Interview: Timmy Allen

Posted June 21st, 2010 / By John Kostrzewski in Featured, Interviews

is no stranger to the motion graphics and visual effects lifestyle, and no stranger to helping others with the knowledge he has gained over the years. Since graduating from Full Sail University, he has gone on to star in the Revision 3 podcast Film Riot and started the internet show KeyframeTV, two excellent resources for furthering your knowledge of film effects. Now, after the announcement that he is joining the Fuel Your Motionography team as contributing writer, I wanted to take the time to get to know Timmy Allen better and let all of you get to know him as well.

Fuel Your Motionography: I would first like to welcome you to the Fuel Your Motionography team and thank you for doing this interview; we are honored to have you!

TIMMY ALLEN: Thank you so much. You have no idea how crazy this is to me. Before we started talking about me coming on and doing some stuff for FYM, the site was always a place I visited to come and check out what is new and exciting in the world of motionography. To, in some way, be contributing to that is wild.

FYM: Have you always known you wanted to work in the motion graphics/visual effects industry, or was there a point in your life that spurred your decision?

TA: I have not known for very long that this is what I was going to end up doing as a career. Right out of High School I thought I was going to be a rock star. I was touring and playing music and hanging out 5 nights a week and I simply thought that was going to be it for me. When it all ended and I was standing in South Florida with no job and no degree, I decided to go to Full Sail University because the only other interest I had besides music was web development and design, and it would only take me two years to get my Bachelors. It was at Full Sail that I had one single class in After Effects, and it just stuck with me. Of all the design and web classes I was in, that single After Effects class made the biggest impact on me. So, that’s when I realized that motion graphics and broadcast design was going to be the path I wanted to take for my career. I still play music a lot and would love to tour when and if the opportunity comes around, but I’ve been bitten by this motion bug. I’ll never be able to stop.

FYM: You gained a lot of recognition from the Revision 3 podcast Film Riot along with Ryan and Josh Connolly, among others. How did your involvement with the show come about?

TA: and I have known each other since we were younger and have been really close most of our “adult” life. He’s my room mate right now, and he’s actually marrying my sister. So yeah, there’s a lot of connection there between the two of us. We both grew up goofing off in front of a camera and doing stupid crap to make our families laugh. I couldn’t imagine if any of those ever saw the light of day. I think it would be kind of like George Michael’s lightsaber video getting out… Yeah, like that. Film Riot is the brain child of Ryan with little ideas and tidbits from the rest of us. It is a blast to be involved (as I’m sure one would imagine). We literally get to go in front of the camera and act like idiots and people watch. Some of us get more naked than others, because what’s more funny than a naked dude? Correct, nothing. I win.

FYM: You also created the show KeyframeTV, an excellent show aimed at those who want to learn motion design and animation, along with Nick Campbell and Pasquale D’Silva. What inspired you to create that show?

TA: When I was brainstorming some way to get involved with the motion community, I thought some sort of an off script discussion between people that know what’s up would be useful. I don’t assume that I am someone who “knows what’s up”; I approached it as someone who didn’t know much of anything, and I’d get to sit there and tear apart cool pieces of work and listen to Nick and Pas be brilliant and feed my brain all sorts of knowledge-type goodness. I really just wanted to put content out there that I knew I was looking for myself. To see people in the industry professionally talking about what is “hot” and relevant in the community is something that I would find very valuable. However, my take on it was more as an “average” motionographer; how would I approach some of these big spots that seemed to be out of my reach. So I was watching do the GSG stuff and thought I’d take a shot in the dark to see if he’d be down, and I was surprised at how excited he got at the idea. is a buddy of mine that I met around the time that FR came out and we did some work together, and I felt that his knowledge of the traditional animation side of things would also be invaluable. Then, kaboom; Keyframe.

FYM: You’re a part of Film Riot, KeyframeTV, and now Fuel Your Motionography on top of having a successful career in motion design. What is your ultimate goal in all of this?

TA: Well, I don’t want to say, “Fame and money, of course”. To be able to love what I’m doing, and to pay the bills doing it is really the ultimate goal. A secondary goal would be to be someone that the beginner or average motionographer would come to for advice on general stuff. The grand circle of life in our community–watch and discuss with other people how to do amazing things in the applications I use, then to turn around and be that guy I went to for knowledge for some other person. I think to hoard knowledge and keep it all for yourself is really crappy. If you have knowledge that someone else wants to know and has a genuine thirst for and you keep it to yourself, you suck. I don’t want to suck. I want to share and grow with all the people around me and in the motion community.

FYM: What people, companies and/or projects are your biggest inspirations in the motion industry and why?

TA: When I was going through Full Sail University the iPod Nano commercial that J. Whitmore did with the light streaks wrinkled my brain! I saw that piece and became super obsessed with it. How did he light the talent w/ the light streaks? How did he generate those streaks off of the iPods? I just really became crazy with picking the thing apart and trying to learn how J. got that accomplished. Another big one was the Gap commercial from a year or so back when the dancers were surrounded by all the sketched animated art work, and their clothes kept morphing into other clothes. The style of the assets and the color correction that was done for that piece really had this great retro feel that I adopted into my “style”. I also loved the Coldplay iPod commercial… I mean, there are so many to mention and talk about, but I won’t bore you with them all.

FYM: What applications and plug-ins do you use and are there any that you are looking forward to?

TA: I use the normal applications to get my work done. Adobe CS5, and Cinema4D. In the areas I work in, there just isn’t an easier, more user friendly 3D app than C4D, and it’s integration with After Effects just can’t be touched. I use all of Trapcode’s stuff inside of AE. This recent CS5 update is mind blowing. Everything works so fast, and the render times have been slashed so dramatically. I love how I can spend more time working and being creative, and less time waiting on my computer to figure out what it is that I’m doing just to show it back to me. I use Nick’s HDRI Light Kit Pro inside of C4D. He really created something special there with the lights and controls that he implemented. Being able to see your lights modeled out inside of your scene really helps with positioning and scale. The last one I’ll mention is kind of a big one for me. If you’re someone who HATES rendering motion blur out of C4D because it takes for ever, there is an AE plugin called ReelSmart Motion Blur by RE:Vision Effects. That plugin has to have saved me hours and hours of rendering time. The best part about it is how beautiful it works and how accurately it gets me motion blur.

FYM: What do you feel are your strongest skills and your weakest points?

TA: Not sure if this is a “cop-out” type answer, but I really feel like a huge plus for me is that I am so crazy hungry to learn as much of this awesome stuff as I can. I am excited to learn new things and realize that maybe some things I thought I knew, I really did not know. Something weak about me is that I am very very easily distracted. It’s sad. With E3 being this week as you can imagine, I am just all over the place with all the new announcements of games and hardware and toys. I’m a child, I know. Pretty much, if I would just stay focused on learning and practicing my craft instead of things like video games, I would be a monster. Its something I’m trying to fix. I promise. Seriously, Gears of War 3…. MOMMA!

FYM: What are your goals for the future?

TA: I am actually about to incorporate and become something a little more legit than just “Timmy Allen”. So, to build up a studio of cool dudes that love what they do that has a great body of work would be the end all super cool goal. I’d like to get married too. Totally nothing to do with motion, but yeah. That’d be cool.

FYM: What advice do you have for any future motionographers?

TA: Practice. Learn. Freakin’ comb the internet for all the knowledge you can find in the areas you want to be active in. You can literally learn any area of motionography on the internet now. People like Nick, Rob Redman, and Robert Leger; they’re all putting out amazing content and tutorials on how to achieve some of the coolest stuff around, and its free. Just go there and watch. Its so simple! However, when watching these tutorials make sure you’re not just copy/pasting what they’re doing. Figure out how to use what you’ve learned and apply it to a project of your own. Follow people on twitter that constantly share great ideas and articles that they’ve found that have helped them out on their growth. All the knowledge in the world is out there for you to get exposed to and learn from. You just have to be proactive and get out there and find it.

FYM: You’re a busy man. Thank you for taking the time and welcome to the Fuel team!

TA: Thank you so much! I am so excited about all of this, and I’ll do my best to share and help everyone out however I can. I love talking to people that are hungry to learn and grow in their craft, and I will never shut anyone down. As long as it is in my pool of knowledge, I will happily share anything and everything I’ve got if someone wants it. I’ll see you around. Be good.

If you want more of Timmy Allen (and, really, who doesn’t?!) you can follow him on and , see his work on his website IamTim.me, watch his shows Film Riot and KeyframeTV and, of course, read his articles right here at Fuel Your Motionography!

Photos by Timmy Allen, edited by John Kostrzewski

John Kostrzewski is the Editor of Fuel Your Motionography and a freelance motion graphics and visual effects artist, videographer and writer living in Minnesota. He is awesome. Follow him on Twitter at and .