98th Academy Awards: Best Picture Motion Series
Project Overview
Building on last year's transition from still posters to full motion graphics, the 2026 Oscars Series focuses heavily on continuity and visual storytelling. Rather than treating each Best Picture nominee as a standalone piece, the entire lineup functions as one fluid, continuous animation. Using Adobe Illustrator for the initial designs and After Effects for the heavy lifting, I built a system where shapes, symbols, and compositions seamlessly morph from one film into the next.
Project Quick-Stats
Role: Art Direction, Graphic Design, Motion Graphics
Tools Used: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects
The Constraint: Maintaining a strict alphabetical order, forcing completely unrelated films to transition into one another.
Impact: 1M+ Cumulative Views across social platforms.
Background & Growth
While I hold an Intro to Motion Graphics Certificate from Vancouver Film School, the real breakthrough for a project of this scale came down to self-teaching. A massive chunk of the techniques I used here came from grinding through online videos, keeping up with tutorials, and putting in a crazy amount of trial and error to see what actually worked in practice.
The Concept & The Pivot
My initial idea was to use a circle as the universal DNA running through every single piece, morphing one circular shape into another. But as I designed all 10 posters, I realized that forcing a circle into every layout was restricting the design too much. I pivoted to letting the geometry of the posters dictate the motion naturally, though you can still see the circle motif driving a good portion of the series.
Behind the Scenes: Key Transition Highlights
Instead of traditional cuts, the entire sequence relies on path transform effects, scaling, and precise timing to bridge the films. Here is how some of the key animations came together:
• The Intro (Academy Logo → Bugonia): This was the first transition I mapped out. The iconic Academy logo naturally resembled the letter "A" in the Bugonia typeface, making for a seamless opening handoff.
• The Spinning Motion (Bugonia → F1): Leaning back into the circle concept, a spinning globe dissolves into a fast-spinning motion, which perfectly outlines the wheel for F1.
• The Lightbulb Moment (F1 → Frankenstein): My Frankenstein poster was designed as an homage to Saul Bass’s Anatomy of a Fall. While figuring out how to get there from F1, I noticed the outline of the Monza racetrack resembled a limb. I morphed the track directly into the monster's arm.
• The Shared Assets (Frankenstein → Hamnet): To make this shift as smooth as possible, the trees in Hamnet use the exact same base scale as the ones in Frankenstein. I just adjusted the heights, converting a dense forest into a minimalist stage set.
• Deceptively Hard Motion (Hamnet → Marty Supreme → One Battle): Transitioning from a solid circle to an outlined one sounds easy on paper, but getting the animation to look perfectly smooth required a ton of fine-tuning in the graph editor.
• The Silhouette Trick (One Battle After Another → The Secret Agent → Sentimental Value): The road lines from One Battle shift into a moving crosshair while character profiles swap in the background. To prep the viewer for Sentimental Value, I hid the two main character silhouettes inside The Secret Agent poster before the border slowly expands to form the iconic house.
• The Most Ambitious Build (Sentimental Value → Sinners): I recreated a version of the iconic music scene from the film, requiring the house from the previous poster to splinter, fall apart, and burn. Getting the physics of the broken wooden beams to look and act right took a lot of patience to nail the timing.
• The Finish Line (Sinners → Train Dreams): A cleaner, classic animation to close things out. A tree grows, its rings form, and a railroad track cuts straight through the composition before transitioning into a moving silhouette representing the biplane from the end of the film.
Results & Industry Reception
The 2026 series reached an entirely new audience, accumulating over a million views across TikTok, Instagram, and X. The community response was incredible, with many viewers noting the style felt like a nod to the Academy’s official 2014 and 2015 motion pieces. The ultimate validation, though? Getting noticed, liked, and shared by actual industry professionals who worked on the films, including a nod from Guillermo del Toro himself.
Where It All Started
To see the evolution of this project, check out the 2025 Oscars motion video below. Last year was a major transition year for me, moving from static prints into motion, and it set the technical foundation that allowed me to push the boundaries so much further for the 2026 edition.
2026 FIFA World Cup Motion Graphics Video
Project Overview
To celebrate the world's biggest sporting event, I created a motion graphics piece inspired by the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The project centres around a seamless animation that transforms between the flags of all 48 participating nations, combining smooth transitions, bold visuals, and synchronized motion to create an engaging viewing experience.
Building on techniques from previous projects while exploring new animation workflows, I developed custom assets and refined my motion design process to deliver a polished, high-energy sequence.
Production Highlights:
• Custom neon-inspired intro animation based on the 2026 World Cup visual identity.
• Dynamic transition from a stylized World Cup ball through a neon tunnel into a custom rotating 3D globe.
• Fast-paced flat-vector animation seamlessly transforming through all 48 competing nations' flags, synchronized to the soundtrack.
Retrospective & What's Next
Creating passion projects like my annual Academy Awards series and 2026 World Cup animation has been an invaluable way to refine my skills in motion design, pacing, and visual storytelling. Each project presents a new creative challenge, pushing me to experiment with different techniques, workflows, and animation styles while continuing to grow as a designer.
Looking ahead, I'm excited to apply these skills to new industries, brands, and events, creating engaging motion graphics that blend strong visual design with dynamic storytelling. Every project is an opportunity to explore new ideas, and I'm looking forward to seeing where that creative journey leads next.