Timmy Beckmann

My calling for animation and design started when I was five years old, with LEGO stop motion: photos dropped into a Microsoft PowerPoint where I controlled the timing by hitting the spacebar. Those LEGO movies have since passed six million views on YouTube, and the ad money bought me my first real camera.

Stop motion taught me that every single part of a film matters, and that you only build what the camera sees. If an object leaves frame, you don't animate it. Every sound effect gets placed by hand, since stop motion is silent. I'd bring each frame into Photoshop to paint the VFX and record my own voiceovers in Audacity. That was the foundation for everything after it.

I kept making films through middle and high school, taking cues from people like Freddie Wong and the Corridor Crew. I spent two years as rally commissioner in my high school's ASB, which was the first time I had to put on a big live event for a room full of people. Then I went to NYU for Film and TV, where I made my own projects but found I got the most out of helping with everyone else's, learning from the people around me.

COVID hit right as I graduated, so I stayed in New York freelancing. I got connected with someone at Snowflake, and have been their Brand Motion Graphics Designer since 2021, the sole full time motion designer for nearly all of that run, covering everything from 143 foot keynote openers to social.