Something Savage is the studio run by Brooklyn-based motion designer Daniel Savage. But the output here is far from feral. In fact, it has a refined, mesmerising look and feel, backed by Daniel’s fascinating creative process, which uses a pen plotter to create illustrations and animated sequences.
Each frame is planned by Daniel and individually drawn by the plotter, then the next and the next. The tiny variations in each iteration create the movement – like the old-school cel animation that inspires him. Going back into the computer, the images are organised to form a motion piece that can then be used at any scale. His work has appeared across the enormous light display that wraps around Circa LA, from mobile phone screens to the largest screens.
The stills above become the video below.
Straight vertical or horizontal lines drawn by the plotter are built up into abstract forms. The look can be reminiscent of screen or risograph printing, with a 1980s vibe. Despite the constraints of using a plotter, Daniel is able to animate his shapes with organic fluidity.
“I tend to ping pong between things that are more graphic and on a grid, and a more organic and gestural one,” says Daniel. “The plotter has allowed me to combine them. There was a period where I didn’t think the work would look like I made it unless you could see my hand in it, and now I think it’s more interesting if you can’t see it at all.”
Thanks to his method, there is always a tension in Daniel’s work between the unpredictability of nature and the formal parameters of a grid structure. Exploring and experimenting, it’s in this space that he seems to find the feeling in the work. “I think it’s really interesting to create organic imagery in the most non-organic way. For example, using a fluid simulation and drawing on a grid to create an image of a splash yields fascinating results. Being tied to a grid helps create a structure to the more gestural work,” he says.
New colours and shades result when lines of ink overlap, and glitches add nuance to the work – for example, when there’s an imperfection in the tip of a marker, or when its ink starts to run dry. These are the happy accidents that take the look and feel far away from the clinical perfection you might expect from a computer-driven process, giving it a hand-made feel even though a machine has done the physical drawing.
Cover for Brain magazine.
Outdoor animation project at Circa LA.
Daniel continues: “I think going that extra step beyond the computer, regardless of your process, has its obvious advantages. Even if a line from a marker is perfectly straight, it still bleeds into the paper and shows subtle variations in weight depending on the pressure. You can’t really get those inconsistencies digitally.”
In addition to working for editorial clients such as the New York Times, the LA Times, and Brain magazine in Japan, Daniel is constantly pursuing self-initiated projects. In 2025, he published his monograph, Something Savage, with Vetro Books in Berlin. Even though it is in print, the still imagery is brought to life through an augmented reality component. Hold your smartphone camera up to an artwork, and you can see the animation it is part of.
“The personal projects fuel the client projects, and the client projects fund the personal projects. Sometimes I have a specific goal like finishing a film or creating a book, and in between those bigger projects, I experiment until I’m ready to make sense of it all,” says Daniel
“Right now. I’m in an experimental phase. I’m exploring ways to incorporate screen printing into my process and hoping that it can lead to some bigger ideas and larger-scale works on paper.”
Animation for the LA Times.
