Takeover Tuesday Rohan McDonald
Dash animator, Bella Alfonsi interviewed animator, illustrator, and director, Rohan McDonald and we’ve got the scoop on it all!
Q&A with Rohan McDonald.
Read time: 5min
Bella Alfonsi:
Rohan! Thanks so much for being a part of our Tuesday Takeover series. For those who are unfamiliar with you or your work, please tell us a bit about yourself and what you do!
Rohan McDonald:
Thank you all for having me!
I’m an animator, illustrator, and director based in Boston, MA, USA. I create work from a 2D hand drawn perspective, primarily focusing on cel animation. I also love working with printed media and reading independent and self published comics. Beyond that, I enjoy rock climbing with my fiance, tinkering with music production and composition (occasionally), and repeatedly watching the Lord of the Rings behind the scenes documentaries.
Bella Alfonsi:
What inspired you to get into the motion design world?
Rohan McDonald:
I didn’t really understand that motion design was an option for me until sophomore year of college. I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) thinking I would be some combination of a painter and editorial illustrator. It became apparent rather quickly that I wasn’t a painter, at least in a fine art setting. In my first few years of school I felt like I had something to prove, so every piece would be about trying to impress people or show off. My painting professor at the time even went so far as to say “Rohan, you’re a really nice guy, but this is terrible.” After that righteous burn, I reconsidered what I was interested in, and came to the conclusion that I just love drawing. So I signed up for Intro to hand drawn animation, which was entirely on paper and entirely about drawing. I loved film and TV and also did some theater as a kid, so it was the perfect combination of acting, drawing, and film for me.
After that class, I wanted more digital animation skills. That’s when I got a crash course in photoshop, After Effects, and how to bring your hand-drawn paper work into digital space. The work we watched in that class brought me closer and closer to motion design as a future career. I would talk to professors outside of class about how to achieve certain looks I was going for and what to watch. So I sought out things like “Late Night Work Club,” where I saw films from artists like Nicolas Menard, Charles Huettner, and Alex Grigg. Then people like Sophie Koko Gate, Caitlin McCarthy and “Parallel Teeth,” appeared on my radar. All of these artists showed me that there was a really intriguing mix of graphic design, print media aesthetics, and cel animation to experiment with. I remember just feeling excited to get out into that world, even just to make commercial work, because I could play.
I then cold emailed every studio/agency in Chicago that created work in the motion design space. I sent over a short 30s reel in search of an internship, a part time job, anything really. I got a fair amount of responses! At the time that was surprising, but the Chicago motion design community is really small, tight knit, and welcoming.
I ended up at Demo Duck as an intern. After my internship, I worked part time at Demo Duck until I graduated. Then Demo Duck hired me full time as a junior art director! I spent the next 3 and a half years at Demo Duck and learned so much on the job, eventually being promoted to Art Director. It was like going to grad school, but without the debt. I really got to put in the time and see Demo Duck grow as a company, in addition to seeing the industry grow and thrive.
“Thanks for Asking” project with Demo Duck
Bella Alfonsi:
Do you have any kind of formal training or are you completely self taught?
Rohan McDonald:
This is a hard one. I definitely have formal training in cel animation and some in drawing overall. But when it comes to graphic design, and digital animation, I learned through a mix of more general SAIC courses, YouTube tutorials, and asking people how they did things. In addition to my own painstaking trial and error. However, I owe a lot to my SAIC professors Joel Benjamin, Shelley Dodson, Matt Marsden, and Jim Trainor, who taught me how to think about film and motion media overall.
When it comes to more soft skills (client communication, organization, timelines + budgeting) and motion design specific stuff, I really learned through immersion. Through Demo duck, I got to go to conferences like Blend and Comotion, in addition to working with amazing freelancers like Zak Tietjen, Milton and Valeria from Notreal, and Martiniano Garcia Cornejo from Fu Imagery (to name a few). I also got to work with the best in house team of producers, art directors, creative directors, and writers, all of whom taught me so much and supported my independent work and my career growth. It was a working experience that really spoiled me in the best way, and gave me lifelong friendships.
Frame from Rohan McDonald’s 2021 Reel
Bella Alfonsi:
As someone who does both animation and illustration/design, do you prefer to do one over the other and why?
Rohan McDonald:
It really depends! I go through waves. Sometimes I’m really tired of animation and sometimes I’m tired of design.
It also depends on the style I’m working with. For certain styles, I like doing more design and illustration rather than motion, and for other styles I like taking more ownership of the entire pipeline. It also depends on the structure of the project: Am I going through an agency, through another director/studio, or is it direct to client? That being said, I love the pre-pro development side of things. And that’s often times a design + motion test kind of process.
But at a distance, I go back to just wanting to draw, in whatever form that takes.
Bella Alfonsi:
Animating by hand is a great way to fully understand the principles of animation and have complete control over what you’re creating. Do you think it’s important that all animators know how to do it the good ol’ fashioned way (by hand)?
Rohan McDonald:
Another hard one! Before I answer this fully, I have a hot take: not all of the 12 traditional animation principles have to be your bible (side note: the “Appeal” principle really frustrates me and feels like an unhelpful and subjective Richard Williams-ism). I know, I know, controversial.
I think animation now is so diverse, experimental, and often times technology driven, to the point where you can accomplish a lot in motion design without having the hand drawn animation background. That being said, you need to know how to think about animation and understand why something might not be working. That’s where an awareness of traditional animation principles comes into play.
So let’s say your simple mograph match cut transition is looking abrupt and startling. Having awareness of traditional animation ideas like anticipation, follow through, and timing will help you tweak that speed graph or adjust the distance between those keyframes to smooth it out. So no, I don’t think people need to know how to hand-draw animation, but knowing the thinking behind the old ways will make you a strong animation warrior.
SupplyFrame NPI Explainer Video
Bella Alfonsi:
I’m sure it’s hard to pick, but do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on?
Rohan McDonald:
I’ve gotten to be part of a lot of great projects in the past few years. One that stands out to me is a project from early 2021, which was a really simple but “vibey” music video for Liam Kazar’s song “Nothing To You.” I had a lot of freedom and I didn’t plan a lot of things out. And interestingly enough, it wasn’t a cel animated project. I just jumped into After Effects with a few rough designs and created tons of loops. Working with that type of improvisation is really fun and low pressure. I’m excited to do more of that in my personal work.
Frame from Liam Kazar’s song “Nothing To You” music video.
Bella Alfonsi:
Your portfolio is full of so many different art styles-from simple shapes with minimal color to more illustrative with lots of bright colors-do you have a favorite style to work in?
Rohan McDonald:
It’s been hard for me to focus on any particular style, or set of tools to work with. I love trying out a style and then trying to add something new, or just explore how I do it specifically. That being said, I usually start off with a line-based pen sketch, so I tend to gravitate towards a line-based illustrative style.
I think there’s a frustrating notion that you have to “find your style” to get work or be noticed as an illustrator and animator. And to some extent that is true. But I have another hot take here: having a style doesn’t have to mean doing the same type of thing over and over again. It can be finding out how your specific perspective translates to different mediums, color palettes, and tools. While algorithms love consistency, oftentimes you can recognize someone’s creative voice no matter what medium they’re in, as long as they’ve experimented and cultivated that voice (which I still struggle with sometimes).
Bella Alfonsi:
What’s the workflow like for a freelance director? Are there any big challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Rohan McDonald:
I’ve been part time freelancing for a while, but 2022 was my first year as a full time freelancer, so there were a ton of challenges!
To be honest, my biggest challenges have been messaging/making sure people understand my offerings while balancing direction projects vs. projects with more specific roles (i.e. cel animator, AE animator, storyboard artist, illustrator). I think this is where my previous point about style becomes relevant. I do a lot of different things, and so I have a lot of different types of projects come along, so I have to plan my time in a way that allows me to flex all those different muscles effectively. Without that stylistic focus, sometimes my freelance workflow has to be re-thought and adapted. And that’s rewarding, but difficult!
Still frame from “Rooms.”
Bella Alfonsi:
“Rooms” is a really fun piece and I love the unique take on connecting mental space with physical space. I see that it’s also been featured on Motionographer, Aeon Magazine, Good Moves, and on Vimeo’s Staff Pick (congrats!!). Can you tell us a bit more about this one and how it came to be?
Rohan McDonald:
Thank you! “Rooms” started out as a series of risograph printed artbooks that I created with my college roommates Lucas Reif and Austin White, who are both amazing designers and collaborators. They had been working through “ShelfShelf,” a small publishing collective. I don’t remember who had the idea to interview people about their spaces, but we all ran with it and conducted our own interviews with family and friends. Lucas and Austin handled the type design, layout, and printing. Then I did all the illustration, and helped with file set up and assembly. We really love the way they turned out and I thought there was a film in there as well. The illustrations were so fun to draw and I thought it would be even more fun to make them move. This was around 2018.
Cut to the pandemic and everyone is experiencing some awareness of physical space and mental space. Everyone remembers how it felt. I used that time to truly investigate how this film could work and what narratives I could find in common between interviewees. I combed through all of our audio, and what started off as a ten minute film was edited down to around two minutes (dodged a bullet there).
The biggest production challenge was creating a workflow that didn’t feel stale or forced. I was working full time at home and it was difficult to find the intrigue and joy in creative work sometimes, especially when going from one screen to another. So I decided to do two things differently: Use rough animator on my iPad for all the rough animation, and delve into Animate CC, a software I hadn’t used a ton at that point. Rough animator allowed me to work more spontaneously and Animate CC gave me clean lines and quick fills that I could apply subtle effects to in AE. Changing up my process really worked out this time around, and Rooms came together with the help of two additional animators (Sofia Diaz, Dena Springer) and a sound designer/composer (Limes and Cherries).
I’m very happy I took my time with it, and I learned a lot. Although I’m glad my girlfriend at the time (now fiancé) pushed me to finish it.
Bella Alfonsi:
Any advice/final takeaways?
Rohan McDonald:
There are always multiple ways to do something, especially in animation. Not everyone needs the perfect AE script or the latest plugin to make things work. Just explore and find the way that you like to do things! And I’m also still trying to figure out how I do things. That will be a lifelong pursuit!