Humans of justDice – Salma, Principal Designer

Our team here at justDice is a blend of fun and professional. And that’s what these posts aim to unlock. We want the Humans of justDice features to focus on getting to know the people and minds behind the scenes. We’ll get to know a different team member every month, giving you an exclusive look into how we work together here at justDice 🙂

Salma’s unique journey from architecture to motion design showcases her creativity, problem-solving, and passion for storytelling. Her curiosity and drive to learn new skills have shaped her role as Principal Designer, making her an integral part of the motion design team at justDice. Let’s dive into her story!

1. How did you transition from architecture to motion design, and what led you to justDice?

Design and architectures are not very far apart as one might think. At its core, architecture is the origin of design thinking: putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to see the world from their perspective, anticipating the problems they might face, and finding solutions that satisfy different users’ needs, considering the bigger picture, and most importantly, listening to the clients’ unspoken needs.

Perhaps what I’m describing would resonate more with product designers, but at the end of the day, the designer’s job—any type of designer—is to identify and solve problems you didn’t know you had.

It’s the same with motion design. We think about the audience who will see the design piece, the message that needs to be communicated, the way we will tell the story we want to tell to resonate with people, what will make them remember the information that is communicated, and the consistency of it all in terms of graphics, hierarchy, brand, and a million other things.

Architects would be very smug about it and say, “Well, child! Architecture is the mother of all arts,” and I tend to agree—I’m sort of biased 🤷

I decided to pursue the moving image medium in my final year of university. By sheer luck, I stumbled upon a behind-the-scenes video of the movie Ice Age and the process of animating the characters and building the environments. Then, directly after, I fell into the rabbit hole of ILM (Industrial Light & Magic), where they essentially invented this whole new branch of art called visual effects for film in order to create the world of Star Wars back in the 1970s—on film reels at first, then moving to digital as the technology advanced.

I was deeply fascinated, hooked, and determined to learn what the hell that was and how I could get into it. So I took another year after I graduated to study multimedia and computer science basics. The rest I learned on the job.

Whenever I had the chance, I would learn something I’d never done before. I dove into 3D and learned modeling, texturing, animation, lighting, and rendering. I was good at some and sucked at others, but that’s okay. I alternated between 2D animation, motion design, 3D animation, and compositing, depending on the job at hand.

I was fortunate enough to work with great people who gave me the space to evolve and learn. I created ideas that would lead me to learn more about this world—from 2D and 3D animation to sound design, compositing, and color grading. I did everything myself at first because I didn’t know anyone who shared my interest. So it was on me to teach myself through books, online tutorials, and anything else I could find.

A couple of years in, I took another fun detour that became my hobby and passion: 360 panoramic photography. I originally learned it to light my scenes in 3D and composite them better (because I sucked at lighting—and I still do, haha). But what came out of it was an ever-growing portfolio of 360 panoramas and a personal project documenting ancient Egyptian sites. Because why not!

Through it all, my philosophy has been simple:

If I can delete everything I’ve built, start over, and still have a smile on my face while doing it all over again, then it’s something worth doing. To me, there is nothing more magical than seeing something I made with my own hands moving on the screen.

As for what led me to justDice, I can’t tell you I planned it or anything. It was by pure coincidence that I stumbled on the job—a happy one, considering I’ve seen the company and the people grow and change so much over the past five years.

As I tell my friends, I finally understand how the internet works since I joined this company. 😀

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2. What does your role as a Principal Designer involve, and what’s a typical day like?

I wake up early and feed the chickens, then I bake some bread! And wait for the team to arrive. That’s a lie! I’m not a morning person! The chickens would be very angry with me!

Seriously though, I like to define my job as the one who makes the design team’s life easier (or at least tries). Being mostly a technical director, I focus on our internal processes, how we collaborate together, and what the best ways to do so are. I also get to set the standard for our workflows together with the team, which is terribly important considering the amount of creatives we produce on a monthly basis.

We start the day with a standup/feedback daily meeting where everyone presents their work and progress. We give feedback to each other and discuss next steps, then start working on our projects.

In the process of creative production—whether it’s a video, static, or a playable—there are many repetitive and boring tasks every designer has to do. My focus is to identify those and try to automate them or eliminate them altogether.

I find ways to annoy the team by forcing them to adapt new tools all the time! (They hate it so much!) Even worse, I make tools for them and force them to use them!

The idea is to take away all the technical distractions from the designers and help the team, including myself, to be more efficient when producing new creatives while focusing on the creative part of the process.

Less grunt work, more creative work.

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3. What do you enjoy most about working on design projects at justDice?

I really enjoy the freedom I have to explore different ideas and animation styles and software when working on video projects. I decide how to execute my work the way I see fit, and I always have the support I need for it, no matter how insane the idea may sound.

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4. Is there a project you’re especially proud of, and what role did you play?

I designed a custom script for Adobe After Effects that creates automatic translations for our video creatives. Any video ad we create has to be localized to at least 11 different languages, and with the help of this script, we can focus on creating the main copy, and the script generates the rest of the videos automagically localized, saving days of meaningless grunt work for all the designers.

In order to make this a reality, I collaborated with an incredibly talented developer to realize this project. I designed the features to address our needs and to fit our existing workflow. I also tested the script, gave feedback on certain features, and did quality control before onboarding the team into it.

This project is the reason I got into technical direction and creating custom scripts for After Effects myself, so I hold it very dear to my heart.

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5. Which tools or techniques do you rely on most in your work?

For video projects, I use Adobe After Effects and Cinema4D or Blender, depending on the types of assets I need to create or use. If there’s a live-action shoot, I use DaVinci Resolve for editing and color grading, and Adobe Audition for sound design and sound editing.

And when bringing creative ideas to life, the process often involves multiple stages of experimentation, technical precision, and creativity. One of my early projects at justDice involved integrating 3D animation into live-action footage. Here’s how it came together:

First, I began with a proof of concept to test if my idea would work. This included ensuring that the 3D animation would seamlessly fit into the live-action footage and successfully motion-tracking the footage. Motion tracking involves creating a 3D camera to match the live-action scene and marking specific areas in the footage to later place 3D objects accurately.

Using Cinema4D, I tracked the clean plate (the live-action footage without any added effects), extracting camera animation and object coordinates to replicate the scene digitally. Then, I shot a 360 HDR panorama of the location to capture its real-world lighting. This HDR lighting was key to ensuring that the 3D animation blended naturally with the live-action setting.

Next, I created the 3D animation, using the HDR lighting to make it as realistic as possible. Afterward, I exported various 3D passes, including ambient occlusion, shadows, puzzle mattes, and beauty passes, all essential for the final compositing stage. The compositing process, my favorite part, involved combining all the 3D passes with the live-action footage. I cleaned up the footage by removing tracking markers, matched the colors and brightness, and added interaction effects, like the ripple effects of paper and the animation of the logo.

The finishing touches included sound design and text elements, tying everything together into a polished final creative. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the process, followed by the final creative:

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6. If you could describe the culture at justDice in one word, what would it be and why?

Chill—except when there’s cake in the kitchen; they become cookie monsters! I can’t really tell you why, it is just the feeling I have when I walk into the office. I like that.

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7. What’s something unexpected or interesting about you most people might not know?

Because of the impact of my side project documenting Ancient Egyptian sites, I was invited to give a presentation about cultural heritage preservation and digitization at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Together with a group of world-renowned experts, we literally wrote the manual on digital cultural heritage preservation techniques.

Also, I love to dive and my spirit animal is the sea turtle!

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8. What advice would you give someone pursuing a career in motion design?

There’s a quote I read ages ago—unfortunately, I can’t remember the author. I still find it very relevant when I feel frustrated with my work:

“Realizing the flaws in your work doesn’t mean you are a bad artist; it just means you have good taste!”

Keep that in mind and remember: You are here to tell stories. If you can tell a story with the simplest of shapes, you can do everything else. Learn the principles of animation by heart. Don’t be a button-pusher. Invest your time learning why, not how. Stay curious, and never stop learning.

Most importantly, don’t take yourself too seriously. Have fun doing what you do, and it will show in your work!