Hip to Be Squared: Square Motion Design Inspiration

Can Motion Design inspiration can come from a simple square? You bet your button it can.  

In the Motion Design world it can be easy to focus on spectacular examples of artistic and technological achievement, but overlook great design principles altogether. At its core Motion Designers aim to bring life to inanimate objects, but this is better said than done.  

Specifically, it takes a lot of skill to give life to simple shapes. So we decided to make a list of some of our favorite MoGraph examples that feature a simple square. The videos on this list represent some of the best MoGraph work in the industry. So if you’re ready for some great MoGraph fundamentals, check out these awesome projects.  

Shhhhh// We’ll Never Tell

I’m not going to lie, this piece was the inspiration for writing this article. This video from Giant Ant (surprise, surprise...) shows off a wide array of MoGraph techniques. Notice how each scene flows into one another. It’s smooth like butter. And yellow like butter. mmm…butter.

Pause Fest 2011 - Sander Van Dijk

Sander is known for his masterful shape animations. This sequence created for Pause Fest (8 years ago) is no exception. Check out how the colors complement each other in the scene.  

Quartus

I don’t speak french, but I don’t have to in order to understand the themes in this video. Blackmeal put together this sequence using a strong amount of visual language to tell the story. They even turn a Fibonacci Sequence into a perfect square. So that’s neat.

Go Try it Yourself

Animating a square is fantastic practice for refining your skills as a Motion Graphic artists. Instead of hiding behind fancy textures, gradients, or effects, a simple square animation forces you as an artist to focus on the principles of animation. And speaking of animation principles have you seen this simple square animation from Cento Lodigiani? It proves that by following the golden rules you can bring anything to life.  

I hope you found this post inspiring. If you create a square animation of your own tweet it out to us @schoolofmotion. And to all you circle lovers out there….