PHOTO: Type-Cycle – A personal project by Marcel Piekarski
“VR is a new & exciting development that will probably become more important than regular animation in the motion industry in the near future…”
As part of our upcoming Screen Social:RIDE, we present a few fresh, cycling-inspired video projects from designers, animators and independent filmmakers. One of them is Marcel Piekarski‘s latest personal project ‘Type-Cycle’ – a custom 3D type mixing typography with bicycle parts. Using Cinema 4D and After Effects to animate different letters, Piekarski created a whole alphabet built of bike components.
The London-based CG & motion designer chats with Screen Social about his work, motion design and where he likes to cycle in London. With a clean, elegant and minimal design, Marcel’s video motivates us to hit the road with our bicycles…
‘Type-Cycle’ is an awesome project, tell us a bit more about the design process… It’s a personal project… I was thinking of ideas for 36 days of type (a social media based project designing and posting a letter of the alphabet a day) and the first thing that came to my head was “b for bicycle”. After designing the B, I knew there was the potential for a more extensive project
What influenced you to make a typeface from bike parts? Is typography a passion of yours? I have done a few projects where I play with type… I am not sure if it’s my particular passion, but it’s exciting to try to do something original or different with type…
What motivates you to get on your bike? Usually a need to arrive to work…
Where’s your favourite place to cycle in London?Why? Where is no traffic, or the small streets around West London.
You have a degree in architecture, what made you get into motion design? I started playing with animation during my studies. I found making moving stuff exciting and so I continued to discover motion design over the next few years.
Do you think your degree influenced your style of work? I’m not sure if it was the degree, but I do like playing with concrete and wood textures.
How would you describe your work? It’s minimalistic. Most of designs I like from my work are in whites, greys and blacks.
What do you love about motion design? I really like seeing designs being fully brought to life – when you add the final elements like music and sound design in the edit… when it all comes together to form one final piece.
Who’s your favourite artist/designer? Why? That’s a very difficult question… I’m trying recently to follow less individual designers and to focus on work that I want to do and explore.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a motion designer? Work, work and work. When you do nothing, nothing happens…
What are the biggest challenges motion designers/designers face today? In a positive sense of a challenge, the industry is progressing everyday. VR is a new and exciting development that will probably become more important than regular animation in the motion industry in the near future… so it’s difficult to predict what formats we will be working with in the next 3 years….
Are you working on any other projects at the moment? Taking few weeks off of personal projects
Join us at Screen Social: RIDE on the 8th June – and there’s still time to submit a film for screening.