Freelancing 101 with Ryan Summers
Relationship building, mental health, and the art of negotiating; just three of the many topics we discussed with Ryan Summers. Ryan has worked with the likes of Guillermo Del Toro and JJ Abrams and is currently a Creative Director at School of Motion.
Q&A with Ryan Summers
Read time: 20 min
Ryan Summers:
It's hard.
It was less hard for me this time because when I was at BK Kitchen, the last year I was working by myself in two separate rooms. I had two big projects I bounced back and forth from. But when I went from working at Royale to freelancing from home for Odd Fellows, it drove me nuts. The culture was so awesome at Royale. We were playing music all the time. We were playing video games and helping each other with projects. Then all of a sudden, it was just silence. It didn’t take very long for me to be like, this is crazy. This is not normal.
Mack Garrison:
I'm trying to keep the same regimen that I had at the office. Waking up, working out, getting my coffee. Trying to keep some daily structure to it. It's such a slippery slope. Even this morning I woke up, I was like, well I'm working from home, I don't have to work out. I could just sleep a little bit longer. And that's when you start getting dangerous, man.
Ryan Summers:
You need a space that's just for work if you can. Even if it's just a desk to separate work mode. And then, you need a routine. Routine is the biggest thing.
Mack Garrison:
No, that's a really good point.
Thinking about the dash bash; about the demographics that are going to be there. I think there are a lot of people that are either just getting into freelance, rising in the freelance game, or on the precipice of starting their studio. What are some things that folks should be thinking about when they're going off on their own? I’m thinking about how it can catch you off guard when you find yourself in this lonely situation that you hadn't been in before. What are some struggles you think people should be preparing for as they go into the freelance game?
Ryan Summers:
I've been in that position, granted, not in this kind of specifically-geared environment. But the first thing is always runaway and capital. If you have to worry about having enough money in two weeks, you're not going to be your best artist or your best business person going forward. So as much as possible, I try and have that runaway figured out so that there's a safety net. But as much as the financial stuff is important, I think the psychological enemies are difficult no matter what. There are so many factors of, “I've got to learn stuff, I've got to network, I've got to decide if I want to just be a great animator or move into art directing.”
But then when you compile that with freelance or trying to get into a place and then chasing bookings and payment, that's going to be more complicated right now. I think that the best thing I can tell people is to try to create an ad hoc mastermind group for themselves. I know there are lots of buzzwords going around, but if there's a way to try to create some sense of community, even while you're working at home; a shared group of people like you would have in an office where you build relationships...I hate the word networking, but building relationships in this day and age is so important. So that every morning you have somebody to spot check and be like, "Dude, are you a red light right now, or are you a green light? Are you feeling good? Awful?"
Ryan Summers:
What happens is, you'll talk to people online and you lose tone. People right now want to put a good spin on everything and be positive. But if you start seeing people every day or every two days, just visually looking at each other, you know when someone says something but there's something else behind what they’re saying. It's really important to start building those relationships now as freelancers.
You might be stressed out and not even realize it, but if you have somebody else who can be like, "dude, something's up. What's going on?" They can kind of push. Whereas, when you're just sitting at home in your room trying to go down and trying to get work done, it's easy to push way too fast, way too far.
Mack Garrison:
That's a really good point. I remember before starting dash, I worked for an agency for about four and a half years here in North Carolina. I don't think you realize how isolated you become. It's really interesting talking about finding that group of people and just having someone to check in on you to make sure that you're doing okay. That you're not pulling your hair out every day, because you start to lose track of time, and things blend. You're working all the time because the work is right there at home. It's a slippery slope that can get dangerous quickly if you're not cognizant of that.
I also remember some of the pains that go with freelance. What you alluded to earlier was chasing money and trying to get paid. I don't know why this industry is so challenging with that, it's still an issue. Part of it is also, as people get older, we're more cognizant of that. Making sure I don’t forget where I was as a freelancer and how frustrating it was to get paid, so not doing the same thing that other folks did to me.
Mack Garrison:
As far as just tips and tricks, what’s something that may be useful, whether it is for a studio or a freelancer when it comes to getting paid? If the client's not paying you, do you have a protocol?
Ryan Summers:
I end up using this word too much because it means different things for different scenarios. But, it's going back to that relationship. I do open office hours where people can come in to talk. A lot of times we just talk about demo reels or freelance life. I'm always surprised by how many people don’t establish relationships. For example, your first interaction with a client. When you’d walk up to someone - before COVID - you'd shake their hand. That first meeting sets the tone for the relationship going forward. I'm shocked by how many people don't have contracts or deal memos with a list of working requirements. They’ll establish the relationship almost as if they're doing a favor for a buddy versus entering into a work agreement.
So, when you start a relationship - let's say somebody wants to work at dash - you’d say, "Hey, dash wants to bring you in for freelance." The person should immediately reply with, "well, here's my deal memo. My understanding is that you're booking me for two weeks with the option of holding me for two more weeks. This is my daily rate. This is my after-hours overtime rate," with the definition of what is considered overtime. If you don't have your full understanding and expectations set up at the beginning, it's really hard to circle back and say “okay, will you promise me you are going to do this?” I'm shocked by how many people fumble the ball for themselves. Whether they're new to it, they're naive, they're intimidated, or it's a big client that they don't want to start on a bad relationship with. Treat your first interaction with anyone you may be working for or working with as a business relationship. Then, everything else is easier.
Style frame from “GOOGLE: Meet Data.” Animated by Ryan Summers.
Mack Garrison:
So, I think back to when we started dash as partners, Cory and I. We were best friends going into it. We had known each other for four and a half years and were so excited. We still went to a lawyer and got an operational agreement done. Everything was great then, but introducing a business when you're going off together in a partnership can have so many wildcards. Luckily we haven't had anything happen, but having that contract upfront is preparing you should things go south. Of course, the expectation is that it won't, but it gives you something to lean on.
Another thing, I remember being shocked that contracts were negotiable. One time our lawyer was like, "Hey, you could push back on this." And I was like, "really? I just assumed that it was boilerplate, when someone sends you the contract it is what it is."
Ryan Summers:
Absolutely. I'm so glad you say that coming from the studio-side because I think that's rare to hear. I tell people all the time, whether you're negotiating for freelance or negotiating for a staff position, 1.) Everything's negotiable, and 2.) There are a lot of things to consider; you have so many more arrows in your quiver than you realize. It's not just your day rate or your yearly salary. There are other things and tools you have at your advantage so that you're not being leveraged up. Right off the bat, in your contract, you can state that if this project doesn't work out, I would love it if you would try to book me on another job, but if you can’t find anything, release me with my kill fee. Or, it's just you let go of me immediately, so I could go find another booking.
I find so few people run into those situations, I know people who don't use the hold system. You may not get as many offers for bookings, but I know talented freelance illustrators and motion designers that would say, “book me or not, I don't want to play the hold game.” On the flip side, I know others that are like, “man, I've got three holds and none of them booked and now I'm looking at nothing on Monday. I'm going to have to eat this week. Trying to find more work.”
Mack Garrison:
That's a really good comment that you brought there. One of the things that I’d recognized when we initially started hiring freelancers outside of our internal staff, particularly down here in the South, people were just wanting to get hired or not. There wasn't a hold system. We only encountered that when we started getting involved with New York, LA, Chicago. Do you feel it’s more common in smaller or bigger markets?
Ryan Summers:
There are positives and negatives to the hold system. The big thing you have to remember as a freelancer is that you are entering into partnerships with companies that need temporary work. As much as everyone's pushing the freelance manifesto, that it is the one true way to work. It gives you so much more leverage being in temporary work-for-hire situations. When that goes away, they're never indebted to you. In my experiences, the hold system is different if you're talking about the three markets; the Midwest - Chicago for example - New York, and LA. They all have slightly different variations of the system. However, every shop seems to lightly honor it, which is again, completely informal, non-legally binding, and arbitrary.
It’s really confusing and, unfortunately, aimed more towards the person doing the hiring versus the hiree. But as I said, you don't have to follow that. If a company needs style frames done and you're an amazing artist or a great illustrator, they can book you. And maybe they only book you for two days to kind of "hold you." But they have the money to do that. They have the means. It's neat that you said you’ve never encountered it until you started pulling people.
“motionographer awards and ceremonies are not just about highlighting who is the best. they’re to show people that our work exists beyond being used as marketing material for a client.”
Mack Garrison:
Exactly. It's like it's the disparity, and the system itself highlights how broken it is. When there's no consistency and no one's operating in the same sort of game or playing field, it sheds light on the fact that it's not great. The thing that I don't like about it, which you also alluded to, is that it benefits the studio.
That's terrible, there should be more repercussions for a studio if they’re just willy-nilly throwing around someone else's schedule like that. Which is one of the reasons when we first started that we didn't operate on holds a lot. We’d just approach people when we were ready to book. Now, we come into problems with that too. If you're reaching out to someone to book them a week and a half out from when they're supposed to start, a lot of top talent will already be booked up. But the good news is, at least we started to hopefully build a reputation that when we do reach out, we’re serious about the work, it wasn't something frivolous. I think it'd be better if the whole industry started operating like that.
Style frame from “Detroiters - Main Titles.” Animated by Ryan Summers.
Ryan Summers:
As I said, these are all relationships, they need to be built around trust. As long as someone has a relationship with you and they trust you, you can accept the hold system for what it might be. But when you start dealing with a situation where a studio starts spam holding multiple people for a job that may not come because they're pitching, then there's this epidemic of getting held and released with no penalty. For the freelancers, however, there are.
The leverage is in the artist's hands. They just don't realize it. It doesn't take freelancers that much to get a hold of the client they may be working with. And we're all working with the same software, we're all working with the same hardware. If you're working in CG, you're probably putting your stuff up on the same rendering service. Now there's no real magic into how this stuff gets done anymore, other than the people. So, it's a dangerous time for studios that abuse a hold system or believe freelancers are just interchangeable cogs in the machine because the shops are going to be perceived that way pretty soon once it’s realized that the people drive it all.
Mack Garrison:
That’s a great point. And it's something that we've been having internal conversations about as well. If you look at the industry as the whole, it's pinching, right? On the top end, you have the clients that would typically go to agencies for full turnkey creative help; website, branding, motion, whatever. But now those in-house teams are getting better. They're starting to hire motion designers, ultimately they just don't need as much work. What that means is that instead of going to the agency for everything, they're going to go directly to the studio for the motion work. All of a sudden, you find studios like Dash that are now competing with smaller agencies for the same type of work.
But then as you alluded to on the bottom end, freelancers are also getting better. So now, some of the bottom projects that we still take on are being taken by freelancers. So, you're getting this tension in the industry. And to your point, I think it's okay NOW because there's plenty of work going around, but it makes you wonder what the future of this industry is going to look like. Is it the smaller studio shops and freelancers that are going to flourish? Is there a world where the bigger agencies still exist? I don't know. What are your thoughts when you think about the future of motion design?
Ryan Summers:
I'm super excited about it. I know that's a weird thing to say right now, but I think there's one additional factor to what we're talking about. A traditional, large motion design shop, especially the agencies, is not only getting attacks from the top and the bottom, but they're also getting stretched out in the middle. Because as an agency, they're full service; they do everything short of ad buying, which is kind of like the mystery box of our world. But as you said, a studio has a team full of people so that they don't have to go out to a large motion shop. They don't trust the large agencies as much as they used to, but the agencies themselves are getting gutted out from the inside. We know where peoples’ eyeballs are and we know how to attract their eyeballs in terms of commercials or whatever you may be doing. However, they don't understand social media. The landscape is changing so fast. Agencies don’t understand advertising.
Ryan Summers:
Because of the eyeball shift to streaming and social media, every six months there's a new service. TikTok is it now, it used to be YouTube. Agencies can't see bumpers, so they're losing their authority. They're getting their lunch handed to them on what used to be an easy way to make money because they don't know where to go to even advertise.
It's a really scary time for them, but it's a huge opportunity for us because we speak that language. There are a lot more people working in motion design that are closer to the target audiences and know what to make for them. So, there's an incredible opportunity to create trust now from the people making it to the people who need it. At the same time, the amount - I don't call them screens anymore - but the number of canvases available to us, is big and only getting bigger. It's going to skyrocket in the next four to five years. Places that our work is going to live and need our kind of agency, our understanding is going to just skyrocket. So I think it's an awesome, but difficult, time while we're trying to figure it out. The opportunities are huge.
“this is the one creative arts industry that I can think of where we put so much time into the work, but the amount of time that the work exists is negligible.”
Mack Garrison:
You bring a really good point on the medium and how motion design lives in the world. I think for a while it's been relatively consistent on what the programs you need to know are to generate the content. Whether it's Maya, Cinema 4D, After Effects, whatever. But we're on the precipice of all this new technology. There’s this perpetual learning that you need to do. A lot of people have preached about being good at one specific thing while the jack of all trades-type person, the generalist, is kind of dying. But I see that coming back because of all the new technology that's coming out. I think the success of a future motion designer is someone that is flexible and can be an avid, nimble learner when trying to adapt to these new things.
“there are just enough people now who've been in our industry that are either desperate for a community or they’re looking for the next step. people want to see their work recognized.”
Ryan Summers:
I agree. Motion design used to mean it was the umbrella for anything that moved, right? So it meant photography, it meant still frame, it meant videography. It meant knowing typography. It meant knowing hand skills, collage, 2D animation, 3D animation. And no one ever expected anyone to know all of those things. That's why teams were so interesting, and that's why each studio had a specific signature. You would go to Digital Kitchen because they had this very cinematographic style, but it wasn't very graphics-oriented, it was editorial. Or you’d go to Imaginary Forces for another look. Then there might be two or three studios that did high-end 3D, but they wouldn't be the people you'd go to for 2D animation. Now, everything has solidified around, “it's going to be done in After Effects, it's going to be done in Cinema 4D if it's character animation, there are two styles of character animation if it's CG, it's going to look like it came out of Red Ship.”
Having constricted to a really specific definition of animation, to now exploding back into what it used to be; where motion design is the overarching umbrella, where you can do anything to make anything move. The tools that were inaccessible in the 90s and the early 2000s now everyone has access to. Not just software, but access to cameras in a way we never had access to before. You can work with editors in a way you never used to be able to before. That's why I always talk about voice and vision being as important as your established relationships and the hardware or software that you use. That being said, I do think there's going to be a demand for people who have a specific way of seeing things or a specific way of making things look.
Mack Garrison:
That's a really good point. I've even been guilty of it myself. You get that project request that comes in and it's a certain type of client. For us, we deal with a lot of IT stuff. So it's like, okay, here are some examples of other videos that have been made, that probably fall into exactly what this should be. Right? And it's a safe play. I think what ends up happening is a cycle effect where someone comes up with a style. That style gets recycled around by everyone in the industry. People like it, so we keep pushing it forward. It's safe.
What ends up happening is when we're looking for inspiration, we tend to look only at what other videos are being made. What the top people are making right now. So limiting, right? So, there's not that much diversity in the variety of work that’s being made. Whereas I felt like to your point in the 90s when people were still experimenting, there wasn't a right way because there was so much still left to figure out. Work was constantly being evolved. That's what I am excited about with this technology growth. Hopefully, it will break us away from this reuse cycle.
Style frame from “Pokemon — BREAKTHROUGH.” Animated by Ryan Summers.
Mack Garrison:
What advice would you give for someone trying to push away from having a set style? What are some things folks should be doing to try to push that innovation?
Ryan Summers:
I think the bottom line is just allowing yourself to do it. Maybe this is me being too personal, but actively allowing yourself to realize that in this career, it's okay to be a capital-A artist. I don't think there are a lot of people who feel like they've been permitted to say that. Some people are like, "Oh, I work in cinema," or, "I'm an after effects animator." But I don't think most spend their days thinking about, "Oh, I want to say this about the world," or "I'm interested in this look that I found from this photographer from the 60s, how can I take that and work with that methodology in Redshift, or 3D?"
For example, most people in 3D right now over-light everything. It's the same thing that used to happen in early CD animation for feature films where people were like, “I have to build all this stuff, then I have to texture everything, and then I have to light it so that when I light it I need to show everything that I made, because otherwise, why would I ever have made all that stuff?” And it wasn't until someone like Roger Deacon came into feature animation and asked why everything is over-lighted? If you're doing this in a feature film, you would only put the light where you want people to look. You had only used lighting to make people feel a certain way. All of a sudden with "How To Train Your Dragon" and "Wally" and the many films after that, by bringing in real-world cinematographers, people started using the tools in a way that allowed them to portray the emotions that they wanted to express.
Ryan Summers:
That's just one example, but it was because people who were looking for software-based solutions finally allowed the art to creep back in. That's the first step to all of it, right? You talked about the echo chamber, and the inspiration paralysis right now. There's so much going on and we're all responding to the same thing. For example, I’ll ask another designer who they like, and if somebody says, "Oh man, I love Ash Thorp." I'm like, "Okay, cool. Do you know why Ash Thorp is Ash Thorp? Go back and look at the three people he was inspired by and find out who those people were working with."
Ash Thorp loves Katsuhiro Otomo, the guy who created Akira. So go find other people that inspired Otomo. He loved Stanley Kubrick. Find out who Stanley Kubrick's cinematographer was and find out who those people started with and look back. Being able to present full references that no one else has, that's liberating. That's exciting. And it gives you an advantage.
Mack Garrison:
You're touching on something that has become a bit lost; the whole research side of things. It's a constant balance between art and design. We design something for someone for a purpose...to get them to like it. At the same time, the art is an evolution of what we would like. It has been a mix of different styles, with different periods over the years. I think, as opposed to some traditional mediums where people would study various periods and have that art history knowledge to build off of, a lot of what we do is being condensed to a week, a few days, or a 24-hour period to come up with an idea for a piece.
Rather than looking back in a nontraditional way of research for what could be done or looking back at periods that can echo a client’s sentiment for something, we go to Vimeo and we look at what's on there. One of the things that we should advocate for now is more education in some of the art periods themselves. Look back in history to what you're talking about. Who are other people inspired by, what was their history, what were they inspired by about that history?
Ryan Summers:
And that's why I think, allowing yourself to say, “I'm an artist,” means that even if you did...let's say Dash gets some call tomorrow from Marvel for their next movie, like "Black Panther 2."
Mack Garrison:
Yeah, sign me up.
Ryan Summers:
Sure. Right? But the problem is you have to have the pitch in by Friday. Or, let's say Monday because we have a weekend. If you aren't thinking like an artist and you don't have interests outside of motion design, the only thing you can do in that amount of time is two things. Either A, "What do I know that the software can give me right now and solve for that?" Or B, "What do I know everybody else is doing that I know somebody else has made so I can figure out how to do it? And let's do a variant of that.”
Ryan Summers:
But if you’re thinking as an artist, the time that you've spent to create a pitch, the time needed to show what you're inspired by, isn't based on the time you're given when initially assigned the project. It's based on how long you’ve spent thinking for the last seven years about things that interest you; things that you love, things that you don't know anything about but catch your eye. So if you think as an artist, you're always thinking about these things. Even if you are only given a two-day turnaround, the artist who was like, "You know what, I love macro photography, but I also love textiles and fashion. And you know what else? There's something interesting about AR in terms of how people interact with technology."
So, all of a sudden when a client says, "We need a teacher that looks like it's influenced by alien technology and we need it in two days," you have a wealth of ideas to pull from. Allow yourself to be an artist. All commercial artists still have personal projects that they want to do, and that's what feeds into the work they do when hired by others. Then, the for-hire work hopefully gives them enough money and time to be able to go and reinvest that back into a personal project. We've been so detached from that. People are being taught that deeming yourself an artist or saying that you have personal projects, is like a dirty word. You're being selfish or you're taking money away from your company and I believe that couldn't be further from the truth.
“the bottom line is just allowing yourself to do it...actively allowing yourself to realize that in this career, it's okay to be a capital-A artist.”
Mack Garrison:
Oh, I love it. That's a great description. I think we've lost a little bit of that art form. Or it's been commercialized to the point where you're just doing internal art projects that look good for the brand. So you're starting to cater your art to the masses as opposed to just experimenting and trying new things. All the while building that library of knowledge in the back of your head.
To change the subject, one of the things we talked about in the very beginning was moving into freelance, the importance of community, and finding a group of people. With you doing School of Motion, I know you will echo the sentiment on how great and connected our industry is. We're both fortunate to have found ourselves in an industry that's so welcoming and helpful. Do you think that's one of the reasons why festivals have started?
Ryan Summers:
I think it's a direct reaction to all the stuff we've talked about. This has been a nascent industry that is finally starting to grow up. I asked at Camp MoGraph, "Who feels like an impostor?" Everyone raised their hand and I said, "That's cool. That's a good thing because none of us have made it through an entire career arc yet. We're all imposters. We're all trying to figure it out." There are just enough people now who've been in our industry that are either desperate for a community or they’re looking for the next step. People want to see their work recognized, right?
This is the one creative arts industry that I can think of where we put so much time into the work, but the amount of time that the work exists is negligible. We make stuff that is so difficult to make in such a short amount of time, in really inventive ways, yet we throw the pipeline away and start all over again on the next one. It's sad to think about. And every other creative arts industry recognizes the work being done in such a special way.
Ryan Summers:
Motionographer awards and ceremonies, for me, are not just about highlighting who is the best. They’re to show people that our work exists beyond being used as marketing material for a client. The systemic nature of our work causes a lot of the awful psychological problems we've started to see. People are burnt out, scared. People don't know what to do next. They’re leaving the industry because they don't feel fulfilled. I think having award shows and the awards themselves aren't that important, but the byproduct of them is. Even more important is the festivals, where people are getting together and we're not talking about software or how to make the next hot look. We're talking about what it's like to be in an industry working together as artists. That's what's awesome.
Mack Garrison:
You hit it on the head there. When we had the idea of doing the dash bash, a lot of that originated from those early conferences we went to and how enjoyable it was to meet people in the industry that are exactly like you. Blend did their first conference about a month after we started Dash. When we went, there were all these superstars that we looked up to. For us, man, these were our heroes, these were the people we wanted to be like. All of a sudden we got to recognize that they're just people like ourselves. You can go up and have these great conversations.
That's the biggest thing that I tell people. When they go to these conferences, whether it's the Dash Bash or anything else, don't go in there and just be handing out business cards. Get to know people, become their friends. Ultimately, people want to work with who they like, right? So if you have these great friendships, then naturally the work is going to come from them. Take the time to just hang out and connect in what can sometimes be a very solitary industry.
Ryan Summers:
I always say I hate the phrase networking because I don't think it’s accurate. When you go to those things, you're making friends; you're finding community. Like-minded people. Maybe you're looking for a mentor? And that's what I love about Dash. It reminds me of when I hear stories from the people who went to the first couple of Comic-Cons for the comic book industry when it was just in a basement of a hotel somewhere. It was so cool to sit and just talk to other people who settled in at a drawing table. Right? Just slaving away at comic book pages.
Mack Garrison:
We're all just in it together. Trying to figure it out. I love it. That's a really good point to end on. Let me ask you this. Have you given any more thought to the workshop itself? Anything you want to tease the public with?
Ryan Summers:
Absolutely. I get asked all the time by people about what their next steps should be, and a lot of times people think they want to be an art director, or they ask how to become a creative director. A lot of times it's surprising what that job entails. It can be very divorced from all the work you've done up until the point you asked that question. Just because you're an amazing animator, it seems like people get pushed into the direction of an art director. But you don't end up animating all that much. I hope to be able to create some type of environment where people can start to understand what it means to be an art or creative director; an interactive slice-of-life insight. So that's my tea.
Style frame from “Jump the Line - Starbucks.” Animated by Ryan Summers.
Mack Garrison:
Awesome, man. I'm excited about it. I'm going to be in attendance with my notepad out taking notes.
Ryan Summers:
Awesome. It's very cool. Very cool.
Mack Garrison:
Thank you so much for taking the time. I know with everything going on, everyone working from home, I appreciate it. This has just been a blast, just catching up a little. We’ve got to do this more often.
“...there's no real magic into how this stuff gets done anymore, other than the people.”
Ryan Summers:
Definitely, man. Thanks so much for reaching out. And I'm super excited. All this stuff will get itself figured out by September, for sure. I think it's going to get a little worse than it is right now, and it's going to be a little weird because we're not used to it. But if everybody's taking it as seriously as it seems like it is, I think we'll be okay.
Mack Garrison:
I know man. I feel the same way. Be smart right now so it's not a problem later on.
Ryan Summers:
Will do. I appreciate it. Thanks for calling.
Mack Garrison:
Yeah, absolutely, Ryan. Talk soon, man. Stay safe. Don't touch anything.
Ryan Summers:
Yeah. You too. Take it easy. Bye.