You learn as you go so it’s always a work in progress
How is using Lottie beneficial to your daily work?
Ever since I started learning about Lottie animations in 2017 I have invested all of my focus into learning, building and troubleshooting Lottie projects. I don’t use native effects in After Effects so I constantly think of different ways to build animations that fit within the limits of the supported features so they are compatible with Lottie. Collaborating with a client on a motion project is a good way to put what I have learned so far to the test. I love collaborating with client’s because each project has a different function, each project has different meaning, and each project is a new challenge for me to problem solve. I also enjoy helping other animators in the Lottie community troubleshoot their errors when building Lottie animations. It’s inspiring to see other designers/animators in the community working on their own ideas and projects. Collaborating with clients and assisting community members on their projects opens my mind to the many different ways a Lottie can be used and I acquire new skills at the same time.
Tell us one thing you wished you knew before embarking into the world of motion.
I am a visual problem solver so it is easy for me to learn about motion design and use software to create designs. One thing I wish I would have learned about early on in my career is the business side of being a freelancer like self employment taxes, contracts, pricing your services, collaborating with clients, etc. The longer you continue your learning journey the more you will learn and improve on who you are as a designer. Potential clients will find you and contact you for work, you have to be ready when that happens.
Do you have any advice for the motion community?
For beginners: Pick one specific thing you want to animate and learn everything about that one thing until you can build out what your idea is. It's easy to feel overwhelmed at first because you want to create everything.
