Takeover Tuesday with Marcelo Meijome
Q&A with Marcelo Meijome, a 3D and Motion Artist currently working at Varjo in Helsinki as a Senior Visual Designer.
Q&A with Marcelo Meijome
Read time: 5min
Madison Caprara:
Hi, Marcelo! I’m excited to get to know you a little better. Could you give us a brief introduction to yourself and your work? How would you describe your style for the readers?
Marcelo Meijome:
Hello Madison! I’m a Visual and Motion Designer, currently based in Helsinki, Finland. Actually, soon to be based in Milan, Italy. I was born in the U.S. to an American mother and an Argentine father. Growing up, we moved around a lot, back and forth between the U.S. and Argentina. I guess that carried over as an adult and I find myself moving around with my wife every couple of years it seems!
My work and style have evolved quite a bit over time I think, and I try to experiment with everything from super-stylized work to realistic 3D art. One constant though has been the focus on motion and animation in my work. These days, I find myself making short animations with inanimate objects, such as chairs, and giving them some personality and life. There is something really satisfying about creating a clean, seamless looping animation.
Madison Caprara:
A bit of a nomad I see! Well, let’s get started. Who or what nurtured your initial creative spark? Did you have any early mentors?
Marcelo Meijome:
I would say my parents played a big part in nurturing my creative spark. They always encouraged me to draw growing up, they let me play a lot of video games, and we would watch a lot of animated movies together. It’s because of these things that I think I knew I wanted to somehow do something related to art and design.
An early mentor for me would be my college professor, Dan Baldwin. He had gotten his Master’s degree at SCAD and has so much great experience when it comes to design and illustration. He really helped to make my work better and to also do a lot of projects outside of the classroom which better prepared me for the agency/studio world after graduating.
Madison Caprara:
It’s always great when you have that initial support from your family. I imagine it makes it easier to go after the career you want. What has been your career path leading up to the present?
Marcelo Meijome:
Originally, I started in the Fine Arts program at Indiana University, but after a year I transferred to IUPUI in Indianapolis to pursue a program more focused on design and computer graphics. After graduating, I felt like I wanted to learn more about animation specifically, so I enrolled in Animation Mentor. While doing these online animation courses, I started working at a local Indianapolis creative agency called Vision Three. This is where I started to really develop a lot of my 3D and motion design skills. Over time, the work there transitioned to be heavily based on real-time interactive applications and virtual reality projects. That’s what led me to being contacted by Varjo in Helsinki to help design for their VR and Mixed Reality headsets. Besides the full-time work, I’ve also taken on a variety of freelance projects on the side when some fun or interesting opportunities pop up.
Madison Caprara:
So, what is it you exactly do for Varjo? Break it down for us!
Marcelo Meijome:
My role at Varjo has been that of a Senior Visual Designer. In practice, that means I help out with a wide range of design challenges and tasks, a bit of everything from UI design, to illustration, to virtual environment creation in Unreal, to motion design for interactive elements, to even functionality prototyping. This role has really given me a chance to improve on some of my core design and motion skills, but also learning and exploring more technical aspects like coding to make early-stage design prototypes. One of the challenges with designing for virtual or mixed reality is that there are no tools like Adobe Xd or Figma just yet to quickly prototype things, so there is a high learning curve for designers to learn something like Unity or Unreal to be able to create and validate their designs in VR. Hopefully, this barrier improves, but at least there are already some concepting tools in VR like Oculus Quill, Microsoft Maquette, and Gravity Sketch that can help with part of the process.
Madison Caprara:
Who has been one of your favorite clients to work with? This can include one you’ve linked up with during your time at Varjo, or even during personal work!
Marcelo Meijome:
I really enjoyed working on a project for Morton Salt. It was for a big interactive video wall at their HQ office in Chicago that was run on three Microsoft Kinect sensors doing full-body tracking. This combined a good amount of UI motion design work, but also creating motion and design for when the application was not in use, so when people would walk by the screens we could create interesting transitions and motion design that would follow the user around. Morton Salt surprisingly gave us pretty free reign when it came to some of this as long as we stayed on the brand colors, so I think we were able to come up with something really cool in the end. This is something I’d like to experiment with some more in something like a museum setting.
Madison Caprara:
That sounds absolutely wild! I didn’t know they were based in Chicago.
As a self-labeled “generalist,” what are your thoughts on the generalist vs specialist debate?
Marcelo Meijome:
I think there is definitely room for both, and they each have their own benefits. From my experience, it helps to try and specialize in a few related things. For example, a lot of motion design positions now require 3d experience. You don’t need to be an expert in the whole 3d software package, but it does require knowledge of many areas like animation, lighting, and rendering. It’s always good to keep an open mind and continually be learning new things, you never know when it might come in handy. This is especially true in smaller studios where you don’t have huge teams with lots of specialists.
Madison Caprara:
Sound like your preference definitely leans towards being a jack of all trades.
In your opinion, what are some things that the art and design world is too focused on, and on the flip side, what are we not focused on enough?
Marcelo Meijome:
It feels like there’s a big focus these days on social media when it comes to art and design. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely benefits to this, easier to get exposure, share work, get your art seen by a huge amount of people. At the same time, this makes it feel like there’s a constant pressure as an artist that you need to share your work online and promote yourself which can be super draining and leave you burnt out. Like with anything else, it’s about balance and using the tool for your benefit but not letting it control what you do or what kind of work you make.
On the flip side, I would say traditional design and art skills have lost some focus. Everything needs to be more instant these days, so people expect to learn some software quickly and then the great work will follow automatically. I think the understanding of design principles, shapes, color, form, etc are way more important in the end, and learning the software or tool is more secondary to that.
Madison Caprara:
You’re right, social media has its dark side, but it can also be crazy inspiring. I love the connections you can make with people and places all across the world. Where do you go for inspiration when the creative rut hits?
Marcelo Meijome:
The usual social channels of Twitter, Instagram, Dribbble, Behance, and Motionographer can be a good way to find inspiration and spark new ideas, lots of great work to be discovered. Besides that, I find a lot of inspiration from just going out and doing things, whether it’s taking a walk, going to a museum, or traveling, you’re bound to see inspiring things in architecture and nature. I usually get a new idea for a personal project when I’m doing something completely random!
Madison Caprara:
Speaking of random, what’s a skill you never anticipated needing within your career but have found you can’t work without?
Marcelo Meijome:
Organization skills have become crucial for me, and this applies to pretty much all areas of my work. In school, I thought I could just make cool things and then the final deliverable was all I needed, but I quickly realized how important it was to stay organized once I started working professionally; the organization of my files, being able to find things I need quickly, and archiving work that’s been done. Keeping my working files clean and tidy, naming all my layers, grouping things accordingly, color coding things. These are all especially important when working on projects with other artists. I try to hand off projects and assets in the way I would like to get them from others. The worst thing is getting a messy project or file that has things scattered all over.
Madison Caprara:
For curiosity’s sake, do you have any off-the-wall side hustles or hidden talents?
Marcelo Meijome:
I don’t really have any side hustles or hidden talents. I like to play soccer but haven’t found a way to get paid for that yet! I like to learn about history and lots of different topics, so maybe I know a lot of random facts or bits of info that occasionally come in handy!
Madison Caprara:
Is there anything special we can look forward to seeing from you?
Marcelo Meijome:
My dad passed away suddenly back in June this year, so I’ve taken a bit of a break from working on much personal stuff since that happened. I’ve been thinking and reflecting a lot about my dad during that time, what he meant to me and my family and our connection to Argentina. Hopefully, soon, I would like to create something as a tribute for him. He always supported me no matter what I wanted to do, and really pushed me to continue working on my art during the times that I wanted to quit and study something else. Besides this, I want to get back to making more weekly art posts and collaborate on projects with my wife where she will create music tracks and I’ll make an animation to go along with them.
Madison Caprara:
Oh man, Marcelo. I’m truly sorry to hear about your father’s passing. My condolences to you and your family. If you plan on sharing your memorial project with the public, I’d love to see it.
We’re reaching the end of our time. Do you have any closing advice or maybe a statement you would like to share?
Marcelo Meijome:
Try to set aside some time for personal projects when possible. I know it’s not always easy to find the time or motivation to do these, I struggled for a long time with this too, starting lots of things but never finishing them. Start with small and short goals and try not to focus too much on making things perfect. Experiment with different styles and techniques! Almost all the freelance work I’ve ever gotten came as a result of someone seeing some of my more fun personal work. Just be careful to maintain a good balance with your personal life as well, it’s also ok to take breaks and not always feel like you have to be working.