Meet Desmond Du | Motion Designer & AE Tutorial Maker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Desmond Du and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Desmond, what principle do you value most?
Being thoughtful and intentional about how we live our lives matter the most to me. By knowing where our desired destinations of success are, we can easily plan and charter a course to get there as smoothly as possible. Part of my Motion Design and creative practice involves giving free one-on-one consultations and helping people with getting to the success they want or troubleshoot any problems. After dozens of all these sessions listening to people’s concerns, I come to believe that most people are unable to get the success they want not because they lack the skills or resources, but rather, because they do not have a clear idea of what they want in life or what their success looks like. They yearned for a positive transformation of their careers, lives, and identities. Yet, their definitions of those goals always seem so abstract and vague.

Having a goal, one that is thoughtfully crafted and defined, is the key to success. No matter how lofty your goal is, if you work on it consistently in small increments, you will still get there or at least closer to it compared to going around in a circle without a target. This concept is known as “The Strangest Secret”, coined by the author Earl Nightingale who defines success as a “progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” You can find an audio recording of “The Strangest Secret” on YouTube; I highly encourage people to listen to it if they have not.

Personally, even though I am a Motion Designer, my idea of success in life is to become a teacher or a professor, which stems from my love for teaching. I manifest this identity through doing Adobe After Effects YouTube tutorials (focusing on coding, another passion of mine), being a peer tutor, and taking the initiative to run software workshops in school. Through teaching, I was able to build a presence within my peers at my school (Savannah College of Art & Design) and with professionals in the Motion Design community as well. Using this positioning as an educator, I have also received two full-tuition scholarships to do my undergraduate and graduate studies at SCAD. In summary, because I knew teaching was what I wanted to do, and I did it consistently in various ways, and the successes that came were incidental of those thoughtful actions.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am Motion Designer that specialized in After Effects Javascript coding and programming to create procedural design and animation, and automate the boring stuff. I enjoy teaching and run a software tutorial YouTube channel called NoSleepCreative (NSC) since December 2019. To this date, I have over 50 video tutorials and 6500 subscribers! I am growing slowly and steadily!

As for how I got to where I am today professionally, it would definitely have to be teaching, especially on YouTube. I believe teaching is one of my gifts and talents. I feel fulfilled and lots of joy when I share knowledge with people. Though when I was starting out my YouTube channel, my content did not get as much attention or viewership as I hoped for. But as I continue to make a tutorial every single week, I grew more confident with teaching and as well as the type of content I put out. Only after about 8 months of consistent hard work, I finally had my first big break where everyone love this new master study tutorial I published because it was highly relevant to what they wanted to learn. My content viewership soared from then on, and so did my subscriber count! In short, my key to success was a combination of being consistent in giving value to people, discovering what relates most to my audience, and niching down on the type of tutorial channel that I ran.

In the near future, I like to invest more time and effort into NSC to be a remarkable creative resource and business to give Motion Designers the skills they need to create a killer portfolio, land their dream Motion Design jobs, and clients that they want!

Watch the tutorial video that became the turning point for NSC:

Also, read the full story on my journey of running a YouTube channel: https://desmonddu.medium.com/nosleepcreative-a-year-in-retrospect-5c98fb9edd4c

Finally, here are some additional readings on my trials and tribulations, and how I got the success I wanted:
https://desmonddu.medium.com/journey-to-a-full-ride-56e1be17c0de
https://desmonddu.medium.com/journey-to-an-art-school-full-ride-again-e67b3ff134b4

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?

I think the best thing to do in any city or country is to eat and have a good meal! My favorite place to go in Atlanta would be this Japanese restaurant and cafe called “Momonoki” located in midtown. They have the most delicious chicken karaage rice bowl that I ever had in my entire life, and it is not too expensive too! I would go to Momonoki almost every single week to have that dish, and each time is always as refreshing and fulfilling as my first time there. I highly recommend Momonoki to anyone who is visiting Atlanta!

Other places include Sweet Hut cafe which serves amazing lemongrass pork sandwiches, Fado Irish Pub with their savory Guinness BBQ sauced wings and Guinness beer, and Korean restaurant Salaryman with their remarkable Kalbi Jjim Poutine.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I like to dedicate my shoutout to my parents and family who love me unconditionally and have continually support my pursuit of a creative career. When I first started learning digital media at a Polytechnic back in my home country Singapore, my parents never really question me about my decision of being an artist or designer as a career. In fact, one of the reasons why I chose to study digital media was because my siblings and brother-in-law urged me to do so because they saw how much fun I had creating animations on the computer. If it weren’t for those encouragements, my life would have perhaps taken a less interesting turn.

In Singapore, the art and design industry is not that well appreciated, and you cannot really earn a lot to enjoy a luxurious life with a creative career. Many parents would encourage their children to have a more “practical” or “lucrative” career such as engineering, banking, or medicine. Not having to deal with those societal or parental expectations for the most part of life is a liberating privilege that allows me to do my best work which I am utterly grateful for.

A story I am very fond of telling my friends is that: My mother does not mind whatever career I have or where I am in the world. As long as I am happy with my life and the decisions that I make, that is all that matters to her. Now that I am in the U.S. by myself, I work as hard as I can, share as much knowledge as possible, smile as bright as I can, and laugh as joyful as I can, so that my family, who is on the other side of the world, have the peace of mind that I am living my best life doing what I love.

Website: http://duitbetter.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedesmonddu/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/desmonddu

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NoSleepCreative/

Other: https://desmonddu.medium.com