Tahsin Alam: The self-taught 24-year-old winner of a global prize in motion graphics

A short video of just one minute, which surprisingly took one and a half months to make, landed Tahsin Alam his greatest achievement yet. 

Tahsin – a final year student at Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET) majoring in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) – has won the grand prize of the 2022 Peace Motion Graphics Competition by Sunhak Peace Prize. 

"At first, it might seem odd that it took so long to make a one-minute video. But there is more to it than meets the eye. Apart from finding the solution relevant to the theme, you need to make it work in just under one minute," he explained. 

Tahsin participated in the competition for the sake of participating, with a faint hope of getting an honourable mention. Not even in his wildest dreams did he think would win the grand prize. 

While other participants in the competition worked as a group, Tahsin completed his video by himself. From the script and digital art to animation and post-production – he did it all by himself.

Tahsin completed his secondary and higher secondary education from Barisal Zilla School and Saint Joseph Higher Secondary School & College, respectively. 

Launched in 2020, the Peace Motion Graphics Competition seeks to create awareness about the myriad global problems facing the earth. Through motion graphics – a form of animated video – the competition aims to promote dialogue in the world to find solutions plaguing the earth. 

This year's theme was sustainable living and participants were supposed to submit a 1-minute-long video on the designated theme. Tahsin's video was titled Sustainable Living in a Nutshell.

In the competition, 331 teams of artists from 68 countries participated with their short motion graphics video on how to overcome climate change-related problems through environmental sustainability.

Tahsin chose to work alone, despite the massive workload and needing to learn new things along the way (i.e. sound design).

"I wanted to have total freedom with my work. I've always wanted to do a personal project, but I was always too lazy to do it. And this seemed like a perfect opportunity," Tahsin explained.  

"Winning the grand prize made my parents happier than I. I think they finally understand what I'm doing! The $3,000 prize money was a great added bonus." His father is a banker, he works at the National Bank Ltd, and his mother is a housewife. 

Tahsin approached the challenge like a personal project, he wanted to apply techniques and styles he liked. He wanted the plot to be simple, but cover the whole topic nicely.

He said, "I wanted to apply some advanced rigging techniques I've been learning for a while. With that in mind, I began working. It took me three days to complete the script."

He then worked on storyboarding, design, animation, and sound design. 

"I did all of them one by one myself and in total, it took me around 1.5 months to complete. And finally, for the voiceover, I used AI."

Tahsin's association with motion graphics was kind of a happy accident. In his early years at the university, he had an interest in photo editing, logo making, etc. Even though he could not invest a lot of time on it, he always tried learning something new whenever he could.

"I knew a thing or two about static images, but I didn't know anything about video editing or VFX."

However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Tahsin made the best use of his time. And he found his passion in motion graphics. 

"So, when the Covid-19 lockdown started, I suddenly had a lot of time for my hobby. I started learning adobe after effects with VFX/video editing in mind. But in the process, I discovered this huge industry of motion graphics and fell in love with it." 

Since then, he has watched thousands of tutorials, learned a lot of techniques and applied them in his work as a freelance motion designer.

Tahsin's passion for motion design is derived from his pursuit of learning something new. It could be anything as long as it's fun, he professed. 

Growing up, his dream was always to be an engineer and he enjoys what he is currently studying. 

" For now I plan on completing my graduation and getting a government engineering job."

However, Tahsin says that he will continue working in this motion design industry.  "I want to become one of the very best in this industry, I want to set up my studio," he added.