Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michael Luckhardt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Michael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Animation has been a love of mine since I was a kid. You would find 12 year old me stitching together crudely drawn MS-Paint images into gifs, or uploading fan-art flash animations to the web (shoutout to newgrounds.com).

This led me to pursuing animation in art school, taking design courses by chance, realizing the two fields could be combined, and wham-bam my interest in motion design began.

Fast forward to finishing college, I landed an internship at a motion design studio in New York City. I had hopes it would end with a full-time position, but spoilers, It did not. While disappointing, things worked out for the best as it forced me to take on contract work until I eventually became a bone fide motion design freelancer.

Michael, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Michael and I am a freelance motion designer. I was born in Connecticut, moved around the states a bit, and now call Queens, New York, my home.

I’ve been working as an independent contractor for 13 years now, which has granted me the latitude to work on a variety of projects, whether that be with production studios, TV networks. ad agencies, or directly with clients themselves.

As a motion designer, my job is to bring my client’s ideas to life. Sometimes they may not know exactly what they’re looking for, or be able to provide a clear direction. It’s my job to take their ideas and create visual solutions in the form of design, illustration, storyboards, and eventually the finished animated piece.

I’ve worked with brands such as Google, Apple, Facebook, NBC, AMC, AT&T, and Goldman Sachs to name a few.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I’m torn on the topic of NFTs and how they’ve been implemented in recent years.

I appreciate the idea that a digital artist’s personal work can now be sold in a similar fashion to physical or traditional artwork. This is great – It places digital artists on equal footing with traditional artists. What I dislike about NFTs, is how they’ve been turned into a form predatory gambling in recent years.

Before going any further, I did dabble in the NFT space – going as far as to create my own collection of animated monsters that parody a certain popular Japanese franchise. (*Cough*, notpoketmon.com). In doing so, I came to realize how ponzi scheme-like the whole system can be.

It’s quite common to find mass collections of auto-generated artworks with early bird prices for initial buyers. These buyers are sold on the promise they’ll be able to resell their NFTs at a later date for huge profits. The creator makes a large sum of money up front, and may abandon the project at any moment, given many of these collections are run by an anonymous crew.

Now I certainly don’t believe all in the NFT space are predatory or dishonest. There are many individuals who sell their digital artworks without these predatory practices. This is just a trend I’ve come across all too often in the space.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Versatility and Flexibility.

A director is in need of an animated title sequence for their film? That’s a potential job. A live event production company needs visuals to appear on-screen behind their on-stage talent? That’s potential job. A tech company needs animation ideas for their new app’s user interface? Yet another potential job. The applications feel nearly endless.

And this isn’t exclusive to motion design. I believe most artists. whether they be writers, illustrators, designers, musicians, etc, have the freedom to take on a mix of jobs, due to the versatility of the medium. Everyone needs to sell something, and selling usually requires some form of creative advertising.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mluckhardt.com/
• Instagram: whathardt
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelluckhardt/
• Other: Personal NFT Collection: https://notpoketmon.com/ https://opensea.io/collection/notpoketmon

Image Credits
Profile Photo: Photographer: Lori Perbeck.