At the start of this year BUCK partnered with Riot Games and set out to bring the visual identity for MSI 2025 to life. We came up with a brand, design and motion system that was used by dozens of vendors during the event.

I loved exploring this more gritty style of animation, and often wondered how far we could push it. How many keyframes do you actually need if you go really gritty? Turns out, some elements only needed 4 frames in total to fully animate in and out. The less in-betweens we added, the grittier it looked.

But how do you maintain consistency when so many different people are involved? You make a set of guidelines: a Motion Language. This is where Riot Games asked us to create a Motion Brandbook + Animation Toolkit. We supplied an After Effects toolkit with a bunch of pre-made assets that were used by the vendors all throughout the event. And it's been really fun to see them editing an iterating on our work. You can see some of the work that was included in the AE toolkit and some quick screen recordings from the Motion Brandbook towards the end of the video.

Working alongside the Riot Games team was an incredibly rewarding experience.

Lastly, a big shout out to our own team here at BUCK Amsterdam, everyone delivered outstanding work on this project.

Explore the full showcase here for more details.

Some glassy gradients. These were a joy to make!

I was heavily inspired by @fafa_motion and @jerbosmans for this one, go check them out.

Music: CHUCH – FRIENDZONE

Some explorations made a while ago in After Effects with the Card Dance effect. This was a fun exercise, but come to think of it, I would probably turn to Cavalry for this type of work in the future.

Music: Solvent – King Vincent

An explosive logo animation for GitHub from 2023. This continued to be developed even further into an entire branding system by my dear colleagues at BUCK. Check for more info here.

Below is a list of the awesome people who worked on just this logo animation.

Klarna approached us in 2023 to help them out with a set of videos promoting their Spotlight 2.0 event.

We had such a talented team working on this, both staff and freelance. Personally I had a lot of fun leading the animation side of things and in seeing the colorful designs come alive.

Antfood's quirky music and sound design made things come alive even more.

A celebratory loop I made when I joined the BUCK team in Amsterdam back in 2022.

As a big fan of meditation and yoga, I was more than thrilled when BUCK Amsterdam approached and asked me to help out on this animation for Headspace Germany. This was the first time for me in the role as a Lead Animator, and I have to say I've learned so much while working on this project with some of the most talented people in the industry.

Check it out on the Headspace YouTube channel here.

For this project I set out with an ambitious idea: to model, rig and animate a 3D character all within After Effects.

Character was modeled in Element3D, rigged with Elementary and DuIK, and animated in After Effects.

Some insights about this workflow:

Is it easy? No.

Is it frustrating? Yes.

Does it render fast? Yes. Faster than most 2D rigs I've made.

Is it worth it? Maybe. 🤓

A project I started after noticing that I was spending way too much time online. It dawned on me that many of us are often unconsciously seeking "happiness on demand" by tapping on screens and buttons, gathering likes.

Sound by the amazing folks at: QBsound.

In 2017 I set out to make my first short film.

It's about a narcissistic pebble named Mr. Pebbly Rock: "Mr. Pebbly Rock is a pebble who's pretty full of himself. However his presence is not always appreciated."

Sound design by the awesome folks at tigerbearaudio.

My very first showreel back in 2017.

This is a collection of both freelance work and work done while on staff at in60seconds.

I did the animation for all of the shots but didn't do the illustration for most of it. For a complete breakdown you can always shoot me an email.

Lienke illustrated two major pieces used in this reel. Check out her work, it's great!

Song: Tensnake – Freundchen (Original Mix)

Here is some of my work over the last years put together in a reel. I've had the pleasure to work together with a lot of talented people, so please find more details on who did what below.

Song: Neon Indian – Change Of Coast

See how the reel intro was made ↓

🍄👌🏼 A mushroom I made in After Effects.

For this project I set out to further dive into After Effects Layer Styles and find out how far we can push them to achieve a 3D but somewhat graphic look.

Back in 2018 I set out to make my 2nd short film, diving deeper into storyboarding, simple character illustration and animation. The idea was simple: "Follow someone throughout the day while they are never averting their eyes from their phone."

I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could blend several environments together just through the usage of continuous animation of the character. By keeping the character mostly in center and only changing the background elements around him I could use his anticipation and follow through to blend the scenes together.

© Marco van der Vlag

*This video contains really fast flashing images. It may trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.*

Here is some of my work from 2017-2019. I've had the pleasure to work together with a lot of talented people, so please find a full breakdown below.

Song: Koto – Jabdah (Chinese Mix)