I’m Arya Senboutaraj, a creative director, video director, and motion designer based in San Francisco. For more than 20 years, I’ve been turning complex ideas into visual stories that people actually feel.

My story started a long way from any studio. When I was two, my family fled Laos as the communist regime took over, and we landed, of all places, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Growing up there made me an observer. I was always looking for answers, and more than that, for the experiences that would lead me to them. I still work that way.

I went to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design planning to be a photographer. Two years in, I switched to a multimedia path built around graphic design, which let me combine photography and collage. I also got into video, animation, and digital video when it was brand new. Along the way I freelanced as a designer at the Walker Art Center, and they offered me their design internship when I graduated.

I turned it down and moved to Los Angeles, because something new was taking shape there: motion graphics. I co-founded the studio Logan, and later the directing duo Rainbows&Vampires. Our first music video, Enon’s “In This City,” was a seamless, dreamlike trip through a neo-Tokyo city. It got us press in RES and Creativity and led to work with the Black Eyed Peas, The Strokes, Yoko Ono, Le Tigre, David Gray, DeepDish, and Nickelodeon’s TeenNick. That work played on MTV and at festivals from RESFEST to Milan.

Since then, I’ve shot commercials around the world and collaborated with directors like Roman Coppola, Sophie Muller, and Mike Mills. As a freelancer, I’ve worked with Imaginary Forces, Digital Kitchen, Brand New School, The Picture Mill, and The Ant Farm. I designed user interface elements with Apple’s Human Interface team for the launch of iOS 7. At BMW Designworks, I directed future-technology brand films for BMW, MINI, and Rolls-Royce. At Media Arts Lab, Apple’s agency, I designed and animated launch campaigns, including the launch of Apple TV+.

I can take an idea all the way from first sketch to final frame. Direction, design, photography, illustration, and animation all feed one process that runs through previs, the shoot, and post. Lately I’ve built AI-assisted production into that process. I use Midjourney and Adobe Firefly for image development; Runway, Veo, and Gemini for video and motion; OpenArt for both image and video generation; ElevenLabs for voice and sound; and Claude and DeepSeek as creative partners for ideation and prompting. I also hold eight AI certifications from Google and DeepLearning.AI. To me, AI is a new set of brushes, and taste and story still drive the work.