Big (AWESOME) Changes are Coming to School of Motion

Hey folks - Joey here! 👋🏻

I wanted to share some exciting news. In just a couple of weeks we are going to officially launch School of Motion’s new All-Access program. We’ve been working on this update for a year, building out our new training platform and quietly inviting a few people into the program to test it as we did. 

The feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. Students love the freedom to explore whatever subject they want, on whatever schedule they want, allowing them to level up faster and to engage with fellow artists more than ever before. 

I’ve made a video explaining All-Access, why we’re shifting to this new platform, and what this change  means for you. 

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Just in case you TLDW’ed (too long didn’t watch), here’s the skinny: 

⚡️ WHAT DO YOU GET?

With School of Motion All-Access you unlock everything we have, including every SOM course and workshop (including new ones we release), unlimited critique, 24/7 community and online events. This is the same experience you already know and love.

⚡️ HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

You get all of this for one insanely low price - just $1,197 a year. This is just slightly higher than a SINGLE School of Motion bootcamp course. Previously, If you wanted to take several courses, it would have cost thousands of dollars. With All-Access, even if your funds are limited, you can take as many courses as you want at no extra cost. 

IMPORTANT: When we launch on 4/28, there will be a crazy good deal for your first year of All-Access. Stay tuned! 

⚡️ WHY ARE WE MAKING THESE CHANGES?

There are a lot of reasons we’re changing things up. 

First, we wanted to remove the constraint of time. We have heard from so many students that committing to 3 solid months of class is hard. Life gets in the way, they have to take a break, and before you know it, the course is over - no more feedback and no way to complete the course and get your verified credential. 

On the other hand, some people want to dive in and do the course in a much shorter span of time, and we have seen that a ton in our beta program—students taking courses in half the time it usually takes, and taking more classes one after the other. 

Which brings me to the other big reason - we wanted to remove the pressure of budget. I got into this business to make it possible for anyone to learn motion design…but there is so much to learn. And if you have a limited budget and can’t afford more than one class, it’s hard to grow your skills. We wanted to make the School of Motion experience more accessible to everyone, and with All-Access we’ve finally got a way to do that.

Finally, by moving to this model we’re able to better keep up with industry changes, so we can deliver shorter focused courses on new subjects. When we’re not bound to selling individual courses that take months to create, it means we can build short topical courses to keep you up-to-date on the latest tech and techniques.  

⚡️ BUT THERE HAS TO BE A CATCH, RIGHT?

Not really. Some things have changed for sure, but we think these changes make a lot of sense based on what we’ve seen on our platform for the last 15 years. 

Teaching Assistants. Rather than being paired with a single TA, on our new platform we have a rotating team of talented professional motion designers who will look at your work and give critiques. You get the same quality feedback, but with more perspectives from different artists. This change also makes it easier for us to ensure there is always someone qualified and available to give you that feedback. 

Access to your courses - While we have always offered forever access to your course materials, most people don’t use it, and frankly it costs a lot of money to maintain that for 30,000+ alumni on the existring platform. That drives up costs for you, our students. Moving forward, students will have access to their course materials only while their subscription is active.Based on what we’ve seen in terms of how students use our course content, this will not have a material  impact on the vast majority of students.

That said, if you bought a School of Motion course in the past, you’ll still have access to it. We’ll be contacting you soon with the details, but rest assured, you won’t lose access to your content. 

Community Platform - Finally, the old alumni community platform is being sunset (that’s a nice way to say we’re taking it out behind the shed and putting it out of its misery). It turns out that while there is a lot of activity on the platform, it has only been 1% of all 30,000+ alumni taking part. On our new platform—focused on enrolled students—we’re seeing a 70% engagement rate. This means an incredibly vibrant community for you that is also much better for us to maintain and justify. 

❤️ THANK YOU

Anyway, that’s it. We’re grateful to have you as a part of our community. We’ve been doing this a long time, and these changes mean we can keep doing them for a long time to come.