Julie Craft
In this engaging conversation, Julie Craft, a talented animator and motion design generalist, shares her journey from a high school nerd to a successful freelancer and founder of Boxfort. She discusses the evolution of motion design, the impact of technology like Rive on animation, and her experiences working with major brands in the automotive industry. Julie also highlights the importance of community in the creative field, shares insights on freelancing, and expresses her love for music production, showcasing her multifaceted talents.
Takeaways
Julie started her journey in motion design before it was a defined career path.
Her high school experience in media helped her find a sense of community.
The evolution of technology has significantly impacted the motion design industry.
Rive has opened new opportunities for animators to create and collaborate directly with developers.
Working with major brands has taught her valuable lessons about UX and design.
Julie emphasizes the importance of a supportive and collaborative creative community.
Red flags in freelancing include over-communication and lack of team cohesion.
Green flags include concise communication and a visible sense of team spirit.
She finds inspiration in both established and emerging artists in the motion design field.
Julie's passion for music has led her to explore electronic music production and live performances.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Julie Kraft and Her Journey
02:51 The Evolution of Motion Design and Technology
05:58 Navigating Change in the Motion Design Industry
08:55 Exploring Rive and Its Impact on Animation
11:59 Working with High-Profile Brands and Projects
15:08 Lessons Learned from the Automotive Industry
17:58 Passion and Frustrations in the Industry
22:26 Red Flags in Job Postings and Client Interactions
24:16 Identifying Green Flags in Collaborations
27:18 Inspiration from Peers and Influences
31:31 The Journey into Music and Performance
35:24 New Chapter
Transcript:
Mack Garrison (00:00)
Hey, what's up y'all? Mack Garrison here with Dash Studio and we got another good one for you. Another series in the speaker series. We got the talented Julie Craft hanging out with me today. And if you don't know Julie Craft, you should, because Julie is a technical minded animator and broadly skilled 2D and 3D motion generalist. From the day she first opened After Effects in 2001 until now, she has had her hands in almost every possible aspect of our industry. Julie is a highly successful freelancer and has become a trusted creative.
for countless studios and clients throughout her career. She has self-taught and began growing her skills before motion design was even defined as a career path, which is relatable to all of us. As a leader and founder of Boxfort, a thriving creative collective and co-working space in Detroit, she has been instrumental in fostering creative collaboration and community growth. And we love that. Welcome to the show, Julie. So glad to have you here.
Julie Craft (00:51)
I'm happy to be here very much.
Mack Garrison (00:53)
Julie, I'm just gonna be your hype person because I feel like reading your list of accolades, I mean, you've done everything, you've worked with everyone, you're so immensely talented. Maybe you could start the conversation off with a little bit of your journey. How did you find yourself into this world of freelance motion design? Where did that really begin for you?
Julie Craft (00:55)
Go for it.
Yeah. So like, you know, as you sort of mentioned in my bio, I grew up or I started doing motion graphics before it was defined, you know, sort of, what is it? like a aspect of the industry. Yeah. It was a field. Yeah. Yeah. Right. so it was like always, you know, video editor, whatever. So, the first time I even did anything with video, luckily my high school had a TV and radio station in the high school.
Mack Garrison (01:28)
field or anything. What the hell is this thing?
Julie Craft (01:43)
So there was actually after school radio shows, I had my own radio show, a Christian punk and ska music radio show. So that's something. I branched it into a little bit of electronic music at the time too. But yeah, it was like, but it was all like Christian music, you know, cause I grew up Christian, whatever. Another story for another time. Yeah, but that's why I started working with media. And then like on the, on the video side, they had a TV station. do like,
Mack Garrison (01:50)
Sick. Nice. Excellent.
Sure, sure.
Julie Craft (02:10)
video announcements throughout the school. Every classroom had a TV in it. So we kind of do like a broadcast style setup. And they had like an, I don't know if you know, like an Amiga video toaster. It's like an older dedicated hardware computer that could do a bit of 3D and mainly had this like sheep dropping transition thing, whatever. But that was my first intro to any sort of like nonlinear editing and stuff. And then the actual switcher thing that like did the newscasts, you could do lower thirds.
Mack Garrison (02:26)
cool.
Julie Craft (02:38)
And I was able to animate the lower third. So really the first motion graphics I did was an animated title slate underneath like people for the school announcements. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (02:48)
that's funny. When you were like
making it where people were like, this is so rad. What is this?
Julie Craft (02:51)
Yeah, yeah,
I mean, they didn't even, I mean, who knows if they even notice, like, just like still no one notices what we do now. But yeah, like, no, but like I excelled in the class and I loved it and I, you know, and it was also special to me because I mean, I was totally like, I know I'm like super cool now, everybody loves me, I guess, but I wasn't like that. No, in high school, like I was totally a nerd, you know, stuffed in the locker kind of whatever kind of person.
Mack Garrison (03:12)
So cool.
no.
Julie Craft (03:19)
No, I just, I like, had some close friends, but you know, when it came to the broader, like high school social structure, I, I did not have a place. I didn't understand it. didn't know who I was, where I was, whatever. And the TV and radio group, it was cool. Cause also, kids came from the other two schools in the school district. So it was like different people from different schools. We all came together and it was very much like my first, like taste of a community of, and it was kind of like.
You know, the movie, the breakfast club or freaks and geeks. was just like a whole mismatch of different, you know, some of it, some of the people were like football players, popular. some were totally like, you know, the misfits or the whatever the punk kids. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. You know, and it didn't matter. Like, like, all that status was like a race there in that little micro community. then, and honestly, like that's the vibe I bring like nowadays, like what I try to do with box for is that same vibe. It's just like.
Mack Garrison (03:51)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Molly Ringwalls or whatever.
Julie Craft (04:18)
place where like, you know, all the freaks go and we all have fun and there's no, you know, pretentiousness. So that was a whole lot.
Mack Garrison (04:24)
I love that you said you're like,
I'm cool now, but we're still queen of the nerds, right? We're all still nerding out here in this like weird area.
Julie Craft (04:33)
Yeah, I mean, I'm like cool within a very small community, which is our whole animation community. No one else knows me outside of that. I'm not on like the Forbes, you know, 30 or what? I'm way over 30 now, so I don't know. I'm not, you know, I'm not known like anywhere. Sure. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. don't know. Yeah, so that all started in high school and then...
Mack Garrison (04:48)
If there was a Forbes for the animation industry, you might make it. You might get on there, right? Yeah. I love that.
Julie Craft (04:57)
Like after high school, I went to this school called specs Howard, which is like a broadcast school. It's just like a one year program. Did more like newsy stuff, did a little avid, a lot of nonlinear editing, you know, but we still had some real to real like, you know, analog editing, all that stuff. So I did a bunch of stuff with tapes, beta cam SP, all that stuff. so yeah, the really old school stuff. And that was all like just kind of starting to switch over to digital. So yeah, I went there and then my first job was like at this.
Mack Garrison (05:17)
How?
Julie Craft (05:27)
local cable station, doing like commercials. Actually, I started as like a production coordinator, just assigning work. And then like, like one day a freelance, here's, here's where my motion graphic like, career really started is in 2001, like I said, when I opened up After Effects. So a freelancer came in, to our, you know, studio, a freelance editor and he made like lightning, you know, use the AE lightning effect. And I was like hooked.
Mack Garrison (05:32)
cool. Yeah, yeah.
Julie Craft (05:53)
And it wasn't just the lightning, was also like the compositing he did to like make light go on like a person's face and stuff. And from there is when I was really hurt. So that's when I started learning After Effects. Like a year or two later, they moved me into a graphics position, you know? And I absolutely grew up with Video Copilot, Grayscale Gorilla. I learned like everything from them. And then, yeah, just sort of like watch the industry grow. And now it's a real thing.
Mack Garrison (05:57)
sure.
Mm-hmm. yeah.
Also wild. mean, like I remember those days when you had like Adobe on a disc, right? Like it wasn't, you weren't subscribing to it like we are now, you know, and just seeing that evolution, I think from really the hardware days of it to like how easy it is to get into and adopt now. mean, there's a lot of perspective that comes with that. I think, do you have any takes on just the change that's currently happening in our space? And the reason I asked this is because, you know, you've seen so much change in your lifetime.
Julie Craft (06:23)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mack Garrison (06:49)
from when you started to what we're doing now. I think there's a lot of uncertainty and even discomfort that comes with change. I don't know, what's your take on this industry and how it's been evolving and how it's continuing to evolve?
Julie Craft (07:04)
Yeah, so this is definitely like in my talk, I'm going to dive right into that. Like all the topics that we usually dance around, I'm going to jump right in. You know, the whole specialist versus generalists. I have a lot of answers, you whether or not you agree with me or whatever. I have some answers though. So like I uniquely have become a very flexible generalist person in my career. I mean, in life also, you know, been thrown some curve balls in life and in career.
and so like, don't know, like I'm not really, I don't fear as much, know, like when VR came on the scene and 360 video and everyone thought this is the new thing, you know, none of it became the thing, you know, throughout all of it, there's been like a need for custom content creation and we're still doing that. And yeah, AI can like take all the stuff we've made already and make stuff like it, but it can't make anything new. It can't, it doesn't have intuitive leaps.
You know, the AI we know is Gen AI. It's not AGI, you know, which is general intelligence. So it's not, you know, it's not Skynet. It's not whatever. It's not the AI we see in movies at all. So it's like, it's just like a filter and you know, maybe I'll explain some of that in my talk a little bit if anyone cares. No, no, no, there's tons of secrets. I'm not giving away. Don't worry. But yeah, it'd be a fun time.
Mack Garrison (08:13)
Right. Right.
Yeah, I don't want you to give away too much, but I love that you're going to come with like some. Yeah, that's good. Well, it is interesting because it's like it has opened
the door to like, you know, I think I was talking to Michelle Higa Fox with Buck on another one of our interviews and just talking about getting into technology and new tech that's coming out. so with everything scary that comes down the line, there's also opportunity and cool areas to play. And one of those I know that you've been playing around a lot in is Rive.
Julie Craft (08:34)
Hmm?
Mack Garrison (08:48)
Maybe you can speak a little bit to some of your work you've been doing in Rive and what's kind of brought you into that space.
Julie Craft (08:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, so for me, weirdly, like, the abilities of software have usually drive my creativity. Like when I started learning After Effects or when I started learning Cinema 4D, I was like, oh, you can do this thing. That gives me ideas. You know, I came from like the opposite of a traditional art background. I was like, you know, video editor first, like computer stuff first, kind of, and then got into art stuff. besides that trade school I went to, you know, I'm self-taught. So everything designed kind of came later for me.
So for me, it's like when I get a new tool, I feel like it really inspires me. And with Rive, so leading up to like the recent years, and I used to do stuff with like automotive work, a lot of app UI work and everything. And all of that was like, you know, basically doing mockups and After Effects and like exporting it for developers and then learning how to like say, hey, like this is how it should look, here's a video. But then I would have to say like,
Mack Garrison (09:38)
yeah.
Julie Craft (09:55)
This should animate in like however many milliseconds. I could have to like document stuff for developers and they would do their best. You I mean, they're amazing. They can make systems and awesome things, but they often can't get the visuals quite, you know, right there. Like the nuance is not there. Right. So what's awesome with Rive it's like direct, you know, you, you build a Rive file, you build a system, you build the software and you, you give it to engineering.
Mack Garrison (09:57)
Mmm.
Right.
Julie Craft (10:21)
But you, give engineering all the inputs and everything. It's like they, they make it work, but like everything that moves you've created it. It's like, it's awesome. And that might seem like, Oh, well I'm, I'm an animator. I don't want to deal with the, you know, you know, that like side of it or whatever, but you know, you can go as deep into the programming side of it as you want or not. Like, cause you, you know, basically with Rive you can animate just like you do in After Effects. It's actually, would say it's more limited than After Effects, but has an awesome like puppeting tool or whatever.
Mack Garrison (10:47)
Sure. Sure.
Julie Craft (10:51)
bones and stuff. So yeah, you can totally animate and it's what you see is what you get. And you can get into the state machine and really pretty simply, you can start to make some basic interactions. And so it just opened my mind up. Like, like it's so much nicer to have direct control and, and the output. So that's what I love. Hmm.
Mack Garrison (11:07)
yeah. Well, it just feels like it's opening a new vertical for a lot of people that
haven't been able to operate in, right? There's the friction of, don't really know code. How do I get into it? Or how do I even work with someone who is using code on the backend, which I find really fascinating. Is there any project either personal or client related, if you're able to talk about it, that comes to mind where you've used Rive that you've just been especially proud of?
Julie Craft (11:21)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, all the Duolingo stuff, like I got to, you know, animate the perfect streak fireball. So yeah, it's something that people see. Some of that was like already kind of roughed in and after effects. And then I like read it a lot in, in Rive and then like refined it. You know, there's a lot of people touching it, but I definitely got to have a big part of it. And that was cool. Cause it's like, I don't know, like
Mack Garrison (11:38)
yeah, yeah, that's right, I remember seeing that.
Julie Craft (11:59)
I knew that what I was exporting was gonna be in the app. I'm like, oh yeah, this isn't gonna change. mean, know, if creatives changed it, but they didn't really. So it was awesome to like know that like, even though, okay, I'm putting this in, it's not gonna be in the app for like months, six months, a year later, I don't know. But knowing that like, oh, what I made is actually going in there directly. That's awesome. So yeah, it's so fun.
Mack Garrison (12:17)
Yeah, and just the visibility of it. Cause a lot of times
there's various projects that you work on that, you know, either don't see the light of day or it's internal and things like that. It's nice to have a very public facing piece to be like, Oh look, ma, I made that. This is what I do for a living.
Julie Craft (12:24)
Yep.
Yeah.
And I have very few of like, I feel like I've, I've been kind of in the background for a long time. Like I, you know, I haven't worked on spider verse or whatever. don't have any, like really, really big high profile things. Like I haven't really worked on any movie titles or whatever. I would hint, hint, but, um, it just, yeah, whatever. But I mean, it just hasn't happened and that's okay. And like, I had an idea for where I wanted my career to go.
Mack Garrison (12:38)
Mmm.
Yeah, that's right. anyone's listening, cough, cough.
Julie Craft (12:57)
when I was younger, I'm like, I'm gonna take over the world with 3D animation. And yeah, I've done some awesome 3D stuff, but like I said, I'm loving doing Rive, which is all 2D, and I'm faking a lot of 3D with shapes and stuff. But yeah, it's awesome.
Mack Garrison (13:09)
Well, it's really interesting to me, because I feel
like, you know, listening to a little bit of your background and how you came up through the motion space, it was really a hardware kind of start that moved into more of the software thing. And then you're really seeing all this transition. It just feels like you're really comfortable with tech. And I know you would describe yourself as a technical animator. I think about some of the programs you use from like Rai, Figma, know, Lottie, After Effects, Cinema 4D.
Do you still have kind of like a home that you feel most comfortable in? Like, is there always a starting point before you bridge into these other elements?
Julie Craft (13:43)
Yeah, I mean, After Effects is like, just like another hand. Yeah. I mean, I just, know it so well. There's always weird shortcuts and stuff. do nudging key frames that yeah, I just know it, you know? And yeah, it's still Cinema 4D. I want to try out Blender, but you know, I know Cinema quite well. So yeah, but I feel mostly comfortable in After Effects and you know, it's a bloated, like it's got some issues, you know, you have to install a million scripts to get what you want, but it does, you know, what we need and what I want, what I need. So.
Mack Garrison (13:46)
Bren butter. Sure.
Sure.
Julie Craft (14:13)
Um, that's why it's nice about Rive, like how Rive is very similar to After Effects in a lot of ways.
Mack Garrison (14:13)
While love, yeah.
Well, I was gonna ask like, you for some folks who might be listening to this, I think there's certain apprehension and trying something new. It's like, oh, I could do this, but I could get it done in After Effects. It could look okay, you know? So I'll just start there. How do you convince people to move past that? Try something new, get comfortable in the uncomfortable.
Julie Craft (14:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
well, it can be refreshing. Like when I opened up Rive the first time I'm like, this is snappy. This is opening right up. I can open it in browser and in on desktop. can have two Rives like one on, you know, one monitor one on the other, and you can go onto the Rive community and open up anyone's Rive file and be like, how'd do this? Open it up in the browser. Look at it. Like that's how they did it. And then build it yourself. It's like, it's right there. It's so wonderful. You know, it's.
You can't open up two after-effects files or you can only report, know what I mean? But it's it's amazing to just have that. Cause like that helped me so many times just learn like, wow. That's how they did that. And then just one to one. Yeah. It just really. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (15:10)
Yeah
It's this whole like open source mentality a little bit almost right? It's like you can always have access to how
stuff's doing and the community gets better with every new creation that people are doing. that's super rad. I love that.
Julie Craft (15:26)
Totally. Yeah, that.
then there's another one, Womp3D, which is like a browser based 3D program. And I recommend that to anyone who wants to get into 3D, who's like never touched it. It's super not intimidating. So I think, yeah, it's like the chance of like, yeah, you think it's daunting, but you might actually have some surprise of like how refreshing it can be and kind of take you back to that, you know, Zen mind, beginner's mind. Like the whole beginner's mindset is super refreshing.
Like if you've been doing something one way for a long time and you just can't break through or you can't think of any new ideas, it can really change your perspective.
Mack Garrison (16:04)
that's super cool.
Well, I know you mentioned earlier that like you hadn't had a chance to work on like a feature film or things that Duolingo was really cool because it was a very visible piece, but you have worked with some dope brands like I think Ford, Toyota, Lexus. I mean, you're in Detroit Rock City, so you're doing all sorts of car stuff. How's it been working with like electric vehicle companies like those?
Julie Craft (16:14)
Sure. Yeah.
you know, well, haven't really worked with automotive in a bit now, but I did a lot, did do a lot and starting with like the auto show stuff and everything, lots of big screen, display stuff. yeah, it was interesting. So, know, just like with a big ad agency or something, they know it's a slow process. Feedback can come way later than it should and so forth. So the opposite of a nimble environment, right?
Mack Garrison (16:28)
sure, okay.
Sure.
Julie Craft (16:51)
so there's that there's responding to that and, also like checking your ego and be like, okay, you know, the feedback is coming from people that are far removed. So, you know, can't take anything personally, but so there was, you know, that it was, it's been a good lesson in that, working on actual in vehicle stuff was fun because like, that was the first time I really got to do like UI work. And it felt like with electric vehicles and stuff, they're trying to align new stuff. And it felt like designing kind of like spaceship user interface, you know?
Mack Garrison (17:01)
Right.
Yeah, I bet, that's fun.
Julie Craft (17:20)
Yeah. So that was fun. And like a ton of stuff like was made by me and others that was totally not used, you know, like tons and tons of different directions and everything, way too much, way too much work that wasn't used, but you know, it was a nice exercise and the muscle of like learning like, okay, well, this has to work with people barely paying attention to it because can't be distracting. And so that can like, I had a few years of like really being immersed in that. And that really gave me a good understanding of UX.
from a human interaction perspective. And I kind of take that with me everywhere now with Duolingo and app work and whatever. So yeah, it's cool.
Mack Garrison (17:58)
That's really cool.
You know, so interesting. think for anyone that's been in the space for a while or like we have, know, you've kind of seen it all. You know, I've done plenty of projects that never saw the light of day. They just got crushed, right? Or you get the last minute stakeholder weighing in on feedback and killing a project. I'm curious from your perspective, since you've seen so much, is there something in particular about our industry that you still just absolutely love? You're just like, this is like, I get up and I'm excited to do XYZ or I love these things.
Julie Craft (18:11)
Mm-hmm.
Mack Garrison (18:28)
And then conversely, I wanna know like what's the thorn in your side? What's like the one thing in our industry you're like, I'm so tired of X.
Julie Craft (18:36)
Yeah, you bet. Oh man, there's so many annoying things. So I love talking about annoyance. I'm going to, I'm going to complain about so much stuff on stage. I tell you it's going to be fun. So what do I love? mean, what I love is just like, there's very little ego, you know, like most people I work with, whatever, absolutely already considered friends or would consider friends. You know, there's a lot of people that I work with that don't live locally. And if they did, I'm sure we'd hang out a lot. It just, I don't know. It's just very refreshing.
You know, I feel comfortable, you know, yeah, it's like very little intimidation factor, right? so that's awesome. And, like, yeah, I love that, you know, at dash bash, like a lot of your intros you've done, like you're always like, Hey, make sure you talk to the talk to people here. Like people that inspire you talk to them. Like we, like we, all of us who are on stage or whatever, you know, have any sort of platform. We all want to hear from students, from new people, like we, it's the perspectives like that newer people have is very refreshing to us.
Mack Garrison (19:10)
Love that.
Julie Craft (19:34)
It's not just what we can teach you. what we can learn. So, you know, we might be busy. We don't mean to offend anyone by not responding, whatever, but you know, so yeah, the approachable necessary one is just so awesome. So refreshing. It's still a thing that everyone who's in a different industry is like, my gosh. Like, you know, in the insurance business, people aren't like that or a dentist in dentistry school or whatever, you know, it's, it's just, yeah. Right. Yeah. So it's just, it's magic. It's as, as, as intense as like.
Mack Garrison (19:55)
Yeah, Dennis aren't connecting with Dennis all the time, know, sharing tea stories.
Julie Craft (20:03)
the political climate and everything going on is like, we have our bubble. We have our kind of safe place where a lot of us can connect. So that is just so refreshing and I don't think that'll ever change. Festivus. my gosh. All right. I'll well, you know, okay. So the other day I saw like a job posting for like a producer or something, you know, whatever, and producers, which absolutely make our lives wonderful.
Mack Garrison (20:13)
I love that. Now I need the festivus,
Mm, sure.
Julie Craft (20:30)
but it was like something like, you know, we need this, this, and this. it was like, you know, working knowledge of C4D preferred. I'm like, C4D for a producer. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, no, like, I don't know. Job postings have been off the rails for a long time. It's always like, yeah, we need, we need a, you know, rock star who lives in breeze, who loves branding, who loves working. my dog's barking. Great. Yeah. Cause I got excited.
Mack Garrison (20:37)
For a producer, yeah.
Superstar
Yeah, he got excited
too. Yeah, it's like unbelievable job post. Someone who knows all this stuff, you know, but like has 10 years of experience, but they need to be a junior role or whatever it is.
Julie Craft (20:57)
Yeah, there my dogs are like, my gosh, don't even tell me. Yeah, like, you know, we come. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Our studio is nimble and like, you know, we do things a little different here. And yeah, yeah, yeah. You love to, you know, just work all day, you know, I'm like, my gosh, I'm so over that stuff. It's like, I can smell like, you know, a spin or BS a mile away. And I'm like, okay, just be honest. Like, yes, be like, okay, to do this job, you do need a working knowledge of this software.
Mack Garrison (21:18)
I was sure.
Julie Craft (21:25)
You need experience in this. You need like, you know, one year or you need five years or this role of senior you need like 10 plus years. Like, yes, be honest about that stuff. But like the other stuff, you know, you're asking for something that doesn't exist, you know, like there isn't a person that was just the perfect rock star that's going to be able to do all that stuff and isn't going to have like really deep needs of like direction and guidance and or even like, you know, like the benefits they need or time off they need like like we're
flesh bags of meat. you you just, just think about like, I know it's like, it's like, if you're doing a job post for a person, like you gotta think realistically about it you gotta like start with some respect for that person. You know, it's like the environment right now, Linked In we're like kind of AI will filter resumes and stuff. It's like really crazy. within our industry, which is still pretty small and stuff, I think we can be a little more thoughtful with our job postings, a little more intentional for sure.
Mack Garrison (21:58)
Butts in seats, right?
Julie Craft (22:26)
So yeah, that's what I
Mack Garrison (22:26)
I love that. And I think, you know,
that's a good red flag is if the job description is a litany of all these different facets of multiple roles, that's a red flag for that position. How about from a freelance standpoint, what are some other red flags you look for if a client reaches out? What's something that gives you an indication that this might not be the right project or fit?
Julie Craft (22:48)
Yeah. Well, if someone emails me and then very quickly texts me or calls me, like if they contact me on multiple, platforms and it's been like not even 24 hours since I responded, it's like, no, this, don't like this, like this. And I've like, I've had very few, like bad things, like really nasty moments, you know, with, with people working with them, but there's been a couple like, you know, industry people I've had to like,
Mack Garrison (23:04)
No go. Too much.
Julie Craft (23:17)
you know, break up with quote unquote. cause I'm like, no, it's just you, this person adds stress to the project. And I mean, I'm fortunate that I have enough work that I can like, be like, no, I don't need to work with that person anymore. so I'm not going to, and some of those studios, some of those people, like most of those are, you know, aren't really functioning. You know, those, those studios aren't around or, or yeah, I've had that where like, so there's that. And then there's also like, there's teams I've worked with where I'm like, this, they're not gelling or they're like openly fighting on Slack, you know, like
Mack Garrison (23:45)
Mmm... Yeah.
Julie Craft (23:47)
Few things are like, can sense that this isn't right. know? Yeah. And I'm like, and often like, you know, I remember one time there was that and I'm like, I don't know what is going on with this studio. And then I got like a, you know, a thing in the mail saying they went bankrupt, you know, about billing and stuff. Fortunately I already had made my money, but I was like, okay, well that makes sense to me. Yeah. That team. Yeah. That team was not gelling and they were like, totally not in tune. Like very bad at communicating with me. Like, I don't know what was going on. So.
Mack Garrison (23:50)
some internal turmoil, right?
That's wild. You're like, okay. I saw how that happened.
Well,
that's really good point though too, is like you gotta kind of understand how you as an individual likes to work and seek out people that like to work in that regard. Cause you're right, there's many solutions to a problem. Some people like to work a certain way and others don't, but if you're not gelling or there's friction points on how you like to work together, that's problematic. So yeah, that's definitely a red flag. How about on the opposite side, not to be negative, we can be positive here. We're green flags. Where are some things you're looking for where like, these are good indications that this partnership is gonna go well.
Julie Craft (24:17)
Yeah.
Hmm?
Yeah.
so often the less a person says, so if someone contacts me and they're like saying, God, we've got all these ideas. We've got this whole thing, like this big project, whatever, whatever. Sometimes I'm just like, I don't think this is project that's going to happen. They don't know it, but it's not happening. I can like sense it. And then it's almost where it's like, they have to convince me it's like a real thing. I'm like, nah. Yeah. So when it's just like, Hey, we've got this, this is the booking, you know,
Mack Garrison (25:09)
Like this is really happening, I promise.
Julie Craft (25:15)
Um, you know, want a little bit of information about what it's going to be, but it's like a couple of sentences like, these dates, you know, what's your rate, you know, what are you available? You know, if I, it's just like a little bit of information where I know that like, okay, they don't have time to like say a whole bunch to me, they're probably talking to a lot of people. Like I like that. I'm like, okay, this is the thing that's really happening. Like this is serious. So I can kind of sense what's serious and what's not. And.
That also means that like, they're probably not going to ask like more of me than they should, you know, they're not going to ask for, yeah. Yeah. So there's that, there's, you know, just like not over-communicating, but communicating enough, you know, giving me time to do my stuff. And then also, yeah, a visible coherence to the team where I'm like, they're having fun. you know, they're, you know, they're a cohesive unit. I've definitely worked recently with some teams.
Mack Garrison (25:44)
they're just gonna be happy to get something done that looks good. Right.
Julie Craft (26:07)
Well, I worked with hook for awhile. worked with Shopify for a bit and I'm like, Oh, these teams are like, Jelan. Like I could tell that they were like having a good time, you know, not just goof around, but you have a good time. having same with Duolingo. I've been like, okay, these teams are, they're Jelan. good. They're doing good. You know, and it's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And they're not being like unrealistically positive or like, I don't know. They're, they're not like drinking the Kool-Aid in a way that you wouldn't like.
Mack Garrison (26:22)
Culture makes a difference. You wanna feel like you're a part of a support network, not that it's a bunch of different silos trying to work together, 100%.
Julie Craft (26:36)
You know, it's just like they're being realistic. They're like, I tried to do this. didn't work. And this workflow sucks. Or this thing about our company, like we need to change it. Cause I'm like, I had to do way too much last week and whatever. I'm like, that's why I want like, yeah, honesty. Like we're real people. Let's do it. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (26:51)
I love that. It's
just being authentic on everything. Be authentic on your job post. Be authentic on how you're working with people. Support one another. mean, it's like, it's not a novelty here. I mean, it's just like fundamentals of being a good human, right? Which our industry has done a good job of for a while. And I think that's one of the things that I do really like about it. I'm always inspired by folks. In fact, you mentioned Hook. I actually caught up with him the other day because I thought their work looked really good. I'd never met him before. So I reached out and just wanted to make the connection.
Julie Craft (26:54)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. All right.
Mostly, yeah.
Mack Garrison (27:18)
From your perspective, I'm so curious. There's so many people who are coming to the bash that look up to you, the work that you do. Who's Julie Craft look up to? Who are some artists out there that you're like, I just love their work?
Julie Craft (27:27)
Who do I look up to? Yeah.
So like I said, I grew up, you know, with the golden age of MoGraph. So, you know, I started really getting into things when MK12 did those Stranger Than Fiction, you know, graphics. Awesome. That movie Oblivion that G-Monk did design stuff for, you know, and then there was like the Ash Thorpe, like FITC Tokyo graphic thing.
Mack Garrison (27:41)
yeah.
yeah, G-Monk, phenomenal.
yeah.
Julie Craft (27:55)
And these are all like things that are more on the like graphic design-y side rather than the illustrative style side. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that stuff, you know, some of goes in there, but, you know, can't deny a good work. Not, not just by, yeah, by a lot of people. And then there's a couple of that you probably don't know about. There's a studio called Zeitgeist. Um, they always did a lot of very interesting, um, like experimental 3d work. Um, also the studio one size and another lens.
Mack Garrison (28:00)
I was even gonna say experimental and technical side too as well, you know.
Mmm.
Ooh.
I'm familiar with one size. Yeah, yeah. I haven't heard of Zeitgeist though. That's based in Germany.
Julie Craft (28:25)
Yeah, yeah, you one size. Okay. So yeah, yeah, there's a ton of stuff that was no. Yeah. Zyka is yeah.
think so. Yeah. So those were, those are some of that, like throughout the years I paid attention to you. more recently though, now I would say like, like who I'm really inspired by Joyce Ho. I think spoke at the dash before. Yeah. She, she is, you know, very interesting. She's done some cool e-sports work recently, but, she does some good like experimental film and everything that I admire. And I'm like, yeah, I love that.
Mack Garrison (28:44)
Yes.
Julie Craft (28:54)
She like has this unique voice and she does these films that are more like not necessarily character driven, like more like design driven or experimental driven, which I love that stuff. But by far like so that's lot of my inspiration right now. But honestly, what I'm most inspired right now is Marvel Rivals, the game. Yeah, I'm playing it on I'm on PS5 and play on PC, whatever. But like the design in that game is phenomenal. It's like like there's so many
Mack Garrison (29:13)
yeah, nice.
Julie Craft (29:24)
motion moments. just like a feast for the eyes and ears. It's like as soon as you open the game, like the opening cinematic and it's all like kind of illustration that's flat, but then you know, combined with a little bit of 3D, but it all has like an illustrated look. yeah, I would even if you don't play games, I would try to like watch a highlight reel from it or at least like open up the game and just scroll through it. It's free. Wait, it's free to play so you can install it.
Mack Garrison (29:28)
I love that.
Julie Craft (29:49)
And can go through it. Even like you go to the hero section, you go through all the character portraits and like you go to a portrait and there's like a little motion, you know, like a little thing. And it's just like really well done. And yeah, games have done that for years. You know, I just play Overwatch and now kind of Rivals has overtaken Overwatch. And there's been a lot, you know, they did a lot of good work, but they kind of lost the drop the ball. And now Rivals is just like so crisp, so good. I don't know. It just like chef's kiss. It's like everything I want. Yeah. So it's
Mack Garrison (29:57)
fine.
I love it. I'm not even the
biggest gamer and I want to get in to see this game just based on the aesthetics and the eye candy you're describing.
Julie Craft (30:20)
Yeah, it's so
inspiring. can't, and like every state, you know, it's a team shooter. So you get into a stage and then whatever map you're on, you know, there's just a little intro for the map. They have like some story, but like, who cares about story? It just looks cool. Right. But yeah, there's a little intro and it's like, my God. It's amazing. Seamless combination of 2d illustration with parallaxing, a little bit of puppeting and 3d. I'm like, this is just so good. And somehow it loads instantly. It's just like the best like combination of like
current like technical advances in like game systems, being able to load all this stuff quick and just like, you know, short, short form content. It's like short form content at its best, like the way we, the way we want it to be. So there's tons of little quick digestible moments. You even move between buttons on the UI and like I put my headphones on the other day because I was talking with people playing as a team and I heard sound design that I didn't hear on the speakers before. was like, Whoa, those, clicks on the little buttons. I'm like, those are really
Mack Garrison (31:02)
I love that.
Julie Craft (31:20)
Good. my God. So I'm just like, this is so deeply, it's a company called net ease games. I've never heard of. So I, got to look into the team on it, but it's yeah. Marvel rivals is my, is everything now right now to me. So good. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (31:21)
I love that.
I love it. Even talking about the little elements of sound design, I'm sitting here looking
behind you. You've got a bass behind you. You've got keyboards over your left shoulder. I know before we start hopping on this call, we were talking a little bit about DJing. Speak a little bit to me towards your love of music. Has it kind of just become this side hobby and passion of yours?
Julie Craft (31:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I've been probably dabbling in like the synthesizer electronic music realm for like seven-ish years, I think. would say before that when I was younger, I took some piano lessons, played around with the Chinese violin, the Erhu. It's like a two-stringed violin. A little bit music stuff, but yeah, I've been dabbling in like musical hardware for a bit here. And I would say just the past couple of years, it really has come together into like a real thing.
Mack Garrison (32:18)
Nice.
Julie Craft (32:18)
Like
where I'm like, I feel like I've got like a sound I like, and I'm just enjoying making music. And then I just did Jamuary, which is like Inktober for music. I did 31, 31 days. I've yeah, I've got like a YouTube playlist and you'll see it on my Instagram reels, but yeah, I, I did, I recorded posted, you know, video, me making music every day for 31 days. So it's the most content I've ever created. I hate content creation. It's, you know, it's
Mack Garrison (32:27)
cool, that's right. January. my God, I love that. That's great.
You're becoming an influencer.
Julie Craft (32:48)
Yeah, I'll never do this again. was like both wonderful and extremely hard, extremely. Some days I was like, Oh, I do not want to do this, but it got me through like there's friction when it comes to making music with hardware, especially because like, Oh, I got to turn it on. Like, Oh, is it all connected? Right? You know, whatever. But this got me through this experiment, this short-term sprint of content creation, which, know, I definitely recommend short-term like, okay, I can handle this period of time of working really hard. Right. But there's an end in sight.
Mack Garrison (33:16)
Yeah.
Julie Craft (33:17)
This short term got me through a ton of friction of like making sure my setup was dialed in, make sure I could turn on, turn on the cameras, camera like right there, like just all ready to go, turn on record and like, you know, concept to completion, like one to two hours max. It got me through a ton. So now like, I think I've, I've been able to get through like the electronic music, like production hurdles that were kind of blocking me from creativity. And now I feel like I can jump in and make stuff. And yeah, now I'm feeling good all about like.
Mack Garrison (33:34)
Wow.
Julie Craft (33:46)
I performed a couple of times past few years. getting close to having an album ready and I'm feeling like, like, yeah, I like this and performing like in public in front of people, you know, literally like going and like playing like nine, 10 PM at night. Like, you know, I'm too old for this stuff and I'm just getting started. I didn't think this would be such a thing, but I love it. And it's such a like amazing creative flush and just like, wow, people are there physically like feet away from me enjoying what I'm creating.
Like, yeah, it's hard, it's difficult, but my gosh, it's so rewarding. More rewarding than anything, anything posting online or whatever. So yeah, that's where I'm at. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (34:19)
Ugh, I love that.
Well, and also the accountability to do that every
day, you know, it probably reduced, it took friction initially, but then it probably got to a point where you were more comfortable in just creating and just naturally getting into that flow state a little bit faster. Cause I know that's always hard with personal projects of any creative minded project is just getting into it, right? Cause there's the little friction points of it. Very cool, very cool.
Julie Craft (34:32)
Yeah.
Super hard.
Outtake.
Mack Garrison (34:46)
Well, we've been chatting here with Julie Craft, who's a technical minded animator, broadly skilled 2D and 3D motion generalist, and Julie is speaking at the Dash Bash this summer. So if you don't have your ticket, what are you doing? Grab a ticket. We have an optional third day of workshops on June 11th, and then a speaker series on the 12th and 13th. It's gonna be tons of opportunity for hangouts. You get to meet Julie, you get to hang out with all the other speakers and the fantastic industry that we call motion design.
Cannot wait to see you all there. Julie, thanks for hanging with us today. It was a good little tease. Excited to get to more of the nitty gritty stuff in your presentation, but really enjoyed talking today. Yeah, thanks everyone. Have a good
Julie Craft (35:22)
You bet, thanks.