Every once in a while, we publish something that stops me in my tracks, not just because of the talent on display, but because of the depth of thought, generosity of spirit, and sheer curiosity behind it. This Q&A with Elliott Chaffer is one of those rare pieces.

As I was editing, I found myself clicking every link, pausing to reflect, getting lost in ideas, and then coming back for more. The range of influences, the interconnectedness of his thinking, the creative courage, it’s all here. And it’s a reminder of what Motionographer has always been about: spotlighting not just what people make, but who they are and why they make it.

This isn’t just a welcome to VERSUS, it’s a window into the mind of a creative who sees beauty in chaos, who leads with integrity, and who reminds us that in the right hands, Motion Design can be more than a craft. It can be a way of moving through the world.

Let’s dive in.

Welcome to VERSUS! What drew you to the studio, and what excites you most about joining the team at this moment in your journey?

Joining Versus feels like a natural progression in my career. It’s a studio where ideas are welcomed, possibilities are endless, and the production chops are real.

That openness comes straight from the energy of the partners, Justin, Samantha, and Rob, who bring a powerful mix of experience, generosity, and curiosity. They have proven it over the past 12 years.

The team continues to innovate and connect the dots, and that’s really what I love to do: spot opportunities on the horizon and go for them.

I’m excited to lean into new technologies and expand our offering in the brand space. With ECD, Jay Harwood already doing incredible work in AI and VFX, we are going to challenge and complement each other in all the best ways.

We come from different worlds, and that mix is where the magic happens.

But most of all, I’m looking forward to rekindling meaningful connections with clients and collaborators to tap into our shared networks and create new worlds for brands and their audiences to explore together.

Your work fuses live action, Motion Design, CG, and even Unreal, how would you describe your creative approach when directing or leading a multidisciplinary team?

I’m involved in nearly every part of a project (except the artistry itself), which helps me adapt my role based on what the work needs.

I still love rolling up my sleeves and getting into the weeds with the team but what I really value is knowing I don’t have to do it all. When I give others room, I have more space to open doors and connect teams.

I think of it like DJ mixing people’s skills together, and I’ve been lucky to work with an incredible roster of artists, designers, strategists, and copywriters, people I’ve been in the trenches with who’ve made work that stands the test of time.

I hope to bring many of them into projects here. When you have that kind of trust, you can build strong teams that elevate the work in unexpected ways.

As a surfer, I embrace dynamic forces and try to find balance and natural flow. I live by the principle of “duckdiving your fears,” helping others find clarity and resilience in the middle of life and work challenges.

The surf lineup is a shared space. It’s about showing up with integrity, respecting others, and seeing each person as an individual. Not competing. Just being present. That mindset helps me stay calm, focused, and adaptable, and from there, you can be inspiring.

The goal isn’t to impress people. It’s to create trust, make space, and build something beautiful together.

You talk about creating ‘beauty in the chaos.’ What kinds of kinetic challenges or opportunities are exciting you right now, whether creative, technical, or cultural?

Everything and everyone is energy. We resonate together. I love the challenge of kinetic, dynamic forces and finding beauty within them. As surfers, that’s literally what we do.

This double pendulum represents it perfectly →

Try it. The way dynamic forces interact when set in motion creates something unpredictable and beautiful. It’s about being fluid, flexible, responsive to change, and open to the push and pull.

Now imagine that pendulum with four points, say, VFX, editorial, design, and longform. Add three more. Set it in motion. The result becomes even more complex and beautiful.

That’s what excites me about this moment.

There’s chaos in the world, in our climate, in our industries but within that, there’s also movement. There’s opportunity. We’re nimble enough to use our skills in new ways, to create and communicate meaning, joy, wonder, truth, hope, and memory.

Creative people are creators. The world was created from chaos, so none of this is new. What matters is how we respond to it.

You’ve worked with brands, studios, musicians, and technologists across the spectrum, what do you hope to bring to the VERSUS culture as both a leader and a collaborator?

This is what excites me most. We already have a deep network of talent, with lots of natural overlaps.

With the streams we’re working across content, editorial, new tech, design, VFX, I’m looking forward to helping every side of the business build new connections with clients and collaborators.

I want to expand what we offer to brands and grow our capabilities through all our combined strengths. It feels like the beginning of something powerful. 

You’re generous with your knowledge – speaking, judging, mentoring – how does that sense of creative generosity show up in your day-to-day process?

At the bottom of this page on my site there are hundreds of pictures to show this. But if you prefer reading, read on.

“Paddle on and don’t snap to guides” David Carson

Like surfing, it is about remaining present and thinking about what kind of line you want to draw with others on a moving force of energy. Generosity is one of my core values.

I try to bring it into everything I do, whether I’m pitching to a CMO or helping an intern see new possibilities. I love sharing connections, listening, hanging out, and building talent culture from the inside out.

The best leadership I’ve seen is rooted in generosity.

I’ve always believed in opening doors. When you do that, you’re not just helping one person you’re creating a ripple effect. That kind of trust builds strong teams, real relationships, the kind that makes teams strong and clients want to come back.

That mindset is a big part of why I’m excited about Versus. Generosity here isn’t just a value, it shows up in the work. It’s active in how we collaborate, in the charity work we support, and in how we amplify underrepresented voices.

This is a studio that understands the creative cycle is always in motion. A junior designer today might be your client tomorrow.

A client might one day join your team. That fluidity is part of what makes this industry beautiful.

One project that captured this spirit was .movtogether a mentorship program we launched during COVID that brought together clients, competitors, musicians, and artists to support a cohort of BIPOC students from CAL Arts. It wasn’t about checking boxes.

It was about showing up, giving time, and helping shape the next wave of creative talent.

.movtogether

The point is, we’re not just moving pixels. We’re building something bigger together. When people feel seen, supported, and inspired, they come back to the work, to the studio, to each other.

How do you see the Motion Design landscape evolving, and where do you think VERSUS fits in or helps shape what’s next?

Motion by name, motion by nature. It’s in flux, and it always has been. I remember working with 23 frames to work with on a Quantel Paintbox and had to bounce everything to tape with mattes and fills on Beta SP.

I don’t miss those days, but I value what they taught me long before the term “motion graphics” even existed.

We’ve all evolved with the formats, resolutions, deadlines, and tools. The key is staying open, adaptable, and ready to grow.

That’s where Versus thrives. We’re riders by nature.

Justin’s a skateboarder. I snowboard with Tony on his annual trip with clients and collaborators.

We live in momentum and unpredictability and bring that mindset into every kind of moving image: CG, AI, long-form, experiential, AR, and beyond.

It’s about meeting change with curiosity, not fear. With Justin and Rob’s eye for what’s next and a shared openness across the team, we’re in a strong position to create new waves of opportunity. One pixel at a time.

What’s something unexpected about you, a creative habit, influence, or obsession, that people might not know?

This could be the subject of a whole article and I mean that humbly. I found my why. 

I realized that in 25 years of branding for others, I had never taken the time to do it for myself, as I preferred to spend my time inspiring my children in the arts (Oceana and Zephyr) and helping others with our skills pro bono.

But then it went deeper and I started to see all these fascinating visual, numerical, sonic, connections everywhere all at once when I really started to hone in on my Y, why do I do things, what have I done, and where do I want to make new trees of connections we can all make together.

Turning 50, losing my dad, and undergoing major surgery, it all forced a pause. And in that space, I started to rewire how I see and how I create. I leaned into the power of the mind, animal flow, and conversations with brilliant coaches like Maria Manrique and Kyoko Takeyama.

Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act became a kind of companion. So did silence. That’s when I started designing a living, breathing system to represent who I am, what I care about, and how I think.

Now I’m constantly building visual iterations of that system, merging AI with iPhone VFX, creating cyanotypes of hand-drawn grids, filming paper sculptures blowing in the wind, repairing surfboards like Kintsugi, and designing symbolic playing cards that tell layered stories. It’s not one project. It’s a whole way of seeing. Of processing. Of being.

People sometimes catch me in bars fiddling with mirrors, light, or tiny lenses and wonder why I’m not watching the game. But the game is everywhere. Music, shadow, motion, math, all of it is in play if you’re tuned in.

What I didn’t expect was how much this inward journey would expand my ability to give outwardly. It’s made me more curious, more connected, and more inspired to build brand systems that invite the same kind of reflection and wonder.

Long term, I’d love to teach this work, maybe in design schools, or maybe on a stage. A TED talk someday, perchance to dream! 

Any early ideas, dream projects, or creative collisions you’re hoping to spark with the VERSUS team?

Already in my first week, every call, brief, and treatment I have seen, and the energy in our discussions, the open spirit, is a dream home to dream together in.

I am so excited to dive deep into all the creative tech and delivery systems we’re innovating to find ways to connect that to help us tell our own and brand stories; to bring all that originality and infrastructure, momentum,  and ambition to keep taking us all from now to what is next. 

Dream collaborations: 

Ez Devlin
Treatment Studio
Done and Dusted
Youtoocanwoo
Redbull media house
Patagonia
Punchdrunk
Meow Wolf

Rapid-Fire Round

Because one article could never hold all the layers of Elliott Chaffer, here’s a peek into his mind, one instinctive answer at a time.

• Favorite title sequence of all time? Unfair question, too many to count. And I love making them too. This isn’t one of but how many title sequences make you laugh out loud like Too Many Cooks ? And to then be remixed by Marvel in their version of Too Many Cooks? It reminded me of branding Disney XD and then branding the Marvel Universe on Disney XD. Too many transitions. 
• Creative tool or technique you can’t live without? Mind, eyes, ears, heart and hands; treat them well and you will have them forever, so let all the others come and go, but never lose your innate creativity. Try just listening to music sitting in the car and follow an action you see with one eye for a bar, blink to the beat, pan, tilt your head to change the camera angle, blink both eyes to faster beats, hold them closed for the drop etc. Within seconds, you will realise you have creativity inside you. 
• Design trend you wish would go away? I notice trends, but I don’t subscribe to them, so they don’t bother me. The other day, I picked up a signed book about Zandra Rhodes, from a street vendor in my neighbourhood. My mother used to be her fashion agent in the 1980s and I had never seen and appreciated Zandra’s work before; am totally blown away by it and her connection to butterflies, which has been the whole central driver of my desire to create butterfly effects with design, motion, and experiences. And pouring over the book with my son and friends who have seen my journey just brought it all full circle again for me.
• Design trend you’re secretly into? Chindogu The Unuseless Inventions of Kenji Kawakami. The inventions that you could almost see yourself using…almost.
• One unexpected influence on your creative worldview? Be Like The Water My Friend. Bruce Lee. The fluidity and essence of water molecules and how they have memory and come together in the chaos and make beautiful rainbows, waves, stillness, hydration, irrigation, cooking, and healing. There is so much that connects me and my creative flow states to the elemental forces, the sounds, the optical qualities, the push and pull of the tides, the scarcity, the climate issues, the search for it beyond our galaxies and at our breaks. I am a Cancer after all. 
• In one word: VERSUS feels like…? Acid dropping into a gleaming barrel at Teahpou, on a transparent reflective board, grabbing the rail, finding my groove, looking at the reef rushing by underneath, and the sky and chandelier reflected on the top of the board, and out on the shoulder the team is there giving me the confidence that I can make it because we all have each other’s backs. I have been manifesting this. It feels like home.

elyo.me / www.weareversus.tv