Justin, thanks for the com­ment! I do all of my ani­ma­tion and com­posit­ing work in After Effects. As far as design, i use the old indus­try stan­dards, Adobe Ps and Ai. I have 3 kids and one on the way, so most of the time i read fairy tales or sto­ries about mice, or pirates. I think the last book I actu­ally fin­ished was a book called “1001 Rules for my Unborn Son” here is a link to the book. http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/ it’s a really great book and a super fast read.

I try to be inspired by every­thing, even walk­ing down the gro­cery aisles at the local super mar­ket. Lately I find myself amused and inspired by the sim­ple things, i think mostly because of my chil­dren. Chil­dren are fas­ci­nat­ing to study. They think dif­fer­ently. They ask amaz­ing ques­tions that are twisted and skewed about the sim­plest stuff we just don’t think about or take for granted. My son asked me yes­ter­day, “how does a dig­i­tal cam­era work?” and “how it can cap­ture a moment and then put it on your com­puter?” — I have no idea. and frankly i never even thought about it, i just know that it can.

The other sources of inspi­ra­tion come from my cre­ative process. I am like a pack­rat, I col­lect and file almost any­thing visu­ally pleas­ing to the eye. When i start a project I usu­ally take an entire day just to research and dig for infor­ma­tion, images or just dif­fer­ent styles. Some­times I pull from what i have already col­lected, and other times i start with a clean slate. These col­lec­tions I call mood boards. I can quickly set a stage with sev­eral looks, pin them up and use that as fuel for the design stage.

I think the other impor­tant thing that i have learned along the way is to always design first, then ani­mate. So often i think young ani­ma­tors get in a bad habit of going right into Ae and start ani­mat­ing. I have been there. It always starts out great and ends ter­ri­bly. Great design has legs, it will take off effort­lessly and you find your­self think­ing of a thou­sand options and ways to ani­mate. Where as if you just start in with no direc­tion you find your­self run­ning into walls or unfore­seen road blocks, mak­ing the project painful.

My last 2¢. I work very hard at what i do. In fact i am writ­ing this com­ment back to you at 5:20 am after being up all night work­ing on a first draft ani­matic. I am not telling you that stay­ing up all night will make you a great designer, but you have to be will­ing to put that kind of effort into what you love doing. You have to have that drive and pas­sion to sur­vive in this indus­try. There are only a hand­ful of artist that were sim­ply given that “God Given” tal­ent. The rest of us have to make up for it with a big heart, long hours and a few tears.

I hope that has given you a lit­tle insight about my approach. Again, i am pretty tired, hope­fully i responded to your ques­tions cor­rectly. If not, my con­tact info is on the home page and you can always con­nect with me here as well http://www.justinmcclure.tv/networks feel free to call me or email me with ques­tions or com­ments any time!

Great body of work here Justin. I totally agree with you on the bit about design­ing before AE and how it will some­time end ter­ri­bly. After I started mak­ing boards ( which i believe are mostly used to “con­vince” a client on a con­cept ) they help act as a qual­ity con­trol for the projects aes­thetic through to the end..

Can i get those gigs of inspi­ra­tion you have cat­a­loged? J/K