Advanced Motion Methods is a nine week intensive course by School of Motion built to sharpen high-level animation skills. I took it in 2020 with the goal of pushing past clean keyframes and into motion that felt more intentional, expressive, and rooted in how things actually move.

Over the course I worked through assignments focused on geometry, rhythm, match-cuts, and transitions, all grounded in observing real movement rather than relying on instinct alone. The result was a set of polished, high-contrast geometric animations that pushed both my technical range and my creative judgment forward.

I already knew how to animate. What I wanted was to animate better, with curves that felt technical, transitions that felt seamless, and decisions backed by more than instinct alone.

The real challenge was making purely geometric, abstract shapes feel natural. That meant studying the math behind movement, understanding visual rhythm, applying natural proportions like the golden ratio, and breaking old habits in favor of more intentional choices. It's a magical thing to realize that the universe runs on math and we don't even notice it, to see that you can borrow some of that logic to make a movement feel more real, better.

This course was a solo journey, but not an isolated one. Each week brought a new assignment, worked through independently, paired with a tailored critique from a dedicated teaching assistant and a group breakdown where TAs highlighted standout work from other students in the course.

That feedback loop pushed every piece further than "technically correct" into something closer to creatively memorable. I brought the concepts to life, but the critiques are what made me trust the process enough to keep pushing past my comfort zone.

One of the earliest realizations in the course was how much motion is shaped by the world around us, physics, timing, proportion, behavior. Every exercise traced back to nature in some way.

One assignment, Seed & Stem, asked us to animate a bee flying through the artwork. I watched videos of real bees to understand how their wings actually move, fast, slightly erratic, nothing like the smooth flutter I would have guessed. The same project had a spider, and I studied YouTube footage of how spider legs actually articulate to get the motion right. Falling leaves got the same treatment, watching how they actually drift and spin rather than animating what I assumed they did.

This shifted my entire mindset. Motion wasn't just about curves anymore, it was about empathy, observation, and feeling.

Each assignment started with provided style frames. From there I broke the movement down into paths, mapped it onto geometric proportions like the golden ratio, and animated in After Effects with carefully tuned curves. Match-cuts, masks, and seamless transitions tied everything together.

The workflow was part analytical, part intuitive. Study the geometry first, then make it feel alive.

Tools: Adobe After Effects

Weekly critiques were some of the most valuable feedback I've ever received. The notes consistently pushed toward the same things, making impacts feel more physical, creating smoother visual rhythm, using negative space with intention, and pushing timing past comfortable into dynamic.

Each round of feedback helped polish a piece until it felt cohesive and confident rather than just technically correct.

By the end of nine weeks I had a small collection of geometric, rhythm-driven animations, clean motion arcs, abstract movement studies, match-cuts and seamless transitions, golden-ratio timing and proportion. Some pieces had voice over, and most followed a hero object through the scenes to give the motion a sense of story, even without a traditional character walking through a traditional narrative.

The pieces were stylistically diverse, but they shared the same foundation underneath, motion that feels rooted in the real world, even when built from simple shapes.