PURDYGOOD
Sharpening chaos.
(scroll)
Hi, I’m James. Multi-disciplinary artist who mostly gets paid to do motion design.
I started in Flash as a teenager, learned graphic design on a pirated copy of Photoshop Elements, and got bored of static layouts the year I graduated. After Effects became the extra dimension I needed, and I haven’t slowed down since.
Ten years in, I’m still self-taught with everything I’m really good at: motion, design, image-making, VJ sets, modular synths, the occasional 3D print. The thread is the same one a creative director once accidentally named — organized chaos. Eye-catching surface, clear logic underneath.
Currently looking for full-time motion design work and select freelance, especially with people who hate design by committee as much as I do.
Google, IBM, VICE, T-Mobile, D&AD, BESE, Propel
More about how this all fits together.
I do motion design for a living, but I take photos, build modular synth patches, run a small home 3D printing setup, and DJ when somebody asks. None of it is a side hustle. They’re all the same instinct — find an interesting tool, see how far I can push it, then come back to motion design with whatever I learned.
The motion career started in college. I’d been making graphics since middle school (Flash, then Photoshop Elements, then whatever I could pirate next), got obsessed with graphic design, then got bored of layouts that didn’t move. After Effects fixed that. The year after I graduated I got into the D&AD New Blood Academyin London — fifty students out of hundreds — took the motion role on the team project, and watched the whole presentation come alive because of it. That was the validation that made motion design a real path instead of a hobby.
Ten years on: studios, agencies, and brands — Google, IBM, VICE, Apple, T-Mobile, D&AD. Editorial animation, product UI, advertising systems, color-therapy light baths, music videos, a documentary series I’m currently directing about legendary experimental queer DJs.
The breadth isn’t a hedge. It’s the work. Years of moving between mediums means I can usually tell, early, when a direction is going to overcomplicate or land somewhere inelegant. Organized chaos is the shorthand.
If you fight design by committee and like collaborators who’d rather break the rule than explain it, we’ll get along.
- After Effects
- Cinema 4D
- Premiere Pro
- DaVinci Resolve
- Figma
- Illustrator
- Photoshop
Say hello.
james@purdygood.meOpen to full-time motion roles and freelance projects I’d actually want to talk about at a bar. The shortest path to me is email — I read everything that isn’t a recruiter blast for a “Senior Motion Designer (Java).”