Meet the speakers: Cabeza Patata
An interview with Cabeza Patata: A company born from a love of characters.
Q&A hosted my Meryn Hayes & Ashley Targonski.
Read time: 15min
Meryn:
Welcome! We'd love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the studio.
Abel:
So I'm Abel…
Katie:
And, I'm Katie, and we set up the studio Cabeza Patata almost five years ago now. It started as just something that we were having fun doing together, we were just making some drawings, we started making some murals in the street, and we started putting everything together slowly and then we started to realize that we had a nice body of work and so we made a webpage for ourselves and then things just really grew from there.
Cabeza Patata Co-Founders - Abel Reverter & Katie Menzies
Abel:
Probably in the beginning, the time in which we were doing it just for fun, it felt like a long time, but it was around six months of trying and experimenting. And I think by the time we started putting things out online, we were doing something that was looking very different.
Katie:
But then we made a bit of a change, I'll probably get more into this later, but we decided to open up a gallery space in Barcelona. Because we said okay, "We'd like to make more physical pieces."
So as well as making the 3D digital illustrations, animations, we also started creating more things out of wood and more puppets, giant characters, all of these crazy ideas that we had also had from the beginning. And then we made even more changes.
Abel:
Yeah…and after leaving for an entire year, traveling in a camper van, we are now focusing on physical art, so it's been a long evolution in the five years.
Meryn:
I love that. I love the idea of digital and tactical, and that y'all have tag-teamed that and involved both elements. I think we're so digital these days and there's just something relieving about going back to something that's so much more tactile, and you can feel it or see it and touch it. So that's interesting.
Abel:
I think it's completely true. I think one of the problems is that when people want to jump on the computer and create 3D art without ever even having taken a photographic camera and taken a photo of something they have created. And I think you learn so much about how to light a scene, and the difference between different camera lenses. There are so many steps that you can learn before jumping into just doing things with the computer. I think it has influenced everything we do.
Katie:
And then 3D sometimes as well influences the physical arts. So it's always going back and forth. But we always say to people, because people are always, "Oh, what advice do you give?" And it's always do what you like and then it'll be different and it'll be good. So that's what we always try to do if you begin.
Meryn:
Great advice. So how did you discover motion design or animation?
Abel:
So our backgrounds are pretty different. I studied media in university. I'm from Spain, and I moved to London just after finishing uni. I was 22 years old, and I started working in some little production companies doing animation, motion graphics. I knew a bit about AfterEffects and I started getting my first jobs doing that, and I learned on the job.
I didn't have any training in any software, but because I had studied media, I felt confident just learning on the internet and I had good foundations I think. And a few years later I found myself learning a bit of 3D, but Katie's background is very different.
Katie:
I was studying French and politics in university and then I realized I also really like making things and I like drawing things so what could I do? I decided to do this summer course and that's where we ended up meeting. But then it was many years later really, after I actually went to study illustration as well in Barcelona, and then when Abel was starting to think about 3D, I was more starting to think about character design and illustration. And so we started to combine those two things and learn together.
Meryn:
That's great. I also love hearing when people are set on a path like French and politics, and then going back to what you said about finding what you love and doing that, they pivot and do something else. Or I think sometimes we get so caught up growing up, and being told, "Find what you want to do for the rest of your life." But there are stories of success if you follow what you really enjoy doing. I think people need to hear that, so they don't feel so trapped in that decision of, do I do what I've been doing? Or do I try something new?
Katie:
Yeah, for sure. And you can make that change anytime. People in my year in uni were like, "It's already too late. We've already done a four year degree." And that was only age 22. And then a few years later people now say, "Oh now I can't do it now because I've done five years on my job." But I think you can do it any time. Obviously you need to take into account financial issues and stability and things. But especially in our job, I mean we started bit by bit still working on the side and then when things grew enough that was all that we were doing. I just enjoyed it.
Abel:
I was starting in my career when I started dating Katie, she was still in uni, and I was very surprised about how her degree was so much more precise, studying language and studying politics, you had to write very detailed papers, that you were taking everything that you were doing very seriously in that formal university way. And I remember coming from my degree in media, we would not take those types of things as seriously. But then in reality when you move into professional work, to be able to write correctly, express yourself, be very serious about how you communicate yourself, I think has helped us massively.And many times, people that work with us say after projects, "Oh we love working with you guys, because you are very serious in the way you communicate. You express everything, you save us time by documenting things properly, explaining your decisions." All those things are very important as well. So whatever you have studied, you can apply it.
New York Times “Smarter Living”
Ashley:
As you said earlier, you're entering your fifth year of business, which is really exciting. Founded in 2018 and only a year later in 2019 y'all were going to conferences, you were starting to get your name out there and very quickly y'all were winning awards. How has that quick ramp up and growth path been?
Katie:
I mean, pretty crazy to be honest. I think it's been a really amazing five years and I think when you are living in it, I guess you don't realize how fast everything's going. But yeah, when you think about it you realize how short a time it is.
Abel:
Yeah, it was very intense. I think that especially the first two years, so many things happened. As you were saying, the year after, the second year of starting the studio we were speaking in very big festivals in front of a lot of people. And so we didn't really have much time to think about those things, and I think that's why, as Katie was saying, we were trying to rethink a lot of what we do and the position in which we are operating.
One of the things that created in us was a lot of anxiety about how we are going to be able to continue doing work that is exciting? You go, they invite you to a conference and people ask you, "Oh what are you going to do next?" And then you think, "Oh I don't know, I'm just starting, I'm trying things out."
So I think that for us to be able to slow down the machine and try to look at things with perspective has helped us a lot. That's why we're doing a lot of physical work right now, because we reminded ourselves of the fact that that's why we started. We found the clients asking for the same thing again and again, and it didn't feel that the clients were getting tired of it, but definitely we were getting tired of it.
Ashley:
That's great to establish those boundaries. Also, as a couple running this business, I bet work is very prevalent in your lives, so understanding that balance between what is work and what is actual life stuff is very necessary.
Katie:
Yeah, I think it helps a lot though, because I think that we can be very honest with each other. I'm sure other business owners are as well, but because we were a couple for a long time before we started working together, you can also sort of tell if something's not feeling right or you can be very honest all the time about it. But for sure I think having clear boundaries and knowing when you're at work and when you're not at work is the key really.
Abel:
Yeah, physically separating your working space from your living space is very important. Especially if you are working being a couple at the same time, because if not, it would just follow us everywhere.
Meryn:
Yeah, I think that's something that's been very apparent after the last few years, the boundaries being blurred going into the pandemic of work and home are one thing. I have a five-year-old daughter, so parenthood and life and work were all squished into one.
Abel:
Yeah, definitely. I think dividing your day in slots and saying, "Okay, after this time I'm just not going to do work." Or, "I'm going to move to a different task." So we try to do the most boring stuff really early in the morning, do emails at nine in the morning and then we don't do emails after, unless it's something, some emergency or something. But we try to organize the day a lot like that. Our work is a creative job in which you need that creative energy, it's not only about not falling asleep, it's also about having a brain that is giving you something beautiful that you're enjoying.
Meryn:
Yeah, yeah. I think what you mentioned about just how quickly everything's happened for you the past few years, just reminds me of defining what success looks like, because for so many people who might look at your website and be like, you have great clients and you have great work. But again, going back to what you said about what makes you happy, and you needed a break from that and recognizing that, I think a lot of people have a hard time always looking for the next thing that makes them successful.
Abel:
I think as well we had a really privileged position, or it was really good for us so early on being invited to so many conferences and festivals because we spoke to many people, and many people at a studio that we completely admired for years. And one of the things that we noticed that was happening with everyone we're speaking to is that they would say, "Oh I missed the early days when I was actually doing the job, and now I turn my studio into a big machine in which I don't do the things anymore. I'm managing."
Katie:
I always thought, "Oh it'd be so cool to work with this client. Oh that will surely make me happy." But that definitely runs out, or maybe isn't even really real anyway. But especially if you're choosing to do a creative job, I think the thing that actually is fulfilling is actually making something that you care about, and that's really nice. I think the satisfaction has to come from the actual making, and then the results of it.
So I think if you are thinking, "Oh I'm working with all these big clients, but I'm not inspired by the work." That makes sense.
Abel:
And also from a business point of view, sometimes we found that people grew their companies to really, really big sizes. It's not even necessarily profitable. But the typical studio that has 20, 30 people has so many associated costs, that we personally want to be able to continue creating the work, and we are convinced that we can still make it profitable in the long term. Still take on big commercial companies when there's a need for them, but try to avoid doing those monotonous jobs that might not pay well.
Meryn:
So I feel like I have to ask, and it doesn't have to be a client since we just established that dream client isn't maybe something to gear towards, but what would you say is a dream project or something that you wanted to do, whether it's a type, or a medium, or a client?
Katie:
Well, right now we're just starting to think about maybe we'd like to make giant mechanical characters, maybe out of wood or metal, but things that the audience can come and maybe turn a lever and a giant character's mouth opens or arms move or something. So something really magical that you wanted to do since you were little, kind of thing.
Abel:
And I think for a commercial campaign on the other hand, I think the dream client for us is always the one that is very, very final. When you are talking to the final destiny of the project. I think that the best commercial campaign we've done is the campaign we did with Spotify. And the reason why that's the best one is not because suddenly we were more inspired, or we tried more than with other clients, it's because we were working with a team in New York that was the team that was going to deliver the campaign. We were working directly with the Spotify team and they even came to Barcelona to see us, and we had meetings with them and we were having this direct communication and they understood what we wanted to do and they trusted us.
So many other times we thought things were going to go that way, but when there are so many people in the middle that message gets lost. And we are trying as much as possible to avoid those people in the middle, but obviously the entire industry is made on advertisement agencies and representation agencies, and all of those extra steps. And once in a while we get the chance to work with a client like Spotify or Apple that comes directly to us, but doesn't happen all the time.
Meryn:
So can you talk us through how that Spotify project came to be?
Abel:
Do you remember how it happened? We got an email one Christmas saying, "Hi, we are from Spotify, blah blah blah, and we would like to do one illustration or something." And then they completely disappeared.
Katie:
Yeah. Until six months later.
Abel:
But we continued sending them emails, because we thought, "Oh we had the email of someone and they had copied someone else." So we continued sending them the emails and updating them with things that we were doing. And the emails were not bouncing, but nobody was answering. And then six months later they came.
Katie:
Again, at that time they were very, very unique in how they were and they really liked our style, and internally everyone decided that was the one. I think that for the most part for Spotify and for other big campaigns that we have, it's really self-promotion and having a big social media presence. We post all of our projects on Behance. We explain everything, and we notice whenever we post there that we get a lot of views and I think it's a lot of people from the industry, and a lot of potential clients are looking there.
Meryn:
Yeah, if you think about how much work goes into creating a set of characters, it's a lot. And so it's nice not only for you all but for other people to see your process as well. I'd love to hear about the Spotify campaign, did they come to you with a pretty filled out brief of like, "This is what we want?"
Katie:
So they had some clear things from the beginning, that was basically they wanted to have different characters represent different moods that you feel when you listen to music. So how are we going to do that? And then they said the character should be the same throughout all of the videos, and should be gender neutral, age neutral and race neutral. Because they wanted to go everywhere, but that was it.
Abel:
Yeah, yeah. That was about it.
Spotify Premium
Katie:
And so we were like, "Okay, we'll come up with some ideas." And we sent them to them and then they came up with some ideas and we sort of had a nice back and forth during the beginning. It was like we never really went backwards. I think that was why it was such a good campaign too, because they were excited as well. So energy was always going forwards. It was never like, "Oh, can we go back to that thing that you did two weeks ago?" And you're like, "I don't know if I kind of saved over that file or something perhaps, and I thought we left it." So it was always going forward and making things better.
Ashley:
Where did the name for Cabeza Patata come from?
Katie:
Everyone always asks us that and we don't have a very clear response. We just found it funny I guess, I was learning Spanish and I was just, I'd always ask, "Oh what does this mean? How do you say this?" And one day, I don't know why I thought about it, but in Toy Story I was like, "Oh is Mr. Potato Head called Senor Cabeza Patata." And Abel found it super funny.
Abel:
It's funny. It's not even translated like that, it wouldn't even translate like that, doesn't make sense. You would say an article in the middle. And-
Katie:
You said his name is Mr. Patato.
Abel:
Yeah, we call him Mr. Patato. So it didn't make sense, but the name Cabeza Patata sounded a bit in my head like Hakuna Matata sounds a bit like that, so it has something funny.
Meryn:
That's great. I'd love to hear about Patata School. Tell us what was the start of that?
Katie:
So we set that up only last March. It hasn't even been a year officially of the school being live yet, but we've got a really nice community. Right now we're about 800 or a little bit more than 800 students in school, and we keep creating content and courses, we're about to have our first livestream.
Abel:
The idea of Patata School has started, connected to every decision we've done, trying to be more independent and taking things by ourselves, we knew that a lot of people were doing courses within other platforms and we got contacted by a lot of platforms to do courses with them. And because we've been teaching in universities and we really liked that, we didn't feel that just giving the content to another platform was going to work for us.
We set it up not knowing how well it was going to go, but it's amazing. I think we're going to cross before finishing the year into 1000 active members in there, which is, it's insane. We are so happy. And it's turning into the way in which, as well, we can make money without having to focus so much on commercial work. And as we progress now into doing more physical work, we want to incorporate that more as well inside Patata School and almost turn it into this school in which you can learn computer programs and illustration, digital illustration, but also we want to make a community of crafters and people making the stuff with their hands and learning which tools to get and how to construct and to use materials. So that's the challenge for this year.
Patata School Complete Character Animation by Cabeza Patata
Katie:
And it's cool to do because people in the school suggest ideas for courses. They say, "Oh, I'd really like to learn specifically this thing." And then we'd make a course in that. So it's really nice that you know directly that what you make is going to be appreciated, and to see, and people share their results and things in there, which is really nice. So yeah, it's a much more hands-on, non-commercial space way of doing things.
Meryn:
Okay, cool. When y'all have a making characters out of wood and mechanical class, I am signing up for that course. That sounds fun.
I was looking on your website, and I love the line, "We believe characters can change the world." I think that's so true and now maybe more than ever. Talk through that a little bit.
Abel:
Yeah. We think as well that character design is so on the foundation of how we understand, how everyone does understand art. Even if it looks a bit like a very niche thing. I like saying this thing that when you are a kid, that's the first thing you do when you get a pencil, you draw your family and you even put a little face in the sun or in your house. You put faces everywhere, because everything is a character when you're small, and it's so relevant. And even kids' drawings can be analyzed to show how they understand the structure, the structure within the family, the distance they put between one person and another.
So all of those things still translate when you are an adult. So if you have a lot of stereotypes and you have things that are in your brain that end up appearing in illustration, we see that every day. People might think, "Oh no, that's not relevant anymore." But it is not true, in the world of character design, we are still having a lot of stereotypes being applied again and again. We read a lot of books about animation. Most of the best books of animation are classic books from the big Walt Disney artists, and they're full of gender stereotypes. It's unbelievable.
You read it and you think, "Wow, this is insane that this is how gender was represented in animation for so many years." So I think there's a massive opportunity to change those things.
Katie:
Definitely. And to an extent I think it still continues to be as well, because there's such an imbalance in the industry of gender and general diversity. Talking in festivals like in your festival, you make a really big effort, to actually make sure you have diversity in the lineup. But in so many big festivals there isn't that at all, and so many big brands and things as well, maybe that might feel that they should have a responsibility more to push that. But you might go to a Adobe Live event and just see the same five 45 year old white guys again and again and again. And you think, why is it like that?
Meryn:
Yeah, exactly. I mean that's definitely something that's been important to us both in 2021 and this year, is trying to be representative of the people who are attending. So making sure that we're getting a variety of perspectives and across different industries. So I think it's really focusing on representing the community who is such a diverse, wonderful group of people, and making sure that we highlight that.
Katie:
Yeah. In that way as well, I think inviting more people to join the animation, or design, or illustration industry in general. And if I think the more voices there are, the more interesting things are being made too. But another thing in the school is that we have students from over 70 different countries and the stuff that people make is actually really different depending on their country. And we're always trying to say that, in the tutorials we say, "Try, instead of making this house, why don't you make a house how it would look in your country?" And so people post the specific objects or foods, or anything that they've made that's from their country and explain what it is, and suddenly you think, "Oh, actually I literally have never even seen”, like the other day, "A 3D Dominican house before. And now I have. And that's the first time she has made it and she made it look so nice." So I think that's also part of the key of being a designer.
Abel:
It's been amazing how just growing in our social media and having grown our audience during these five years, we have people from all over the place. We love that, and it's been so interesting. As Katie is saying as well, having that in the forums in the school, which is a place that is a bit cozier. Sometimes places like Instagram feels like everything goes so fast and there's so much noise that we miss messages and notifications, but within the school we have that culture space. It's been very, very nice to see how diverse it has been in there.
Ashley:
What are things that y'all think through when you're trying to design a character that, like for Spotify, should be gender neutral or not specific to one group?
Abel:
When we are making personal projects, and also with clients, I think the best thing that you can do is just go around, and look at what you see everywhere in the street and try to represent that. And I think that sometimes we don't realize how diverse a place like London, you know, has a lot of people, people have different ages.
Age is a massive thing in character design. We're watching TV and we are used to every single character, no matter how graphical or non graphical they are to be the same 20 to 35 years old. And that's what is susceptible to be, and obviously people are going to be older and still consume products and still listen to Spotify... And we are trying all the time to represent that, even before the client brings it up. I think it's important when you do a pitch to put it out and to have characters that might be on a wheelchair, and you can put that in a pitch or in a proposal without the client having said so, because they never said that the character had to be fully able.
Katie:
Yeah. And on the whole, no one's going to say to you, "Oh, can we take the character out of the wheelchair?" Because one, there's no point. And two, that would just be such a horrible thing to say. So generally if you try and push more diversity, it's going to happen. And so it's up to you to push it. I think what Abel's saying, sometimes it's a bit complicated, this concept of, oh, can we make it gender neutral or age neutral? Because what is that? I think that's just one of many different ways of being, so what we like to do in all of our work is just try and make everybody represented.
Abel:
But also even on parts that might not be directly related to people, if you represent objects, to represent things that connect to your life and things that you love, it's something we need to do all the time. And even ourselves, I remember last year we had to design a post box and we made the post box look like one of these post box you guys have in America. I've never seen one of those in my life, and I make it like a 3D, those post box and with that little thing that goes up and down when the postman comes, we don't have that. They don't look like that in the UK. They don't look like that in Spain, but somehow we have that in our brain. So it's good to come out of that and start, the best thing is just go on the street, look how people look, look how your city looks and just put it in your work.
Meryn:
Yeah, spot on. Well, this was so much fun. We're just so excited to have y'all at the bash and we're really excited to meet you in person in July!
Abel & Katie:
Thank you so much, yeah, really nice to meet you both.