In light of International Women’s Day, we’re excited to spotlight one of our female designers on the marketplace, Olga Kirsanova (Trikka).
We recently caught up with her to learn about how she started creating stock templates and motion graphics, becoming a producer for Motion Array, what inspires her, and how she made a career out of her passion.
Tell us a little about your background and how you got into motion design.
I have always loved drawing and loved cartoons. When I was studying to be a sociologist at the university, all my notebooks with notes were painted with some creepy images. I drew social structure, symbolic interactionism, and representative sampling – everything that was the topic of the lecture. I really loved sociology and I studied well, but in the future, I could hardly imagine myself as a sociologist.
When I was 19 years old, a friend of my brother, seeing my unhealthy hobby for drawing, gave me a floppy disk with Autodesk Animator. And so it went. First, I drew a cartoon of 1000 frames – with the mouse, frame by frame. Just a set of animated images that the camera flies through, only hand-drawn. Then the same friend showed my work to his friends from the local TV station – TV2. They decided that such a nutcase would be useful for them and they gave me a job – the first freelance in the advertising department, and after I graduated from the university – already officially in the promo department.
For 15 years I have been engaged in infographics, made commercials, illustrations for promotional materials, participated in filming. It was a good place to learn a lot and I am very grateful to all the people with whom I worked with. Then the TV company closed down. For a while, I worked in studios and it was great, but every time there was a feeling that I had to go through the same path from scratch and I did not develop. And then the stock graphics appeared in my life and it suddenly became a way out of the impasse.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to enter motion design?
It is quite useful to decide on time what kind of designer you want to be – studio or solo. In both cases, there are pros and cons and they are different approaches to work. Don’t focus only on technical skills – they are critical, but design is about communication.
Learn people and their interests, read books, social media, watch movies, video blogs, news. Look around, walk, travel, watch. Working from home can lead to a partial drop out of social life and you can gradually lose the sense of what people need. Find your professional community, online or offline, people who will support you, and with whom you can share problems and experiences. And then time will help you see that, in fact, you want to do something else.
What are the resources that have really helped you on your journey?
I was lucky that from the very beginning I found myself in a favorable environment. There were real enthusiasts around me, and we all learned from each other.
Television in Russia in the 2000s grew very vigorously which helped my development in the field of branding and design. I was also greatly influenced by Coordinate 20, a professional community of TV designers and promoters from all over the country. I gained a lot of knowledge about After Effects simply by examining how the projects of more experienced colleagues were arranged.
What do you think is the unique skill that has helped you become successful?
What one of my colleagues used to call me an “iron ass”, which signifies my perseverance on the verge of obsession. Frame-by-frame animation in stock graphics is a niche direction, not the most demanded. But demand is balanced by supply. Not everyone can draw something frame by frame for a long time and tediously. I can. Even worse, I like it!
When did you start working with Motion Array?
I started working with Motion Array two years ago and wish I did it sooner! My friend and colleague Daniil Doroshkov led me to the idea of working with stock graphics, he is also one of the authors of Motion Array. For a long time I was held captive by the widespread opinion that work for stock is exclusively a conveyor belt and a path to degradation. Now I can say with confidence that this is not the case. It all depends on what you can give other people as an author, are you ready to watch, listen, learn and change, what are you waiting for and what result you want to achieve.
How do you go about gathering ideas for your templates and designs?
From everywhere! Much of what I do is driven in some way by my own freelance experience. I do what I myself often lacked during my workflow, when a project needs to be quickly completed and handed over – how great it would be to find and buy some ready-made elements and insert them into the video!
I am inspired by films, the works of other authors, but the main thing is everything that I see around me. Book, travel, animals, raindrops on glass, social media posts, illness, delicious food, even a birthday of a loved one. Anything that can evoke emotions, surprise, delight, or even hurt.
I want to share and answer these main questions: Can I help others feel the same as I do? Would it be interesting for other people at all? Could this be helpful to me or others in terms of my work?
And then professional deformation already begins: How to make an After Effects project out of it? And – yes, how can I make money on it?
Music is also very important. Taking this opportunity, I want to say a big thank you to the Motion Array musicians, whose compositions I use in previews for my projects:
Thank you for your work! I listen to your music when I work on a project, I listen when I drive a car, I just really love it.
How long does it take to turn around a design from start to finish?
Very, very different. Something fits in a couple of days, something lies unfinished for months. Procrastination is an evil I struggle with, not always successfully.
What are some of your favorite templates or designs on Motion Array?
There are a lot of such authors. I really like the works of Nix Motion, King`s_Layer, Monstreh, and DMaster.
I am amazed at how their projects combine a unique author’s style, trends, skills, and all this has commercial potential, which is very important. This is the line between art and commercially successful design, on which I also focus for my work.
Who are a few of your favorite editors and filmmakers?
I love almost all of Peter Weir‘s films. Every time when I come across Picnic at the Hanging Rock, I watch it to the end, I just can not stop. But more often I like individual films. I can watch Seven and Terminator 1 endlessly, but I can’t call James Cameron or David Fincher my favorite editors.
More recently, I really like the series Servant by M. Night Shyamalan and Girls by Lena Dunham. In animation – Yuri Norstein, as well as The Simpsons, and Futurama, and their entire team – my forever favorites.
What does the future hold for you?
I would like to say that I will be doing video design for the rest of my days. This is already a part of my identity, I do not think of myself outside of this. But everything is constantly changing and it is better to be ready for this.
A huge plus of stock graphics is a relatively stable income. You can do more, you can do less, and get more or less money, but you have a window of opportunity, free time for learning something else. There is always a risk that you will be too comfortable in your niche and will not notice the world around you has changed.
The events of the last year led me to the decision to pursue an education in nursing. I hope to succeed and make a difference!
