Limore Shur
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Limore Shur
Creative Director, Founder & Owner EyeballNYC
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A hypnotic array of images flashes across the screen at whiplash speed, in tune to a pulsing soundtrack, telling a mesmerizing story. The experience is utterly engrossing…and its over in five to thirty seconds. Welcome to the world of motion graphics, an industry that is quickly revolutionizing the face of advertising, brand identity and broadcasting with its fusion of creative bravado and cutting edge computer work that all but obliterates the line between art and commerce. Its players are poised at the crossroads of art and technology, and they are fiercely passionate about the rapid advancement of both fields.
The man behind one of the most prominent and acclaimed motion graphics companies is Limore Shur, the quiet force behind the award-winning EyeballNYC. While only in his 30’s, Shur is an elder statesman in the field. As one of its pioneers, he embraced the industry in its embryonic stages, recognizing an ideal platform for exploring his creative potential. An artist by inclination, Shur has also proven to be a sharp business leader, and these dual skills are the keys to the company’s success: as he has grown the roster of Eyeball’s discerning, blue-chip corporate clients through effective communication and solid dependability, he has also fostered a prodigiously gifted creative team that is constantly expanding the unique visual lexicon for which the company is recognized.
After putting himself through Pratt Institute where he studied illustration, Shur became fascinated with desktop PC’s, aware of their potential for new creative possibilities in art and advertising. He searched for a job where he could fuse these interests, yet at the time, no such company existed. So in order to push the envelope, he had to invent it first.
In 1993, inspired by the minimalist graphics on a Frank Zappa album cover, Shur drew a circle resting on a horizontal line and called it Eyeball on the Floor, which evolved into EyeballNYC. “When I started this company, I had no rule book, no precedents and no capital” he recalls. Graphics and computer animation still existed separately from each other, and, he recalls, “no young artists or graphic designers were really jumping into the computer industry because the kind of computer that produced high-end graphics cost over one million dollars. I decided to see what I could create on a computer that cost somewhere in the thousands.”
Today the company that Shur launched in his Brooklyn apartment has grown to 30 employees and occupies two gleaming floors in a SoHo loft. And thanks to ground breaking efforts by companies like EyeballNYC the industry of motion graphics has significantly broadened its scope, harnessing the best of technology, 3D artistry, illustration, lighting, photography, film, editing, cell animation, painting, writing, storytelling, choreography, music, and production design, among others. It is a multi-layered art form, not unlike opera, in its rich textures and engaging interplay of seemingly disparate entities. Moreover, motion graphics is being recognized as an art in its own right, with art schools dedicating significant course time to the subject, museums like the Guggenheim Bilbao curating exhibits of motion graphics, and artists in a variety of disciplines crossing over to work in the field. Shur himself recently spoke about the industry to an audience at Lincoln Center during the New York Film Festival. A unique facet of motion graphics is that wildly creative artistic personalities regularly collide with the buttoned-down business executives who are their clients. Shur has the singular ability to understand and bridge the disparate worlds of his creative staff and his corporate clients and ensure that each thrives in this extraordinary relationship.
Shur’s upbringing played an integral part in shaping his creative and professional vision. His composer father and choreographer mother weaved art, music and poetry into the fabric of his and his brother Itaal’s childhoods. This legacy of creativity predisposed him to seek a balance between art and business, and he has created an office environment that has the essence a creative community, including a pristine and warm space by emerging designer HyeJin, regular staff outings, and catered lunches on Fridays. Yet there are also the perks and well-oiled machinery of a small corporation, including a comprehensive health care package, profit sharing and 401K’s.
Sensitive to the different communication styles between creative and business people, Shur has the EyeballNYC “creatives” talk mostly to his clients’ creative departments, and then keeps the business sides in direct communication with each other, thereby avoiding potential misunderstandings due to the varying interaction styles between the right and left brains.
Not only is he protective of his creative workers, he will take unorthodox routes to find the best new talent, knowing that the company’s success and lifeblood trickle from the bottom up. His music company, Expansion Team, was born of this philosophy. One of his employees, composer and DJ Alex Moulton approached Shur about expanding the company’s method of working with non-commercial composers as sources of original music. With Shur’s mentoring and support, Moulton took a unique approach, assembling a collective of world renowned recording artists and fellow DJ’s who, in addition to their regular work, could channel their creativity into composing original music. In handing the reins over to Moulton, Shur gained a mechanism for finding fresh talent, and, as importantly, was able to continue his stance of helping employees realize their professional dreams.
While Shur developed his creative sensitivity during his upbringing, he forged his business acumen by learning fast from missteps and victories as he helmed an ever-growing company. “Our industry is sometimes driven by a creative ego and we often make the mistake of thinking we know more than our clients. Today at Eyeball we have an honest respect for our clients’ knowledge of their own clients and their brand,” he says, adding, “I know how scary it can be to work with people who are creative and not letting you in on the creative process. I now try to be proactive about our communication with every phase of the project, and I’ve learned to speak about creativity in a pragmatic way.” Thus each phase of an EyeballNYC project is meticulously written out, giving clients a clear road map to the work, and the reassurance of transparency and accessibility. This model has helped the company develop a deep pool of return clients - a rare feat in a notoriously fickle industry.
The diversity of EyeballNYC’s clients speaks to the company’s flexibility. For Country Music Television (CMT), Eyeball sent a creative team to Austin, Texas in search of inspiration for redefining a network and it’s identity with a style as yet unmatched on TV. Collaborating with CMT, Eyeball emerged with a network image that renewed the brand and created a new visual language for the country music industry. Another recent project saw Shur lead EyeballNYC into the world of high fashion. Collaborating with photographer Steven Meisel, the company broke from its roots in motion graphics to create an ethereal landscape background for a 30-page fashion spread for Italian Vogue.
With his project base diversifying, industry recognition mounting, and top talent flooding in, Shur has established a solid base for the growth of EyeballNYC. Fueling this is an enduring passion for his craft and an ability to maintain a fresh perspective. “I’ve been with this industry since the beginning and I don’t profess to know everything,” he says. “I’m simply honored to be a part of such a stimulating and constantly evolving creative field, as these are exciting times for both us and our clients.”
