Experienced freelance motion designer for worldwide clients and teacher at London university will share his After Effects skills

Find out more about Dani

• Can you tell us about your first experience using a computer?

  Like most people born in the 90s computers have always been a big part of my life in one way or another.
  
  I have always loved art and drawing, and the first thing I remember using a computer for was drawing on Microsoft Paint. The bucket fill tool felt like magic at the time!
  
  I remember drawing random lines around my canvas and then just using the bucket tool to fill the spaces between the lines with my favourite colours, and then printing my magic new abstract art piece.
  
  Thinking of those simple days feels so nostalgic now.

• What is the technological evolution that has marked you most and what will be, in your eyes, a turning point in this field?

  Animation has never stopped continuously evolving, it's difficult to predict any turning point in a media that is already such a big part of every video production, even if we don't notice it.
  The free and open source animation software Blender is already changing the field so much, making high end animation production easily accessible to independent creators, and therefore allowing experimentation to thrive.

• Explain your expertise, your interest in it and, more broadly, its importance in the computer world.

  My expertise is animation on Adobe After Effects, a software by the famous graphic softwares company Adobe.
  After effects is the main software used to create Motion Graphics, and many different kinds of animated content for video production, social media and many other uses.
  It would take very long to list all the different productions After Effects is used for. You can kinda consider it like Photoshop for videos. You can create any sort of image, with the added third dimension of time.

• Do so-called 'visionaries', such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg inspire you or do you have other role models?

  I tend to avoid being influenced by these mythical people. With time I have learned that most of their greatness is actually just good storytelling, and that the truth is always quite different. The only exception to this is former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata (1959-2015). It's hard to express in a few words how much of a role model he has been for many people around the world, and he is still greatly missed.
  
  I think one of his most famous quotes expresses quite well why he is so beloved worldwide.
  
  "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer."
  - Satoru Iwata

• Provide a valuable anecdote related to your subject or your days at school.

  When starting to learn a new subject it is very easy to overwhelm ourselves with expectations, I think we all do it on our first days at a new school.
  We tend to compare ourselves to our classmates and other people on social media, and that can give us a positive push to do better but also self disappointment that can block us.
  It took a long time to start using After Effects professionally, it's not something that can be learned in a few days, even though you can definitely start to create something nice quite quickly.
  So it's important to learn to be kind to ourselves and give us time and space to explore and learn at our own pace, without worrying too much and comparing ourselves to others.

• What would you say to an uncomfortable person in front of a screen who says that "IT is too complicated"?

  The first time you open After Effects and see the super complex interface it is very easy to feel overwhelmed and think that you will never be able to find your way around it and learn the software.
  But taking things step by step and learning the basics starts to give us confidence with the software very quickly.
  
  The software is super vast and used for vastly different objectives. But to start you only need to learn the parts of the software that matter to you and your project.
  So there is no reason to worry about the hundreds of buttons and functions you see the first time you open the program.

• What are your other passions, related or non-related to computers?

  As a person who spends all of his professional life sitting on a chair in front of a screen, I think it's very important to reserve some time to move our limbs.
  I have tried many different sports during the years, but around one year ago I started practicing Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, it's really fun and I had never expected my body would have been able to do such things with appropriate training! I really recommend it to everyone.

• What makes you a Superprof in IT?

  Teaching is a big passion for me. I truly enjoy helping my students achieve their objectives and learning and improving.
  
  I know that each student is a different person with different needs so I always approach each new student in a different way, with a personalised specific plan.
  
  Empathy is at the core of my teaching method and I always make sure to listen well and adapt rather than pushing what one single correct program of teaching.