We recently connected with Rick Jein Kuan and have shared our conversation below.

Rick Jein, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I think to be successful as a motion designer, it requires a combination of creativity, technical skills, and a strong understanding of design principles and experience. Motion designer’s job is to communicate a client’s ideas, brand and story. So, we also need very strong communication skills so that we can communicate well with clients.

Motion design is a creative field, creativity is very important and the ability to generate innovative ideas. Before I always dive into every other project, I will start with understanding the brief and requirement of the project. After that, I will try to find some inspiration. The best and faster place for me to find inspiration or references is through websites. Websites are becoming the fastest way for digital designers like us to get inspiration. We can almost find anything through websites to inspire you. There is another thing that can inspire me is the music. Sometimes music could inspire me with the storytelling approach. As different music can show different kinds of mood or feeling for the animation.

Also, as a motion designer, we work with computers a lot. We got to be at least very good at those design software like Adobe. If we know more other design softwares is a plus. If you have a good amount of technical skills which can enable you to bring your own creative concepts to life rather than always rely on someone else. For over the years, I have been focusing on design and animation. I used mainly Adobe softwares like After Effect and Photoshop. But I also use 3D software like Cinema4D which helps me to create some designs or animations which need 3D. Those softwares, which also can surprise me and help me to bring my ideas to another level.

A successful motion designer, we also need to have genuine passion for motion design. What motivates me in this field, that is the endless creativity that can happen in motion design. I love how technology nowadays can bring out more creativity for motion designers. Also, nowadays motion design is involved in many ways in our life, which gives us endless possibilities to create something new everyday. That is why I love motion design so much, and it motivates me to do better and be successful.

Rick Jein, 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?

Currently I am a freelance motion designer who focuses on design and animation. I am based in New York City.

Before I came to the US and worked as a motion designer, I started as a website designer back in around year 2008. I worked on web design and also for some of the flash animation back in the days. After a few years as a web designer, I went to the US for further study and learned about motion media in a school called SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design). During my school years, I have worked with two prolific studios in the motion industry, Superfad and Logan, for internships. After I graduated from SCAD, I went straight to New York City to start my full-time position as motion designer.

After like 3 years of full-time, I decided it was time to go freelance. In this 6 years of freelance, I have worked on brands like Nike, Adidas, Apple, Microsoft, Masterclass, Facebook, MTV and etc. I have worked on various different projects throughout my career from digital media to offline. Now, I am mainly working for advertising, entertainment and marketing projects.

I mainly provide solutions for design and animation problems. I have very strong adaptive knowledge that I can work on a lot of different kinds of media or art direction. For recent years, I have worked on many type driven direction projects, which developed my strong interest in type driven projects.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative for me is the freedom to get creative with my ideas through animation. At the same time, I have the ability to create visually pleasing, aesthetically attractive, and harmonious designs. This capacity to bring beauty into the world can be personally fulfilling.

Ultimately, the act of creating something from one’s imagination and seeing it come to life can bring immense joy and fulfillment.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In the creative industry it is not that easy, especially if you want to push yourself to compete with all the good designers around the world. I have the opportunity to live in New York City, which is also a city full of world class talented and creative people. It is tough and competitive to work in this city. But that is the power which pushes me to get better and it is the faster way to grow around these talented people.

That’s one story that gave me more resilience than ever. I don’t even know if I could get through the tough time at that time. Years ago, my visa got rejected and I got to go back to my home country which is Malaysia. I was staying in Malaysia for like two years. In those two years, I was struggling between work and life balance. It was one of my toughest life in those two years. I gave myself a year of break at the time, I stopped myself from doing any work related to design to clear my mind. In the second year, I worked at a production house in Malaysia. I had worked so many long hours in that year, which was slowly burning me off. I was thinking if I should continue to work in this industry. I almost wanted to give up on what I am doing. But I told myself I just can’t give up easily at that point. After my US working Visa got approved, I got back to New York City again and started my freelance career.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.rickfourthirty.tv/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickfourthirty/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-kuan-65422125/