Some people find their path early. I had to lose mine first.
I graduated with a BFA in 3D animation with big dreams and bigger hopes. The amazing student film I worked on reached the hights of semifinalist at the Student Academy Awards. With that in my back pocket I traversed the sea of job applications alone with no network. Which came with relentless waves of rejection letters that whittled me and my dream down over two years. Eventually, I had to start exploring another path I saw in computers. So I moved on, telling myself it must not have been meant to be.
So I took a detour.
I found my way to an opened door that lead to technical consulting. I spent the next three years implementing enterprise software and learning how businesses operate from the inside. I could do the work but it never felt like my path. It was soulless and unfulfilling. Every project dissolved the moment it was done, just another solution for just another corporate client trying to save two seconds on a button push. Something deep in the back of my mind kept pulling at me. A voice I could not silence no matter how hard I tried.
So I listened.
Going back to animation after so long felt terrifying. Like opening an old wound. I signed up for School of Motion anyway. First came the intro to After Effects class, which felt like one long exhale. Then Animation Bootcamp, and for a while it felt like I had finally found solid ground again. Until I fell into the web of comparison. One piece of student work led to another and another and within minutes the roots of self doubt had burrowed so deep my confidence had fallen completely through the floor. All the old doubts came rushing back. With all the rejection behind me I felt like a failure, like no one had ever taken the time to look deeper into who I really was. My degree felt hollow, like I had shown up and turned things in but never really proved anything. I had no real proof I was good at this. Just bad thoughts and the memory of every time I had fallen short. I walked away a second time and told myself I was done.
But that voice would not let me go.
With trepidation and reluctance I came back and finished a piece called Eyes Go Here. Somewhere in the middle of that project something shifted. Like sifting through the ashes of something I thought was gone and finding an ember still burning.
Then that ember burst into a great flame.
The systems brain I built in consulting, the programming knowledge I had been developing, the years of watching motion design from the outside. It all finally synced with the craft I had been training since college. It was the best work I had ever made. It did not feel like starting over. It felt like waking up for the first time in years.
That awakening changed how I understood what I actually bring to this work. Most motion designers think in stories. I also think in logical systems. That is not a limiter of imagination. It is one of the greatest additions to it.
Reaching into a tool bag other designers do not know exists is second nature. Expressions are not a foreign language to me, but a native one. That means I can build in ways others cannot, automate what others do by hand, and solve problems others do not know are solvable.
I want to build the kind of motion graphics that make a viewer pause mid scroll and rewind. Work that is clean but surprisingly magical. Technically precise but emotionally felt. The kind of work that looks effortless because everything underneath it was engineered to be exactly that.