Find YOUR inspiration
As motion graphic designers, one of our biggest hurdles can be our own inspiration. It's not something you can force, and usually (for me at least) inspiration will come randomly when I least expect. When it does come along, we tend to grasp it with both hands and immediately create something from it, and hopefully, it'll turn out to be awesome.
James Curran A.K.A Slim Jim is an extremely talented After Effects animator and motion graphics designer. I discovered his work a couple of years back through Instagram, and found his sources of inspiration ironically inspiring. He'll spend a length of time in a new city, and then make it his mission to create a short gif of his experiences every day, aptly named GIFATHONs. The results are incredibly funny and extremely satisfying to watch. Obviously his work is amazing, but what I was really envious of was his endless source of inspiration, every day he had a new experience which gave him the foundation to create something new and entertaining from.
Flash back to 2007 when I met my future wife Goelene (pronounced Jo-leen), I began making a list of all the incredibly hilarious things she says. Sometimes the words bypass the brain before they reach the mouth, other times it's just Goelene being Goelene. After almost 8 years of keeping this list updated with the latest 'Goelenisms', I realised that THIS was my endless source of inspiration. It was my answer to spending a month in a new city.
That's when I began my new animation/motion graphics Instagram account Incontinent Prawn Fish, the name being derived from an amalgamation of the weird things Goelene has said in the past. I started to turn some of these hilarious quotes into funny (and usually weird) looping gifs.
As a motion graphics designer always on the look out for new inspiration, having this untapped source to turn to when I'm looking for something to inspire me is incredibly useful, and best of all, Goelene actually kind of likes it.
If you like these three gifs, check out my Incontinent Prawn Fish page here, or hop straight to my Instagram account to follow the silliness.
Garth
