Speakers

Motion Graphics Artist, SternFX

Coming from the world of graphics & animation combined with great passion for teaching, Eran has taken upon himself to “Spread the Word” of his expertise on Motion Design. He’s a recognized Adobe expert trainer and a desirable speaker in demand, and as such, he is the author of many poplar video tutorials and training series for Lynda.com, CreativeCOW, Adobe, Artbeats and others.

He teaches at local and international conferences like NAB, After Effects World and Adobe Video World and is part of the creative team at Future Media Concepts.

In 2007, Eran founded SternFX.com. A training hub with many free tutorials, training and active Hebrew forum. Besides SternFX, Eran is also the head of Motion Graphics department at Shenkar – Engineering. Design. Art.

He lives on the verge between geek and cool.

Founder, The Futur

Chris Do is an Emmy award winning director, designer, strategist and educator. He’s the Chief Strategist and CEO of Blind and the Founder of The Futur— an online education platform that teaches the business of design to creative thinkers.

Founded in 1995, Blind has been a pioneer in the motion design field and has made hundreds of award-winning commercials, music videos and broadcast promos that combine design, typography, animation, live action and visual effects for screens and clients of all sizes.

His firm’s work has been recognized by national and international organizations such as: the Emmy’s, Effie Gold, Effie, Huffington Post, Lynda.com, Webbie, Communication Arts, London International Awards, One Show, British D&AD, AICP 20, Pictoplasma, How, 72 dpi, L.A. Weekly, Boards, Res 10, Type Director’s Club (20, 22, 23, 26), IDN, Addy Awards, BDA, Create, Stash (2, 12, 22, 24, 35, 43, 65), Creatie Augustus 2010, Motion Design, Asia Image, Brief, 365 AIGA Year In Design 26, Art Director’s Club, Motionographer, New York Festivals, B Brand, PPaper, I.D., and Print.

@theChrisDo (IG, Twitter)
youtube.com/c/thefuturishere
@thefuturishere (IG, Twitter)

Founder, Cinema Spice

Mikey is an After Effects and Video Production professional, Motion Graphics artist and all around great guy. Mikey is the owner and founder of Cinema Spice, a company currently splitting time doing both client work for local and national clients, and building an online community, teaching online classes, and creating production assets, presets and sound effects for professionals.

Mikey also runs a large After Effects tutorial channel on YouTube nearing 200k subscribers The channel has hundreds of free training videos mostly in After Effects. Bragging rights include, After Effects certified expert, One of a handful of grown men named Mikey, Taught university (after effects of course) and Happily married with 6 kids.

Mikey is always happy to help and answer questions about After Effects, so feel free to connect.

www.cinemaspice.net
youtube.com/user/longlivemikey
twitter.com/longlivemikey

Co-Founder of Creative111

CIan Robinson is a creative director and Adobe MAX Master trainer specializing in motion graphics and visual effects. Working in broadcast for over 15 years with such clients as Discovery Channel, National Geographic International and PBS, he’s seen the definition of broadcast change first hand. As an author and trainer, Ian is the co-founder of the online learning website Creative111, an author for LinkedInLearning/ lynda.com, and has written books for Peachpit and Adobe Press. When he’s not scaling 14 thousand foot mountains in Colorado, he can be found taking photos and designing motion graphics with his trusty sidekick Boston Terrier named “Moo.”

Private/Remote Pilot, Advanced Ground School Instructor, Adobe Master Instructor

Luisa Winters is a Certified Instructor for Adobe and Apple (ACI and ACT). She consults for organizations and works at several different training centers all over the United States and abroad. Luisa is one of the few Adobe Premiere Pro Master instructors. A well-known artist, Luisa often speaks at different conferences on topics ranging from video editing to compositing and web.

Luisa is a certified Private Pilot and a Commercial UAV Pilot. She’s been involved with video production and cinematography for over 30 years. Having spent years flying, Luisa’s priority is safety. It is this safety mentality that make Luisa’s missions successful: from preparation and planning, FAA Authorization and client expectation to flying and finally, post-production.

At the beginning of 2019, Luisa joined forces with Mike Sobola to form Mid-Atlantic Drones, LLC, a drone service provider specializing in aerial mapping and cinematography and missions in flight-restricted zones.

Noseman Productions

Athanasios Pozantzis has been making visuals for the advertising industry since 1989, and began teaching Adobe Illustrator a year later. Since then, he has tutored numerous digital artists in his motherland, Athens, Greece, and his adopted home of London, on Adobe software and Cinema 4D. It should be noted that most of his students ended up switching careers, becoming Yoga or Pilates instructors, and one of them became an unsuccessful real estate agent.

His main focus is still on converting briefs into images and animations, an undertaking that has definitely NOT won him an Emmy Award, although he did receive a Grand Epica in 2005.

He picked up Cinema 4D in 1997 and never looked back. He now resides in Toronto, from where he runs his company “Noseman Productions”. Closely affiliated to Maxon as an Alpha & Betatester, Thanassis calls himself a “Cinema 4D fan boy,” and he is one of the very few Maxon Certified Instructors on the globe.

Motion Designer/Video Editor

Kyle is an Emmy-winning motion designer, video editor and software trainer based in Kansas City. Over the last 15 years, he's worked at various agencies and production houses, co-founded a small studio and cultivated a successful freelance career. A workflow & efficiency nerd who enjoys the challenge of an ever-changing workflow, Kyle hops from animated explainer videos to live event visuals; from IMAX documentaries to full graphics packages for professional sports franchises.

Discovering a love for sharing knowledge after becoming an Adobe User Group Manager and Adobe Community Professional, Kyle became a trainer for After Effects & Premiere Pro in the Midwest, and a speaker at conferences around the U.S. He’s also a mediocre guitarist, a lover of dinosaurs and Lego, and a big believer in using creative skills for good.

www.georegulus.com

Sander van Dijk is one of the top After Effects animators in the world. He has worked at major studios, developed tools for animators, won a Webby Award for his direction of This Panda is Dancing, and has a blue chip client list including Google Material Design, MoMa, Squarespace, AirBNB, Ikea, and others. Recently, Sander created the Advanced Motion Methods course for School of Motion, where he shows students how to make After Effects magic happen.

www.sandervandijk.tv
@georegulus (IG, Twitter)
www.georegulus.com

Freelance Motion Graphics Artist

As a freelance motion graphics artist, Jessica Weiss Thomas, uses her mastery of cutting edge video technologies to create outstanding work that has won a number of national awards, including Addys, Tellys and five Emmys. She works for clients such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wendy's and many others. Jessica loves to create exciting projects, and loves to share what she’s learned with others. She is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design in Motion Graphics and Photography, and has used her education as an inspiration to keep learning and growing as an artist.

Jessica specializes in After Effects, Premiere Pro and C4D, but relishes discovering new techniques and solutions for evolving creative challenges. Since her work spans the entire life of a project, covering everything from storyboarding and camera op all the way to final graphics and music selects, Jessica has a unique perspective and wide range of expertise in the video industry.

Chris has over 25 years experience in graphic and interactive design, with a unique focus on both design and development. His development skills span across such languages as PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, making his design execution optimal across various media. His co-owned design company features such clients as Adobe, LinkedIn, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and the CIA. He is also a featured speaker at various industry-related conferences, including NAB, Adobe MAX, HOW Design and CreativePro Week. Watch his step-by-step courses online at Lynda.com, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy.com, CreativeLive, Skillshare, Pluralsight.com, and Amazon Video. Find more of Chris' events at https://codifydesign.com/chris/events.

Freelance Motion Designer, School of Motion TA

Traci is a Boston based freelancer who, in a previous life, did marketing and events for Syfy, USA, an Bravo. Lacking an art degree, she somehow stumbled her way into Motion Graphics. 5 years into this journey, she is now working as a fulltime freelancer with a constant drive to learn.
She fully believes that anyone can have their dream career if they are willing to put their head down and push themselves. Traci made the career change with the help of online resources like School of Motion and MoGraph Mentor, spending countless hours going through training and honing her craft.
She has now freelanced for several Boston based companies including Element, Hero4Hire, Brickyard VFX, TDGarden, Northwestern University, Digitas, Hasbro, and CBSi. A fan of collaborative projects, Traci also heads up a yearly “chain-animation” Holiday card where she has pulled in over 100 animators and designers to work with. She also works with other local motion designers to hold regular meetups in Boston. Wanting to give back, Traci is also a Teaching Assistant for both the After Effects Kickstart and Animation Bootcamp courses by School of Motion.
Feel free to ask her anything, and if you’re ever in Boston make sure to get on the meetups list!

website: tracibrinling.com
facebook.com/nopluginway
facebook.com/tracimograph
instagram.com/tbrinling
twitter: @tbrinling

Boris FX

Ross is accomplished visual effects industry veteran and Chief Product Officer of Mocha for Boris FX. In 2013, Ross was recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures with a Science and Engineering Academy Award for his work on the design of Mocha planar tracking software. Earlier in his career, Ross was a VFX supervisor and compositor on national commercials, documentary films, and on music videos for artists like the Beastie Boys and Lyle Lovett.

Boris FX

With a background in post-production as a compositor, colorist and retouch artist, Peter has been involved in software development since the mid 90's and has spent the last 20 years at Boris FX where he is currently the Senior Product Manager, primarily focused on the design and development of the Continuum toolset. When not focused on visual media, Peter can be found torturing his neighbors with some heavy bass tones.

Boris FX

A 20-year veteran of the post-production industry, Brian is the Director of Product Marketing for Boris FX, responsible for the Sapphire product line, community development and engagement, and overall brand awareness. Having worked for an impressive client list that includes HBO, ABC, CBS, Discovery, Microsoft, Staples, Budweiser, History, National Geographic, ESPN, and Showtime, Brian has built a well-earned reputation during his award-winning career for cutting edge editorial, high-end design and motion graphics, and a love of big and small screen storytelling. When he's not furiously preaching the gospel of plug-ins, Brian can be found chasing after his two sons or arguing 80's movie trivia over cocktails.

Co-founder of Mamoworld

Mathias is a co-founder of mamoworld and is known for the tools and tutorials he develops for the motion graphics and visual effects industry. He developed popular extensions for After Effects, Premiere Pro, NUKE and Audition like Squash & Stretch, BeatEdit, MochaImport+, Auto Lip-Sync, QuickImporter or mamoworldJSON.

On mamoworld.com, Mathias has published more than 150 free tutorials about After Effects, Premiere Pro and NUKE. Some of his tutorials where also published by Creative Cow, Red Giant, Imagineer Systems, SternFX.com and Motionworks.net.

Mathias studied computer science and worked in his diploma thesis on formal grammars that allow computers to understand the grammatical structure of natural language sentences. During his Ph.D. he worked in the field of bioinformatics where he developed algorithms that assist biologists in the structure prediction and comparison of certain molecules. During and after the work on his Ph.D. thesis “Dynamic Programming based RNA Pseudoknot Alignment” which got the top rating “summa cum laude” he published more than 15 articles in international, scientific conferences and journals.

Owner, Yellow Dog Party

Learning how to use After Effects in the pre-YouTube early 2000s meant that there were approximately 2 places to learn how to use After Effects online. It was at that point that Joe decided he’d give back to the community with tutorials one day. But Joe is an excellent procrastinator so “one day” was about 11 years later.

After working at a few studios during the last recession, Joe decided to start his own studio, Yellow Dog Party, in 2010. At the end of 2015, Joe started a side-project called Workbench with a goal of putting out a tutorial every week. Many excellent resources had since launched to learn the basics so Joe set out to make tutorials for more advanced/extremely nerdy users.

Since posting that first tutorial in January 2016, there has been a new Workbench tutorial every week and it has grown to over 30K subscribers on YouTube with the help of Severo Ojea.

Eyedesyn Founder

EJ is a multi-Emmy winning freelance motion design artist based out of the Mile High city of Denver, CO. And I loves me some 2D style animations made in the world of 3D.
Originally hailing from Pittsburgh, PA,I come from a family of designers. My father and uncle are both Art Directors for broadcast news stations and my mother is a doctor. Since I can’t handle the sight of blood, I opted to make pretty pictures for a living. My love for art started back when I was younger playing the heck out of Mario Paint for SNES and drawing anime all the time and even on desks at school, much to the chagrin of my teachers.

Considering I probably couldn’t make money creating crappy anime drawings on desks, I decided to grab a Fine Arts major at Slippery Rock University. There I learned traditional art, painting, sculpture, ceramics, photograph (the in the darkroom, sniffing chemicals kind of photography), and graphic design. Learning Photoshop was the extent of my digital art learning experience in school, so I had to teach myself animation and 3D. It was a huge help that my dad allowed me to intern at NBC, where he was art director, to have the opportunity to learn more about Photoshop and After Effects. From there I got a job at ABC in Washington DC where I had the opportunity to teach myself C4D. Striving to learn more everyday & working hard on nights and weekends to gain clients, I decided after about 8 years of full-time work to take the jump to freelance and been loving every moment of it.

I started Eyedesyn because of the fact that I wouldn’t be where I am right now unless there was enough people willing to give up their knowledge for free online. I wanted to give back in some way and create tutorials that were accessible to anyone of any level of experience. I have a path unlike many designers out there, I didn’t learn 3D or animation in school, I never joined a big design studio, I never worked on big national spots and had to work hard to teach myself to get to where I am at today. Because of my non-traditional design background, I hope to bring a different perspective to training and design. Through speaking, I’ve discovered there’s a lot of us out there who have similar backgrounds and are self taught.

Founder, School of Motion

Joey is the CEO and Founder of School of Motion, an online school for Motion Designers with over 6000 alumni across the globe. Prior to starting School of Motion, Joey was the Creative Director and Lead Animator at Toil in Boston, MA. There he lead projects for clients like Subway, McDonalds, Progressive, Saucony, and many other high-profile brands. He has also freelanced extensively for studios and agencies, working on network rebrands for Speed, Discovery, HBO, and SyFy. He's been using After Effects for close to 20 years and is one of the baldest dudes you'll ever meet.

Creative Director at Digital Kitchen

Type Lover. Pixel Peeper. Pencil Pusher. Curve Operator.

Throw in root beer aficionado, hockey fanatic, and keyframe wrangler and you fairly accurately describe the life of Ryan Summers. He's worked with the likes of Guillermo Del Toro and JJ Abrams and is currently a Creative Director at Digital Kitchen where he designs, animates, and directs for film, television, and other assorted (and oddly proportioned) canvases.

Please approach with abandon, high fives, and a firm handshake. He will not bite.

Creative Director, Yellow Lab - Creative Studio

Andrew Embury is an Emmy nominated, Award-winning motion design director, producer and editor at Yellow Lab - Creative Studio. With a career start at the largest animation studio on the east coast of Canada (Fatkat Animation Studios) and more recently working for one of the top mobile manufacturers. His client list includes VW, VISA, Apple, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co., NHL, NBA, Microsoft, Sylvan Learning, Family Guy, & Happy Tree Friends to name a few.

Founder of Motion Hatch

Hayley is the Founder of Motion Hatch, an online learning hub for motion designers and animators. When Hayley started freelancing as an animator she noticed a severe lack of information and support on how to build a successful motion design business. So she decided to do something about it!

Motion Hatch offers training, resources and a biweekly podcast discussing the business side of motion design. Hayley has been in the motion design industry for 10 years working with clients such as The United Nations, Gates Foundation, Google, and the BBC.

If you see Hayley at the conference say Hi! People from the North East of the UK are known for their friendliness! Promise...

Head of Marketing, Red Giant

Aharon Rabinowitz is a filmmaker, software designer, and motion graphics/VFX artist. He currently works at Red Giant as the Head of Marketing and the Executive Producer of Red Giant Films. Aharon has worked for clients like Coca Cola, MTV, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon, VH1 and much more. The tools he’s helped design at Red Giant are regularly used in big budget Hollywood films and TV shows, and he often consults with artists on the use of those tools. Always on a quest to learn more, his favorite aspect of the industry is interacting with the talented community of Mograph and VFX artists.