Yaroslav Chernov — Motion Designer

I started working in design back in 2008. At first, it was mostly freelance and volunteer work, with all sorts of graphic design projects, branding, and promotional materials. I didn't really plan to specialize in one particular area, and over the years I ended up trying quite a few different things. Some of them stayed just interesting experiments, while others became a much bigger part of my professional life. Motion design was one of those.

For more than eight years now, motion design has been my main professional occupation. Most of that time I've spent working on commercial projects, particularly advertising for mobile games, trailers, and various kinds of digital content. I've worked on projects with very different requirements, from relatively simple promotional animations to more complicated productions involving characters, illustrations, and 3D elements. I know my way around the production process, and I'm comfortable taking a project from an initial idea through to the finished animation.

One thing I've learned from working in advertising is that making something look good isn't always enough. You can create an animation you're genuinely happy with, and then the campaign results tell you that another version works better. That's just how advertising works. I've spent a good deal of my career developing different versions of creatives, experimenting with their structure and timing, and making changes based on actual performance. After doing this for years, you begin to understand which decisions are worth spending time on and which ones aren't going to make much difference.

As far as animation itself goes, I've worked with quite a broad range of styles and techniques. Character animation, kinetic typography, beauty-related visuals, illustration-based motion, 2D and 3D animation — I've had experience with all of them. I enjoy having that variety in my work. I can spend one project working on expressive characters and then switch to something much more minimal, where almost everything depends on composition, timing, and a few carefully chosen movements. Both can be equally interesting, just for different reasons.

Over the years, I've become very comfortable working with After Effects, Cinema 4D, Blender, Unity, and Unreal Engine. I like understanding how things work, not just knowing which buttons to press. It gives me more freedom when a project requires something unusual or when the original approach turns out to be too complicated. And having worked with different production pipelines, I'm used to finding practical solutions rather than getting stuck on one particular method.

Lately, AI has also become part of my everyday creative process. I use it to explore concepts, experiment with visual directions, generate backgrounds, prepare early video prototypes, and occasionally help with voice-related work. It's especially useful when I need to explore several ideas without spending days preparing each one. I'm quite interested in how these tools are developing, although I don't think they remove the need for good design skills. If anything, having experience makes it easier to understand where they can actually help and where it's better to do things yourself.

I should probably mention that I still work with graphic design as well. Even though motion design takes up most of my professional time, I've never completely separated it from the rest of my design background. Branding, typography, illustration, composition, and visual communication are still important parts of what I do. When I'm working on an animation, I tend to think about the design itself just as much as the movement. A nice transition won't really save a composition that doesn't work in the first place.

I'm also quite comfortable working independently. I can organize my own production process, make decisions about the visual direction, deal with technical problems, and manage the revisions that inevitably come with commercial projects. Of course, I enjoy exchanging ideas and working with other creative people too. Sometimes another person's perspective helps you notice something you've been looking at for hours without seeing.

I wouldn't say there's one particular visual style that represents everything I do. Different projects need different things, and I prefer having the freedom to adapt. I know how to make something bright, dynamic, and attention-grabbing, but I also appreciate more restrained design, where the smallest details carry most of the visual weight. For me, being a good designer means understanding which approach makes sense for the project, not simply repeating what you're already comfortable doing.

After almost 20 years in design, I have enough experience to feel confident in my work and the decisions I make. I know what I can do, I know how to approach unfamiliar challenges, and I'm not afraid of taking responsibility for a project. But I also don't see much point in pretending that there's nothing left to learn. There's always another technique to explore, another problem to figure out, or something you thought you understood until you tried doing it differently.

I still enjoy the actual process of designing and animating things. Not every project is exciting, and not every working day is particularly creative, but I like what I do. I've put a lot of time into becoming good at it, and I intend to keep getting better.