Clement Chia is a motion designer from Singapore. He’s also the co-founder of OFFSET and OFFEO (a digital video agency and an online video maker platform).

Curator’s note: If you’re a fan of 3D design or even motion design in general then the chances are that you’ll be familiar with Clement Chia’s work. It’s a delectable assortment of mouth-watering colours and superbly satisfying animations that play with the laws of physics. Everyone has got to start somewhere and today we hear how Clement went from studying online tutorials to eventually co-founding the brilliant digital video agency OFFSET, so fair to say he knows a thing or two about this business of ours. Read on to find out more about how he goes about said business!

On the face of it, judging by your Instagram feed at least, you appear to have a distinct visual style, it's very colourful, tactile and more often than not, 3-dimensional. Although, I realise this has evidently transitioned slightly from a seemingly darker, sci-fi type aesthetic. Did it take time to land on this look and do you think it's important to have a visual style, particularly for those of us who are freelance?

Yea you're right! I started as an artist who was inspired by visual giants like Beeple and Andrew Kramer. When I started my career a decade ago, they were the two artists that I inspired to be like. In terms of the everyday stuff, I felt like there was a huge surge in a dark, sci-fi style. Therefore, I made a decision to explore something a little more colourful. It wasn't easy at first as although these colour palettes seem to be an obvious fit now, to reach something that was pleasing to the eye was definitely something I had to learn throughout this process. And yes, it’s important to have a visual style as an artist. As the Co-founder of OFFSET, a motion agency, I feel it’s always best for people to remember you for a certain style. We are constantly looking for different motion designers that have a unique flair.

Am I right in thinking that some of the work you post is more experimental stuff created in any downtime you might have? If so, what would you say is the value in pursuing self-initiated projects and how do you balance the relationship between this and paid work for clients?

Yep, the stuff I do on Instagram is normally done over the weekends when I have spare time. The paid work is definitely the priority for my business but sometimes it’s best to just explore something that is totally experimental. I feel that in order to balance such work, at least for me personally, I try not to spend too much time making the experimental stuff as I think artists do sometimes get caught up in a spiral of endless perfection. 

It’s definitely best to challenge yourself constantly and just see what you can produce within one to three hours :).

If you're spending a lot of time on creating everydays for Instagram, I personally think you might risk becoming consumed by it. It’s always best to have a healthy balance between exploration and perfection.

How did you first enter the creative industry and can you talk a little bit about how you got to where you are today? For example, did you always have a clear idea of what you wanted to do and similarly, have you jumped between any other disciplines throughout your career or remained focused on perfecting and mastering one specific skill set?

I studied a degree in Computer Science at university and landed my first job as a front end developer. I had no idea how to use After effects or Cinema4D but I knew that I wanted to be in the design industry. It seemed really cool and I was always intrigued by great looking work. Then one day, I saw Andrew Kramer's tutorial online. I started following them and I began to realise that this was actually something that I really loved doing. And so for the next few years I was watching a tutorial every single day and trying to produce as much design as possible. 

I personally believe in the 10,000 hours theory. If you do something constantly for 10,000 hours, you'll be somewhat good at something. And that was the case for me when learning After Effects. It wasn't an easy journey as there weren’t many tutorials on YouTube a decade ago but there was a lot of valuable self-exploration and failures. It was definitely a fun journey! I was actually obsessed with motion design for a really long time. I guess along that journey, I started to master the required skill sets.

You're evidently somewhat of an entrepreneur. Has this always been the case? Have you always wanted to work for yourself or have past experiences guided you to where you are today?

I actually worked in a lot of different places before I Co-founded OFFSET & OFFEO with my partner David Lee. 

Before starting my own business, I was working in different advertising agencies and studios to make a living. I personally think it’s crucial to work somewhere else before you consider starting your own business. In order for a great business to succeed, it takes more than just great motion design skills. Learning how a business is ran, or meeting more people along the way whilst working definitely helps if you ever want to run your own studio someday. And of course, there’s a lot of hard work involved too.

You seem to have worked for some pretty big clients, including the likes of Samsung and Facebook amongst countless others! How do you go about preparing and delivering for such arguably high exposure work like this?

I have a team that works on different clients constantly. To be able to work with such large clients is definitely a huge blessing for us. From the preparation to the delivery of the jobs, its honestly a long journey. We normally do the standard workflow of storyboarding - animatics - animation - music - etc. 

In order for such a production line to work, its always best to get signed off properly on every stage before proceeding to the next one. So we have a great team that works on each part of the project to ensure we make it to the final delivery.

In terms of navigating through your career, can you nail down one particular moment in time or specific project perhaps, where everything began to click for you?

One particular moment that I would say was particularly memorable was something that I worked on for Adidas whilst I was at an Advertising Agency. 

I was tasked, along with my Art Director back then, to work on this campaign. I was pretty new to After Effects at the time but I had to explore every single possible way to create the effect that was required. It included everything from production to rotoscoping to animation. I just kept trying and eventually managed to find solutions after solutions.

It was close to a month of late nights but I never really resented it. I was actually looking forward to the next day so I could start finding more answers to these problems.

And when I delivered the work and saw everyone's stunned reaction to the piece that I had created, I knew that I wanted to keep improving and be able to execute any creative brief that was given to me. And I guess that sparked my career into life.

If you missed the click-through links in the videos, you can check out more of Clement’s stellar work at OFFSET, OFFEO and his experimental Instagram account: @cmttat