Jack Strand
motion work
The Demo Reel
2D & 3D work
News GFX & Personal Projects
Deadline work for the telly and obsessive stuff for myself
produced mainly using Photoshop, After Effects & Blender
Title sequence for the Leaders Debate on STV, part of the 2026 election coverage. The 3D sequences were extrapolated in Blender from a single photograph of the venue, then combined with the rest of the sequence in After Effects. The concept started with racing ribbons and grew from there - I wanted it punchy but slightly desaturated, using the party colours to pierce the scenes with vibrance. I also had a photo of one of the lecterns, so I started modelling it in Blender, and quickly realised the sequence should finish in the debating hall with the lecterns arranged as they'd be on the night. Delivered over the couple of days allocated. Given more time I'd have pushed the ribbon motion further - weaving round objects, jostling for position
A piece of a personal project, featuring the holy trinity of video arcade games, in something like their natural habitat (although not yet populated by the other cabinets). I am currently working through these in my spare time, when I'm not working on the boat for the short film. I grew up in the arcade my family owned in a seaside town on the east coast, so I know these old machines pretty well - having jerry-rigged a few of them to give free credits when bumped in the right spot. I thought that making a fly-through of a complete 1980s video arcade, complete with pool tables, neon lights and garish carpets would be a good exercise and an honest gauge of where my 3D's at
Facial Recognition story for the 6 o'clock news. I was asked if I could replicate the look and feel associated with such tech. I'd seen a few movies, so I gave it a shot, and got fairly positive feedback on the result. Produced in After Effects using the built-in tracker with various lens effects and overlays
Title card for a piece on 'The Rising Cost Of Pets'.
I put together the concept in Photoshop and executed in After Effects. I sometimes work out placements in Photoshop for speed, and then bring it into After Effects as a composition to avoid wasting time trying to wrangle everything in AE's interface
One of the 'package graphics' for the 'Rising Cost Of Pets' story on STV's current affairs programme, 'Scotland Tonight'. Look and feel was left to my own discretion, so I went with a sketched, old-school kinetic type piece - dropped frames and scratchy textures sealing the deal
A 'Sting' graphic for a series the social media team at STV were working on during the Oasis Reunion Tour last summer. Ran on TV, the website and social channels
elevator pitch ⪧ Motion designer with a background that runs from newspaper front pages to live broadcast - twenty-odd years of work that had a hard deadline and went out whether I was ready or not. Nine years at STV building graphics under pressure, solo or in a team. After Effects and Photoshop are my bread and butter; these days I'm working in Blender and pushing into Rive and Python - building toward interactive work that does more than just play and stop
on the box ⪧ Photoshop, After Effects and Blender are the daily drivers. Professional experience across Cinema 4D, Premiere, Illustrator and Audition. Currently adding Rive, Unreal and Python to the kit. Interactive design isn't new ground for me (my degree's in Multimedia Technology), just a new generation of tools for it
off the box ⪧ Away from the desk I'm usually still making something - currently a 3D reconstruction of my family's 1980s seafront arcade, rebuilt from memory, one cabinet at a time. I've also been known to weld, wire and refurbish things most people would've just chucked in the bin. The rest is travel off the beaten track, good food, better beer, and backgammon with friends who talk as much nonsense as I do
stills
Short Film
In my free time I'm working on a short film with a colleague - a strange encounter with Scottish mythological creatures during a mining expedition, somewhere up north, sometime during World War II. I'm providing the boat, built from scratch in Blender using virtually all original assets. The budget's shoestring and the technical ambitions deliberately modest, so I devised a sliding gantry system to keep the mechanics of pushing mines into the sea simple for the animators. Turns out something very similar existed in real life - only much bigger. I've also rigged null controls and rotational constraints on objects like the doors, so bringing the boat to life in-scene will be less of a fight when the time comes.
full boat, seagull-eye-view
front view on test ocean, dusk
deck view detail so far
mine launch gantry mechanism, in open position
full ship side elevation, lit at dusk
top view showing more subtle sweep of the hull
in the cabin featuring ship's wheel, engine control & various dials
brass dials and flicky switches ahoy
the ribs - I didn't need to but I thought I owed her some nice ribs
front view test shot
side view with a name update - not necessarily final, as yet
treated shot showing what the director is aiming at for the final look of the film - dark and gritty
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