Motion Graphics Certificate (Self-Paced)

Learn more about the Motion Graphics Certificate in an interview with the resident expert: Jerron Smith, the Director of the Motion Graphics Program at Noble Desktop.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience with motion graphics?

I went to school for fine arts, taught high school for three years, and then went back for a master’s degree. I got a Master of Arts in Communication Arts with an emphasis in computer graphics. But by that time, I’d already been doing that stuff for years, so mostly I took filmmaking classes. So that’s where I got into a lot of this. I’d been using After Effects for a few years before this and Premiere for a few years before the master’s degree. Mostly, I do corporate video and motion graphics. It’s a lot of animated charts and interviews and that sort of thing. I’ve worked for agencies. I’ve also worked for private individuals. 

What is the Motion Graphics Certificate at Noble Desktop?

So motion graphics grew out of graphic design. Video editing grew out of film editing, which was a completely different background. So people in motion graphics often start out in graphic design or art. In the video editing certificate, you have enough motion graphics to get titles and basic animation. And in the Motion Graphics Certificate, you get enough basic editing to do the cutting in your motion graphics. It’s really two sides of the same coin.

What is included in the Motion Graphics Certificate?

So there’s the video editing bootcamp, which is the basic Premiere Pro Bootcamp, really. There’s After Effects 1 and 2, and the portfolio class. 

Who is the target audience for this program?

So motion graphics and video editing are similar, but when I went to school, it was one or the other. In my master’s program, they didn’t really offer computer ed classes because I already knew that stuff, but they didn’t even really offer them for the video editing people. They taught video editors how to edit and how to shoot, and that sort of thing. People who did video did video. The graphics classes were completely separate. 

So the basic problem is that now that’s not the way it is. Producers used to be producers. There’s a phrase they call “preditor,” which is a producer-editor. What happened was that producers would tell an editor what to do, but they didn’t know how to do it themselves. As they got older and were looking for jobs, people were looking for producers who could do a basic edit, because it saves time. So they had to go back and learn how to cut something together. 

Now it’s kind of like everything. Editors are expected to know enough motion graphics so that they can do basic titles and tracking and that sort of stuff. And motion graphics artists need to know some basic editing. Some people do both equally well, but that’s rare. If you work in a film studio, you edit video. The more stratified an industry is, the less you have to know other stuff. Film and television editing, which are unionized, are like that, but everywhere else, it’s kind of everything all at once. 

What career options are available in motion graphics?

There is television work, there’s commercial work, and there are motion graphics in film, definitely. If you watch the Star Trek television shows, there are graphics all over the place. The screens, all the graphics in those shows, are probably done in After Effects, more than likely. 

So someone is in there making these things, but the number of jobs doing television and film work is a drop in the bucket compared to corporate video. Again, companies produce internal videos. There are televisions everywhere showing animated ads, shopping malls, and gyms. I worked for the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, because on their posts, the Army has TV screens showing information. They used to be just still images, but they decided that they could get more people to watch them if they were moving. So they started making animated ads, and they did screens and presentation graphics in After Effects. 

There are tons of moving graphics everywhere. On social media, you have the ads. The New York Public Library's Instagram has animations. It’s everywhere. The difference is that they are usually animated still images, not video. That’s where the confusion lies. Apparently, young people use the term video editing for anything involving video. So, something involving tracking, they call video editing, but the video editing software doesn’t do that. Animated graphics is not video editing. 

Some places ask for people who can do both. Motion graphics is used more in marketing for animating still images. So if you have images you want to animate, that would be a motion graphics job. If you have something you want to shoot video for and cut together, that would be a video editing job. If you want to do both of those things in one ad, it could be either one. So either two people do it, or one person does everything. There are small production companies that do everything. They shoot video, they edit it, and they do the motion graphics themselves. That’s an option. 

What will students learn in this program?

It’s a combination of software skills and the soft skills necessary for motion graphics. Adobe Creative Cloud is pretty much like a production studio in a box. That’s what it was designed for. You could create static assets with Illustrator, you could create moving assets with After Effects or Premiere Pro, and you can fix your audio or make audio with Audition. It’s all there. 

How does it compare to similar programs at Noble, like the Video Editing Certificate?

Motion graphics is more of a design field; video editing is not. Motion graphics grew out of graphic design. Video editing grew out of film editing, which was a completely different background. Editors were not designers. It was originally considered a technical field. So people in motion graphics often start out in graphic design or art, but with video editing, it’s not the same field, although some people do both. But it is a different way of thinking, so it does vary. In video editing, you have enough motion graphics to get titles and basic animation. And in motion graphics, you get enough basic editing to do the cutting in your motion graphics. It’s really two sides of the same coin.

What is the classroom and learning environment like?

They offer the opportunity to do live online or in-person. Live online is very popular. We do what are called hybrid classes. We do live in-person and live online simultaneously, trying to mimic the live experience online. It’s done through Zoom, and the people in the class have a big TV at the front of the room, and the people online have a Zoom window, and then they are observing the lesson that is happening in real-time. The way our software classes are taught is a method they call “learned in practice,” where the instructor demos a lesson, and the students use their e-books to do it step by step. That’s the opposite of what is probably the most common method of instruction, which is called “follow along,” where people follow along with the instructor the whole time. For small groups, this is fine, but the problem is with larger groups. It’s hard to get everyone together at the same time. We find that it’s easier to train large groups of people if you get everyone together. 

We offer a recording of the class for about two weeks after it’s done. People can go back and take it again to pick up what they missed in class. The e-books are theirs to keep, and they have step-by-step instructions, so they can go back and practice anything they missed. It’s a pretty good balance of hands-on with concepts, usually. Also, when the e-books are updated, students can get the update.

What advice would you give students beginning the Motion Graphics Certificate?

When I was a student, people were always telling me to go watch stuff. You really want to do that because it does help. At this point, it’s much easier because now it’s all on social media. I always tell my students to reach out to their favorite creators. Most people who do this kind of stuff for a living are really anxious to talk about it because nobody they live with cares. At all. Even people who are really famous are anxious to talk about it because everybody fawns over the talent, the actors, and stuff, but nobody ever asks the video effects supervisor what they thought unless they happen to go to an organization where they speak. So when you reach out to people, they are usually really happy to tell you how they did stuff because no one else cares.