The Creative Spark: Alberto Scirocco and the Motion Graphics of leftchannel - Film

Alberto Scirocco: What makes a good design is not necessarily what makes the most beautiful piece. A good design could mix a message with a person. If that message is able to modify the way a person thinks, an emotion, even a behavior, then it's good design. The nature of motion, because it's a conglomerate of a lot of different medias, color, topography, layout, and timing, it's a very large, vast palette. That's what I think I like about it. My name is Alberto Scirocco. I am the president and the creative director here at Leftchannel. If you look at the work that we do, as a studio, the common element is the fact that we're, we always wanted to just get exposed to a lot of different things and try different techniques. We're strong at telling stories that our clients need us to deliver to the audience they need to touch. And because our versatility, we're able to approach messages in a lot of different ways. That's really what makes this stuff exciting. There's just so many ways that you can do this kind of work. And, so, why not jump on it and explore it? I like to experiment a lot of different forms of art, so my approach is generally to explore and search. I grew up in Milano. And, the very first thing I found myself being excited by was graffiti. I had an Amiga, at the time, and got into 3D modeling with a piece of software that I think was called Sculpt 3D. Right about this time, I'm trying to figure out basically what I want to do when I grow up. And so, I went to architectural design in Italy, and I liked it to a point. There was definitely something missing about architecture. So, I came to visit a friend in Columbus, and while I was here, I happened to go through a College of Arts. Walking through the hallways of the school, there were paintings, sculptures, glass blowing, which is not the way our schools are in Italy. Our schools tend to be much more specialized. So, the idea of being able to do all those different things at the same time, you know, in one place, was really, really attractive to me. So, got a big scholarship, and so I decided just, come here. Being located in Columbus is a less common choice. Actually, all the cities we consider our competitors are in bigger markets. Generally speaking though, operating out of Columbus has granted us some advantages. First of all, it's a great city. There's a lot of intellect here. We have access to great talent. We realized that, that we didn't really need to be in a different city to do quality work. We're able to create a studio that allows us to be in this constant, fluid place where we're constantly trying new things. And that's not to say that we don't go back on techniques. We still, today, do photo parallax pieces, which we've done for ten years. But we always, if we can, if there's an opportunity and it's appropriate, we want to try to find ways to make it more interesting. And then, because our work gets a lot of attention and gets published and ends up being a lot of different places, that's how people find us. Ultimately, we're in this industry because we want to keep ourselves interested. The work has to be exciting. In order for it to be exciting, there has to be an exploratory side of it. The Target piece was meant to showcase our multidisciplinary talents. The biggest intention, from a direction standpoint, was to get a continuous movement from beginning to the end of the piece. So, we went through a variety of iterations, a variety of sketches. We went looking at how we can really maximize the attention to negative space, which I think is really what makes this brand so interesting. Target, specifically, is a brand that would allow us to showcase our ability to character design, animate, and combine 2D and 3D together, which is, major focus of the studio right now. Multiple people worked at the same time. Sketches were happening as character modeling was happening, as people were planning cameras and paths. Everything, it was animated in Maya, and then, brought into After Effects for final composite. And there is a scene in the piece at the end, that was done in CINEMA 4D. So, we moved from 3D characters to actually appear 2D, and the piece wraps up in the end. In many ways, the social aspect of design and, and especially of a studio, is one of the things that drives my passion the most. All of us are really present and really important to the process. Each one of us tends to be a little bit more specialized than the others into one specific field. But, that's not to say that we're not going to all rotate roles. You're going to be in a lot of different places. You're going to be the person giving a critique, but you're the person who's also going to drive a project, and you're going to be the lead animator, depending on how we're positioned. And so, that process, itself, actually generates a lot of good thinking and good work. A lot of our work is stuff that we've done for ourselves. We allow ourselves to have fun and explore work that's artistic. So that means, work where we are the client and it's exactly the way we want it to be. Having that balance, between doing commercial work and artistic work, makes us better and much more surgical on how we apply a technique or a method. Our versatility comes from the fact that all of us are people that have a variety of interests. I teach motion design at Columbus College of Art and Design. You know, people always asked me, obviously in school, it's like, okay, class is over, I had a great time, how can I be a better motion designer? You know, and I tell them, paint or sculpt, or dance. Expand yourself, mentally, to be better at the one thing you're specialize. The more experience you have, the more complexity to you as an individual, the more interesting your work is going to be. Definitely, I think, training the technique is very important. You know, your technique has to be razor-sharp. But, on the other hand, I think, exposing yourself to a variety of things makes you a deeper, more interesting person, and that's how you grow as an artist. We are into this field because we love it. I think everybody that is into design is in design because they love it. But, I think our love for the work has always been love for the most interesting work out there. That's what we strive to do. Right now, we're doing some augmented reality work, for example, that's more traditional CG, which is not something we generally do. There's a lot of things that we're excited to try. And, there's going to be more as we go, because that's the nature of it. We have to keep evolving. So, I think our future is interesting. That's what we're hoping for. Keep it interesting.