Mack Garrison 6/9/23 Mack Garrison 6/9/23

Meet the speakers: BIEN

An interview with Ricardo Roberts, Executive Producer, and Hung Le, Creative Director of BIEN. Founded in 2017, BIEN pioneered a unique methodology called Inclusive Motion Design (InMoDe™) that helps brands be more profitable and effective through accurate representation on-screen and behind the scenes.

Q&A hosted by Cory Livengood.

Read time: 15min

Cory:

Good to see you both! So I'd love to hear from both of you what your careers looked like before BIEN. Where were your paths before they converged into this endeavor?

Hung:

So yeah, I started my journey in Houston, where I learned graphic design. I was in a really amazing traditional graphic design program at the University of Houston. I think my path is very relatable for a lot of people in the industry because I did not come from a very prestigious background, both in education or starting at a big studio. I started out at a local university because that's what I could pay for and learned graphic design, print design mainly. And I think upon graduation, and I think obviously all of us at that point in school, you look at everything and you get inspired by motion design. But I did not choose that if you will.

It's just that in my first job out of school, I had a few different offers either from web design and then there's a TV station, local TV station. So my professor, I remember, told me, "What do you have to lose? Even if you don't like it, you just quit six months later." So I went with her advice and I went and worked at a local CBS station and got myself familiar with what the heck is motion design and from more of a TV, network news perspective too.

So after that, I just went on and worked at a local production, live-action production house. They needed an artist, like a graphic designer or motion designer to be on staff. And the title was super enticing. "You'll be the Art Director." And I was a couple of years... Not even that, a year and a half out of school, and I'm like, "I'm going to be the Art Director."

Cory:

That's awesome.

Hung:

But I would direct myself because there's nobody else there.

Cory:

I was going to say you're the Art Director, but you're probably also the motion designer and editor, the-

Hung:

The Rotoscope artist. Yea, whatever they needed. So titles don't mean anything. So that's where I worked. And the pay bump was so great from my first job out of school living in Houston that I thought that was it. I felt good. My family is still in Houston, so there was no need for me to go anywhere. So I felt fairly settled and stayed there for, I stayed at that job for over five years. And then that's when I guess the needle rose when I felt like, I guess, I didn't have anybody to bounce ideas to. I just went to mograph.net to learn stuff from other people.

So I guess like, I'm going to want to try to freelance, and I put my portfolio online. And then at that time, mograph.net was huge. So if you wanted to do something in motion design, with AfterEffects you go to mograph.net, so that's where I was. Ricardo found me on mograph.net actually in those early days when I put my portfolio up. And then the other person who contacted me was a producer from Chicago. And I still had my full-time position at that time because I just put it up. People tell you, you don't quit your job and look for new work, right? You gotta prepare.

Hung:

So they hit me up and said, "Hey, we got this job. We need AfterEffects artists. Today's Wednesday. We want you to show up in Chicago Monday. Can you do it? Actually Sunday." And I say, "Yeah, sure, of course, I'm ready."Because to me, I think normally I would not do that to other people. If I worked for you, Cory, that would be terrible, right?

Cory:

Yeah.

Hung:

Last minute. But I think you have to understand the context is that I have been a small fish in somewhere that, at that time, if you want to do cool work, you have to be in New York, Chicago, or LA.

Hung:

So to me, at that point, I just said I could not turn this down. This was free Harvard Education waiting for me. So that's when I said, I said "Yes," and I apologized to my bosses at the time and just picked up and went. And from then on, I started freelancing, and that's when I met Ricardo on mograph.net and started working with Ricardo and Myriad Media in Raleigh on a freelance basis. And I just freelanced at different shops. Digital Kitchen was the biggest shop that I worked at. They would fly me up to Chicago, and I stayed there, worked there on commercials and things like that, for months on end.

And I also freelanced remotely for a lot of studios in New York, LA. And you have to understand that my portfolio was all oil and gas at that point. That's what the Houston portfolio was if you worked in Houston at that time until now. So my portfolio was just full of a lot of oil and gas work, I did not have any big studio, no Nike on my reel, none of that. So I felt very grateful to have the opportunity to be a freelance storyboard artist to contribute to big pitches for different studios. And I worked remotely for years until my wife and I decided to move to New York, and we moved up to New York, spent five years there working at different shops onsite and offsite, continued to work with Ricardo at Myriad and then moved to LA, and started BIEN with Ricardo in 2017. So I'll pass the story to Ricardo there.

Ricardo:

Yeah, so I actually never wanted to be a designer or be in animation, period. I wanted to be a recording engineer. So I was and am very much into hip hop, and just music in general, that has always been my creative outlet. So after I graduated from high school, I went Full Sail in Orlando. And it was funny because, A, I never thought I was going to be able to go to college. To me, it just wasn't going to happen. But ended up being able to get some loans and grants and stuff like that and was able to go.

So I was down in Orlando, I was learning audio stuff, but I was also learning video production stuff, and then also digital media stuff, which is kind of how they encompassed everything, design, and animation. And at the time, it was like DVD programming with Macromedia, all that kind of stuff. And it was in the beginning three months of school where you sort of learn everything. And I was like, "Man, why am I going to school?" Because Full Sail is expensive!

So I was like, "Why am I going to school to be an audio engineer?" And I already knew a lot of the stuff that they were teaching us. So I was thinking, "I'm going to pay all this money. I'm going to go out of school, I'm going to go to New York and get a job as an intern in some studio making $9 an hour getting coffee for DJ Premiere." And I was like, "Well, if I switch my major, I can learn how to do all this design stuff and make all this stuff and then I can apply it to my record label or whatever I want to do." So I always had an entrepreneurial mindset.

And so I just switched my major to digital media. It was a crash course in design and animation, and we learned character animation. So I was animating characters in Maya and Softimage and in 3D Studio Max. So I did that and I was like, "Yeah, 3D animation, that's going to be my career." But I quickly learned when I moved back to Raleigh, there ain't no 3D animation work happening in Raleigh…this was like 1998.

Ricardo:

So I was working at a Spanish-language newspaper. I was doing print layouts for the newspaper, and then my boss at the time said, "Hey, one of my buddies has a video production company. Why don't you go talk to him because you're not right for this job." He was looking out for me. And so I talked to these guys and it ended up being Will at Myriad Media. So we met and we hit it off. They were awesome. And they were like, "Yeah, you can come on board and do more 2D animation."

So long story short, I started working there in September of '98, and I really had to learn AfterEffects on the job. And it was really an internship for, I think I had three days a week. So I was learning AfterEffects. I was cleaning the office, I was doing whatever to become invaluable. That led to me working with them for many, many years.

Ricardo:

And I found Hung, we met online, as he mentioned earlier, found Hung, and then brought him in as a freelancer at Myriad. And that's how things really took off. That's when we met.

And then Hung said, in 2017, I wanted to get back to my roots in motion design, and I really love the idea of building a business from the ground up. So I wanted to just start over. So Hung and I joined forces, we started BIEN, and the whole idea is to do motion design, but do it through the lens of diversity and inclusion.

Cory:

Yeah, I think that they're relatable stories. I mean, at least for me, because I never studied any design or any motion or anything like that. I figured it all out after college and similarly just put work together. And then obviously Ricardo, I worked at Centerline, which is for those reading, a sort of competitive agency to the one you were at for five years and ended up leaving and starting from the ground up too. So I do think a lot of people look at these superstars who have these big brands, you mentioned your Nikes and all this stuff. But a lot of people who are in this career are starting out at these other...so I really think that both of those stories are really relatable to people.

I think that's a great segue to talk a little bit about BIEN and your methodology, the inclusive motion design. I'd love to learn a little bit about what that means as far as, from your point of view, I know that you've got a lot of resources about it on your website, which is really fantastic. So maybe talking a little bit about what BIEN is and what is the sort of positioning you're taking, the position you're taking on the inclusive motion design?

Ricardo:

So basically, when we started BIEN, we did a lot of competitive analysis and research, and I was working heavily on branding, marketing, and strategic positioning. So I knew we had to find something that made us different. There are so many studios out there that do amazing work, and Hung and I just kept going back and forth, back and forth, we can focus on this and that.
And we really just, when we drilled down to it, we realized, "Hey, we are both immigrants and we have a very different POV from most people." I'm originally from Ecuador, and so I moved to the United States. I didn't know any English, I only knew Spanish and I grew up, in what I would consider a multicultural household, and with a multicultural worldview.

And then the other part is Hung and I both have this urge to do more with our business than just commerce, and more than just creative output. For us, it's really important for us to feel like we are making some kind of a difference through our work. Because again, so many people... You can do amazing work, and the creative is so important, but also at the end of our careers, we want to look back and say, "Hey, we made a difference." It could be a small difference, but we made a difference. We want to be social activists in a way, through our work and through our business. So that's why we settled on inclusive motion design. And so for us, it's inclusive motion design, which we also call it InMoDe.

So InMoDe basically has two pillars, representation and accessibility. So for representation, that means a diverse team behind the scenes to create inclusive content on screen. So it's all about inclusive and accurate representation in the final product, through the character animation or whatever, even if it's live-action. But to us, it's really important to ensure that the behind-the-scenes team is also diverse. And that's something that we all know that our industry struggles with, like many industries. Like the Tech industry, or maybe all industries in the United States, honestly. But motion design seems to be particularly afflicted in that it's not very diverse. So we want to change that. That's our whole reason for being.

And then the second pillar is accessibility. So we know that the world's largest minority group is people with disabilities. So whenever we design, whenever we create, we create with that in mind. So that's like 15% of the world's population. So for us, it's all about design with, not for, that's kind of the whole motto. And that's a quick way to summarize what inclusive motion design is. And our "Why" as I tell everyone is we're doing this because we want to see the industry become more diverse and we want to make a difference. We want to create change, give back to our community, and we want to see more underrepresented artists in our industry and thriving and doing well.

Cory:

There's an image on your website, that I like, which is symbolic diversity versus true diversity because I think that these days, and ultimately is a good thing, diversity inclusion has become trendier. More people want to be a part of that conversation. But I think that image really sums up that a lot of people still maybe phone it in a little bit, like the symbolic versus the true.

Ricardo:

Yes.

Cory:

And so I wonder, how do you have a conversation with a client about this topic in a way that makes them want to be on board with it and not feel like they're being lectured or attacked or what have you?

Ricardo:

It's so funny, Cory, people come to us because they know that's what we focus on. That is our positioning, and that's where we have expertise. So we don't really run into client pushback. If anything, clients have pushed back and said, "Hey, we want this to be more diverse."

I thought at first we would have a lot of pushback, but honestly, I think especially since George Floyd's murder, that's when people really started to seek us out, because we are minority-owned and because inclusive motion design, or anything in the inclusive and diverse space, became more important, more sought after. We haven't had too many issues with that, honestly.

Cory:

That's excellent.

Ricardo:

Yeah.

Cory:

Yeah, so it sounds to me like a smart move and the thing that's helped is, you have positioned yourself as that's your space. And so no one's coming to you and getting surprised that you're bringing this up in a conversation, right?

Ricardo:

No, no. And from day one, we identified a category that no other studio was playing in or owning. So we knew, "Hey, we're going to create this new category and we're going to own that position in the marketplace." So you're exactly right. People come to us because they say, "Hey, they are the inclusive motion design studio." So they know from day one what we're going to focus on and what we're going to do for their brand or their company.

Cory:

I'm curious, from a production standpoint, when you're going through the normal steps of any kind of video-based project, what is different about a project that has this sort of mindset than let's say, a project that didn't before George Floyd or before all that?

Or is there a component to your engagements with clients that is education, not just production? How do you educate a client who even if they come to you and want this, they might not know how or they might be doing it the wrong way?

Ricardo:

Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. I think at the beginning of a project, we always try to find out what the strategy is. Who's the audience? Who are they trying to reach? And then we build a team based on that. So that's the whole design with a, not for, mentality. So once we have that in place, we always come to the client with various ideas, but we always try to push the envelope. And when we first started, we realized sometimes if you're doing a certain type of tech explainer and maybe there is no character animation, we realized maybe we're not going to be able to do something on the screen. So we started thinking about things behind the scenes. So giving an opportunity to an underrepresented designer or animator, or using a certain voiceover talent, like someone with disabilities, we'll use them as a voiceover talent.

It's really, honestly, a lot of behind-the-scenes things that we do. And then we tell the client and they say, "Oh, wow, I haven't thought about that. That's really interesting." But then in terms of when we do character illustration, we always do things through the lens of ethnology and just make sure that whatever we design is accurate and realistic, and it's a realistic portrayal of that particular population.

So when we put those forth in front of a client, then we talk about it, we tell them why, and we tell them, "This jaw line or this nose style comes from this region, and here's why." But in general, it's kind of a mix of both. We're telling them some things, we're also doing some things, and then showing some things.

Hung:

I think we kind of approach the client with the mentality that it's a collaboration. We have our expertise, you have yours, and we want to solve this problem together, your business problem together, while creating social impact in the process.

And social impact might not have anything to do with your product that you're trying to put out there. It's the social impact that is happening behind the scenes. I think the key thing to keep in mind is for Ricardo and I, we really hone into how tactical our process is. We don't want talking points. We don't deal with things that are just talk and not walk. It has to be very tactical. So it's built into the business. The way BIEN operates, how we operate as a company from the inside out to the production process, to pre-production. Every step of the way, we have this methodology built in, in a way that would be inclusive to the staff and also to the process and to everyone involved.

Now, I think that's the key is that it's not just a talking point to get the client to buy in, and we do it on screen to satisfy that. It's what we do behind the scenes. And I would say that at this point for us, that process is owned by everyone. The producers own it, and they come up with their own processes and their own things. So we are not the ones who are there to say, "Let's follow this structure." The structure evolves, the methodology evolves because our team evolves it, and each one using their own expertise and live experience evolves it differently.

Cory:

Yeah, that's excellent. I love the thought that the final video might just be a bunch of cool shapes and texts, and there's really not an obvious place for there to be a diverse or inclusionary system to it. But that's the veneer, it's the people who put it together. It's behind the scenes. That's great.

Hung:

Our aim, I think, as a studio, I'll call it our top-level claim, and I'm not saying we are there yet, but our top-level claim is that BIEN wants to do top-level quality work, just like many top-level studios out there. But when you look, you peel back the curtain, you find a very diverse team behind the scenes making that.

That's the way we elevate the industry, changing it one person at a time and making it better.

Ricardo:

Yeah, and that ties back into our desire, our "Why" is, we want to see the industry become more diverse. And like Hung said, tactically, we're doing all kinds of stuff. Like, we have an apprenticeship. So we wanted to initially do an internship, but we felt like that was not enough. And internships are great, but if you can't afford to not work a real job over the summer and take an internship wage, which we all know, like a stipend, you can't live off of a stipend, especially in a larger city. We thought that an apprenticeship where we can pay a living wage would be much more advantageous for someone who is just getting started in the industry. And so, instead of a shorter internship, our apprenticeship is 10 weeks and then it goes on six months after. And so we also give our apprentices, what we call a motion survival toolkit, which is Hung and my knowledge and then the studio's knowledge on all of the boring, basic business shit that new newbie designers and animators don't know when they get out of school.

Like how do you submit an invoice that has all of the correct information so you can make sure you get paid on time? How to handle a late payment? How to get work? How to email people?

Cory:

Yeah.

Ricardo:

All of these things, we basically have this toolkit and it's like, "Here, go use this." And then anytime during that six months after the apprenticeship concludes, we want you to stay in touch with us, stay in touch with your art director or your producer or Hung and I. And we give advice, we do portfolio reviews, we do all of these things just like this is about going above and beyond because that is the way they make a change.

And we do that because we identify that at our level, at the senior level, diversity is very scarce. However, at the junior level, we're seeing a lot of diversity. Like Hung and I, we also teach inclusive motion design at Hyper Island, which is a creative school based in Stockholm. And in that class, those students are extremely diverse. And I think there's maybe 65, it's 65% female.

So it's amazing. So there's this new crop of talent that's coming in, and we want to do what we can to make sure that they succeed and that they go on to flourish in our industry.

Another thing I always like to talk about, and I always tell studio owners, and I'm telling you Cory, because we think it's important for us to look at what we do as. We view ourselves as a bridge studio. So it's not about what we can do for talent, it's what we can do for that talent so they can go on and succeed in the industry. So how can we be a bridge between us to bigger and better opportunities?

So what we do is, we practice something called Double the Line. Double the Line was originally an AICP concept. AICP is the Association of Independent Commercial Producers. So they do live-action work, but they started this initiative called Double the Line. And basically what it is, is you take a line item in a project budget and you double it. And so you bring on a junior talent and they shadow a senior talent. We found out about that initiative and we've adapted it and really brought it into the fold of our process at the end.

We do that on almost every project where we can, but it's a way for us to identify that very, very junior diverse talent and give them an opportunity. So they're able to come onto a job that they would not have gotten hired for otherwise because they don't have the portfolio, they don't have the experience. But we give them that experience, we give them that portfolio piece so then they can go and they can say, "Hey, Cory, look at this thing I did at BIEN". And so it's about taking a risk. It's about extending opportunities that may not have otherwise gotten extended.

So that's why I say, man, if you guys would think about doing that, all of us together, we can be a bridge studio network so that we all have a similar mentality. And for us, it's not just about BIEN, we want to spread InMoDe throughout the industry. And these little ideas that Hung and I have been implementing, they're not that hard to put into production. It's not crazy. And when we say double the line, if you can bring someone on for an entire project, that's cool, great. But a lot of times you can't, right? The budgets are not there, we're small studios. So you can bring someone on for a certain phase. It could be for help with storyboards, it could be for one character animation if it's cel animation. So it's these little small little plays, these tactical things that we want to spread throughout the industry. And hopefully, over time, it'll make a change, make a difference.

Getty Museum – 2-Minute Time Machine Series by BIEN

Cory:

I love it. When you do those sorts of programs or when you're shadowing you in a situation like that, what does that look like? I mean, are they literally making stuff and getting paid for it by the hour, like a freelancer on the day? Or are they Zoom sharing with your artist and just watching how they do something? How hands on is that?

Ricardo:

Yeah, it's kind of both.

Hung:

That part is part of production. They will have the hands in the project and it depends on the level of skills and experience. They could be working on something smaller or larger. So they will be in the production like a freelancer, just any other freelancer, that's equity and equality or in one. So when you put that person in production, it's not so much about what they are doing on that project. They could be animating just a tiny little bird in the background, but the soft skills they are learning, being in the same job, seeing how the art director is doing that scene, seeing how other seniors, say cel animators, are doing that. They're learning from that day to day. They're learning from the process and they will be part of all those conversations with the team.

So our hope is that, we only laid out the options and people can pick that up themselves in all the soft skills while on the job. And then at the end of the job, they can put this in the portfolio and say, "I worked on the job for this X brand."

Cory:

Yeah, I think that's great. And it is really important. We do internships usually twice a year, and it varies from one to three people, depending on our needs and stuff. But it's really important that we always put interns on client work. It's not just getting the coffee or doing the cool social media stuff for Dash. I mean, we do cool social media stuff too, of course, but throughout the course of an internship, you will definitely work on the client work.

And it's similar reasoning. It's like, people need to experience a little bit of that pressure of, "This is a real project for a real person. I'm involved in this actual client work." And then after the internship they're able to say, "I worked for this brand, I worked on this video." So I do think it's a great idea and it is definitely something that we want to do more of and have always tried to make part of our workflow when it comes to junior level people, especially interns or mentors.

Hung:

Totally. And I would say that Ricardo and I would never claim that we came up with these ideas. It's more like, if you can say what is unique about our approach, it's about us really being boots on the ground practicing many things, where other people practice one or two.

Cory:

Oh, yeah. And normalizing that stuff too, just making it a normal part of the workflow…

Ricardo:

And I'll tell you, Cory, to me, why I think internships and apprenticeships, they're so powerful, but Double the Line may be even more powerful because you can bring someone on for just three days, right? But those three days of their work will certainly add value to that project, AND, they also get to see everything going on in Slack.

We work in Slack, right? And so they see all of the production stuff happening in real time and what has happened before they got there. So they already have that inside view of a big project, and then they're contributing for those three days. And then another project comes on, we can hire someone else or that same person, and we always try to vary it up, but it allows for more variety. So when you have an internship... Because as you guys know, it's a lot of work on the studios' part as well. When you have that internship or apprenticeship, it's a long commitment.

But Double the Line can be a week, it can be two weeks, it can be three days, and it can be done for copywriters, it can be done for illustrators, animators, cel animators, 3D, whatever.

Cory:

That is a really interesting point because an internship could be three months, and that does take planning. And so there's something really cool about, "Hey, we're going to drop you into this project for this week, and you're going to get to absorb as much as you can absorb and then walk away." That's really cool.

Hung:

Yeah, I would expand on that a bit to see, okay, that's something everyone can do. But what we would do is with... We think about that process and say, "What can we do to improve this process?"

Pretend, Cory, if you are new, you've never been on a production before. If you are thrown into this process, you are going to be facing this giant blob and you're going to wonder what the heck is going on. So we kind of see that coming, and what we would do is, we do a pre-call with that junior. So if we have a kickoff set for Wednesday, then a day or so before we can have a pre-call with that junior where we say, "All right, do you know what the term cel animation means? I'm just throwing out some things that are kind of technical and unique to the industry, that if you're not, you haven't been exposed to, you wouldn't know. They get to see all the materials beforehand so they can see if they have questions.

The moment you can clear that out for the junior before the big kickoff, then they will feel more inclusive, there's a sense of belonging by the time they get on with the team, because they're not that new kid on the block. They know what everyone else is talking about.

So those little nuances are what we thrive on. That's the before, and what about after? So we think about that deeply.

Ricardo:

And it's funny you mentioned that Hung. What we're trying to do in essence is fast-forward someone's career by a year or two by giving them this inside track and not just saying, you know how it is, "Any questions?" A junior's going to be like, "No." They don't want to look dumb.

Cory:

Yeah.

Ricardo:

So we're telling them like, "Hey, look like we want you to ask questions. We need you to ask questions, and we're going to tell you some things that open up the conversation." But it's really maybe what we all wish we had when we first started, is sort of, not so much a employer/employee relationship, but a mentor/mentee relationship. That's really important to us.

And then one other quick thing that we've started doing is, this is an idea that we borrowed from the tech industry. They kind of brought it to the forefront, recording diversity metrics for our studio, but also the projects that we do. So I mean, I should have said our staff and then also any freelancers that we hire. So we look at those stats after every job, and a lot of those stats suck. I'm just being very honest. A lot of the stats are not what we want them to be, even though that's our focus, and we're actively recruiting people from underrepresented populations. So we use those numbers as that's the cold hard metrics. Those are the numbers that we can't run away from. And our producers, everyone on the team has that mentality of, we want to improve these numbers. We want to move the needle on, I wouldn't say every single job, that's the hope, but it's more like on a yearly basis.

Cory:

Well, you mentioned it before, it's not just talking the talk, it's walking the walk. And that's where the data, I'm sure, comes into it, where you can actually go back and analyze that and see. You're also proudly, it seems, a decentralized sort of global group. I mean, you have staff all over the world, all over the country. I wonder if you could talk a little bit on how, was that an active decision?

Was that a COVID decision? I know you and Hung are both in LA, but a lot of people are everywhere else. And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that kind of mindset.

Hung:

I can touch on that first. So I think that what's unique about BIEN, when Ricardo and I came together and thought about the industry, is that we were both outsiders, right? I mean, I think I did not know what the Beatles were until I was like, I don't know, 14 or 15, because I lived in Vietnam in a post-communist world where all western media was kept out. But what that afforded me, learning design, going to industry, is that I don't see anything the same way anyone who had an education here had. So that POV, that lived experience helped me tremendously in terms of being more critical of the work we do as motion designers and studios, the kind of stuff we put out there to the world, talking down to other cultures in a visual way, and I will call that the imperialistic point of view. Because we can't escape it. It's just what we lived in, in here. It's what we learn.

So from day one, when Ricardo and I put the company together, we said, "We need diverse perspectives. We see this remote working thing..." I work remotely in Houston for all studios around the world, I mean the country. Back in the, I don't know, early 2000 or whatever, when that was not a thing, right?

So it was working, and I worked for Ricardo's company, Myriad, for years remotely. I didn't meet Ricardo until, I don't know, 10 years after I worked with them or something like that. So we knew that model worked. So from day one, we said, when we put a team together, it is not going to matter about where they are. It's more about what perspective they are going to bring into the studio. And just like anything, you work with someone freelance, at first you kind of click, you see something, you click, they like you enough, and boom, you're a team. And that's kind of how we are right now.

Cory:

How do you handle the logistical issues that come along with that when it comes to meetings or having a company culture that's sort of on the same page and things like that?

Hung:

Totally. We try to put names to everything so that it sounds legit and that it's easy to remember. So that's inclusive time zones. That's like, what does that mean? That means you have to be respectful of... If we put one of our art directors in Spain, for example, if we are going to have that art director on Delete The Project, then all meetings are going to happen at AM Pacific or whatever that is with the client. And the thing nowadays is, I don't know, I'm sure your clients too Cory, but a lot of companies you work with are global time zones.

Hung:

They deal with that daily on their end. It's like they have colleagues in the UK they talk to. So it's been normalized in a way that you just have to know that you work around these things. And then we just start to implement more asynchronous tools like recordings and stuff that you can set for people, be crystal clear on your feedback, step by step, things like that. And we've been doing it for five years and we never fail a delivery. So I think it's working out fine.

Cory:

Yeah, that's great.

Ricardo:

I'll just add to that too, just in general, our worldview, my worldview, Hung's worldview, we've always been international. That's how we think. We think globally, and so access to amazing talent around the world is something that appealed to us from day one. It's like, why limit to a certain geography? If someone's super talented and someone can bring a different POV, a different cultural nuance to a job, then that's the type of person that we want to work for or work with.

And if you think about it, the world's just getting smaller and smaller. And then COVID, like really, I mean, won't say there's no such thing, but there's almost no such thing as time zones and international barriers, because we're also used to Zooming and being connected just on various devices and via email and Slack and all that stuff. So just figuring out how to do it asynchronously, I think we've got that down pat.

But I will say there are challenges with culture. Our culture is robust and it's phenomenal and it centers around inclusive motion design and it centers around doing amazing work and telling great inclusive stories, but it is difficult. It's not the same as if you're all in the same room. So there's pros and cons, and we just try to lean into the pros.

Hung:

Also, we try to avoid the extremes for sanity's sake. Because in production, honestly, if you have someone in New Zealand, then they will say "Goodbye, have a good weekend on a Thursday." So obviously in reality, that doesn't work every time. Certain jobs you can do that, but when deadlines are looming and stuff like that. So I would say we are very global, but we are also very conscious of what makes a project realistically doable.

Cory:

Well, it goes back to being tactical, as you say. I mean, we had a project with a short timeline, and so in that sense, we were able to hire a designer in Australia to design our frames that were then ready for our animators in our morning. And so that would've worked out well from a tactical perspective despite the time zone. In fact, because of the time zones, because we could be designing while we were sleeping and animating while we were awake, essentially. And so there are always these weird little cases that pop up where you can move those pieces into place exactly how you need them, which is really cool.

Ricardo:

And you can always choose, you can look at the negative side of it or the positive side of it. If you lean into the positive, you can figure out ways to use it to your advantage.

Cory:

I'd love to hear any advice you might give someone who is thinking about moving from either a job or freelance into entrepreneurship, into starting a studio. Is there anything you might have told yourself when you were starting looking back?

Ricardo:

It's a hard question.

Hung:

Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, and this is just being really, really tactical, I would say that I would not have done it if I did not have Ricardo as a partner. Because I would say that I did not have the portfolio of a superstar in our industry who can attract a lot of talents around you and build a studio from scratch. I was grateful to have Ricardo to know the business side of it so that we could team up and make something together. I don't look at what we did as forming a company as an ego thing. It was more like a necessity.

I think that in our industry in particular, ageism is a big thing. Designers and animators, when they get to their forties, have to look at alternatives in terms of what they can learn, how fast they can learn, how they can adapt, and whether they have built up all the steps necessary to lead to their final season of their career or not.

So I think that that's kind of important to think about is, if you are young and you're thinking about entrepreneurship or owning a studio later, then you have to build all the necessary steps up to that point. And if you haven't done that, then you find yourself in a very tricky situation. So I would say it really depends on your will. The only thing I have to offer, honestly, it's just like I'm very good at making something out of nothing just because of my background. What I lived through, that's kind of my superpower in a way, not my design skills.

Ricardo:

We just make it work. And just real quick too, for any upcoming designers, I want to piggyback on Hung. Thanks for saying that, man. But I think you have to, most creatives, are like, "Oh, my work's going to sell itself." I think you have to really be prepared. If you're freelancing in particular and then want to start a studio, you have to get your portfolio, it has to be technically sound and follow best practices to get clients. And then you just have to really brush up on sales. Those two things are so important because the creative is just going to sit there because there are a million different portfolios that look as good or better. So you really have to focus on what is your positioning, what is your marketing strategy, and what is your sales strategy. Who are you? Who can you sell to? And then, you know, try to find market fit, try to find what clients would hire you, and then you try to replicate that and then expand from there.

Cory:

We really, really appreciate your taking the time to chat with us today. And it's really cool learning how the butter is made, seeing behind the scenes.

Ricardo:

Yeah, Cory, man, we're super excited I can't wait to come back to Raleigh, man. I miss it.

Cory:

Yeah, great. We're looking forward to it.

Hung:

Thank you. Bye

Mack Garrison 5/25/23 Mack Garrison 5/25/23

Meet the speakers: Kevin Dart

An interview with Kevin Dart: CEO and Founder of Chromosphere, a boutique animation studio in Los Angeles that specializes in design and creative storytelling with technology.

Q&A hosted by Mack Garrison.

Read time: 15min

Mack:

Hey Kevin. Nice to meet you.

Kevin:

Nice to meet you too!

Mack:

I'd love to know a little bit of backstory. How'd you get into motion design? What was the draw to the animation field, and then maybe a little bit of that path that led you ultimately to starting Chromosphere?

Kevin:

I switched careers after graduating from college, because I originally wanted to work in video games. I went to a school called DigiPen up in Redmond, Washington, originally in the engineering program, because I wanted to program games. I think by the third semester, I was in calculus three or something and I was just like, this just isn't what I wanted. It was too heavy on physics and stuff for me, but I always had a real passion for art and design too. I actually was more interested in graphic design, especially in high school. I always drew, but I also spent a lot of time designing websites. I was really into just the worldwide web of the nineties when I was growing up. I taught myself HTML and Perl and various types of web coding languages, so I could build my own websites.

That was my real intro into art, was through web design and graphic design. When I was having that third semester crisis, there were only two programs at DigiPen; engineering and animation. I was like, "Well." I always loved animation too. Maybe I could get into it. I threw together a portfolio and they let me switch over to the other program, and then I did that. It was mainly focused on 3D art, learning how to model and animate in 3D.

I graduated with a degree in 3D animation and then went to work in video games as a character modeler. I did that for almost three years. And then I had another existential crisis... I think I had some awakening or something, when I saw Samurai Jack. I think that actually came out when I was in school, but it sparked something inside of me where I was like, "I think maybe I actually do want to work in animation." Something about it was just so ... it was an epiphany for me. That bug never left me and it kept growing.

At some point, I made a trip down to LA and showed my portfolio around at an event I was at, and met this amazing recruiter from Disney named Dawn Rivera, who's still working at a lot of different studios today. She was like, "I think you really might have something here." She set up this whirlwind bunch of meetings for me at some studios around LA, and none of them went anywhere, but being as naive as I was, my first time in LA and going to these big studios, I was like, "Well, I guess I'm in."

Mack:

Ha - Nice.

Kevin:

I pretty much quit my job a few weeks after that, thinking I was just going to go start working in animation and that wasn't what happened. I think I ended up being unemployed for two or more years or something, trying to figure out how to get into animation and realizing that having a meeting at a studio didn't mean that I was actually going to have a job there.

Mack:

How old were you at this time? I'm assuming this is Samurai Jack, so I'm thinking early 2000s, something like that.

Kevin:

Yeah. I was in my twenties, early twenties. I was probably more naive than I should have been at that age. I think at the time also, there was a really huge geographical disconnect between animation and being centralized in LA. It felt to me, being in the Seattle area, it was basically impossible. There were just no options to work in animation. At some point, I finally made the move down to LA, I think it was 2007 or so, which was actually spurred because my at the time, girlfriend and eventually wife, were long distance dating. She was living in LA and I was up in Seattle. It provided the impetus I needed to finally move down to LA. Then once I got down here, things finally started connecting because I was in the area and I was able to actually go to studios I was talking to and meet with them.

One of the first things that happened was, I got an internship at Pixar in the visual development program in 2007, which was really cool and surreal, because that was a place I'd wanted to work at for such a long time. Then I got to just spend a summer there, learning from all these guys that I only knew from captions and art of books and stuff. Then weirdly from there, I started working a lot for European studios like Cartoon Network Europe.

Mack:

Interesting. Just committing to being there, you were able to meet with some of these studios, you got in at Pixar. The internship itself for the digital development stuff, was that a one-year gig or just a few months?

Kevin:

Yeah. It was just a summer internship. It was weird because I was a lot older than everyone else in the program. Everyone else was still, they were coming out of school or were still in school. I had been out for a few years at that point, but everyone accepted me. It was really nice, nice little camaraderie, but I did feel strange about it. They had us do our own individual projects, where we would get mentored by people. I was mentored by Harley Jessup, who was already one of my idols from just seeing his work on Monsters Inc and stuff like that.

Also just, he's got an incredible eye for graphic design, so we really matched up perfectly. I think he really recognized that I had that interest and was able to guide me on that, and just one of the kindest, most open people ever. It was just a really cool experience to be able to work with him and have that role model, someone who's so open and so interested in art in general, and particularly graphic design, to just be really encouraging and inspiring.

Mack:

Especially given his ... I'm just looking at his IMDB here Ratatouille, Cars 2, Presto, the Good Dinosaur, Coco, and then the upcoming feature Elio. Monsters Inc, of course. What an immense source of talent, and you're just a sponge absorbing all of it. What an amazing opportunity.

Kevin:

I'm pretty sure it was Harley who encouraged me to do this, was to start gathering photo references and just putting it up all around me. That was something that just really stuck with me. I don't always do it actually physically printing stuff out and hanging it up anymore, but I make a big point of always starting every project with a lot of research and gathering a reference and creating boards that we can look at and just be like, "Oh yeah, this is where we're going," and just relying a lot on that research process that he talked about. He was also really big on... I don't feel like I needed a lot of prodding to also be into this, but I think he encouraged me to really focus on presentation.

That's something that's really stuck with me too. The way that you present your work a lot of times, is just as important as the work itself. If you put something out there and you're like, "Whatever," you just throw it out and it's got some messy type or it's printed badly or whatever, it really betrays the quality of what you were trying to do. That's really bled into everything that we do. I spend so much time curating our website, for instance, for Chromosphere, really getting everything just right. I want our work to be presented in a way that I feel is fitting of what we've done.

Mack:

After the internship you said you went to Cartoon Network?

Kevin:

Yeah. I just went back to LA after the internship and then started getting work from Europe, from Cartoon Network Europe first, from a director named Pete Candeland, who was there. And Pete Candeland directed all the early Gorillaz music videos, and those Rock Band promos, the Beatles Rock Band promo and that stuff. He was very iconic in that. Pete, at the time, was working at Cartoon Network Europe, developing a pilot for a show, and they asked me to do some background designs for it.

Then weirdly, they also had hired at Cartoon Network Europe, this French compositor named Stéphane Coëdel, who ended up being pretty much my most long-term conspirator and collaborator in animation. When I started on the project, they told me, "There's this French guy here. He really likes your work and he's wondering if you would be interested in collaborating on these title cards," because they were making title cards for the show and they wanted to do this old monster movie type look to the cards. They asked me to paint up a card like that. I was like, "Okay." I did something where it was a dock scene with these squid tentacles coming out or something and some horror movie type font on it. I sent it off, and then a few days later they sent me back a movie that Stéphane had done, where he had ... I was completely unfamiliar at the time with After Effects as an animation tool, and what you could really do with it. They sent me back this movie and he had taken all the layers from my Photoshop file and animated all these tentacles moving around and appeared in smoke and all this stuff. There was a little parallaxing. The whole thing just came to life and my mind just exploded. I was like, "What?" It felt like he had taken this little painting I had done and just brought it to life, created a whole world out of it. That just planted this whole seed of, "I want to do more of this." I love this process of painting and then working with someone to bring it all to life in a way that I'd never really considered.

I still thought of animation as just drawing in frames. I didn't think there was a whole other level to what could be done with 2D animation and compositing. It just really opened my mind to that. Then the next job I did was also with Pete, but he had gone back to Passion Pictures and he was directing a promo for the 2008 Beijing Olympics on BBC. For that one, they asked me to come over to London and just work on it for a month or so, doing a color script and background paintings for it.

One of the funniest experiences was they just threw me in the room. At the time, Passion was in this ... I don't want to say dilapidated, but it was a very old building with lots of breezes coming through. It was freezing in there, and the floors were all creaky and there was just this room and they're like, "All right, here's the guys. This is so-and-so and this person, and here's a computer for you to work at," and I was like, "Okay." I just started working and there was this guy that they had all introduced to me as Bob, sitting over here. I was like, "Okay, hey Bob." He was a friendly Canadian guy, and it wasn't until a week later where I think I was about to go home for the night and I was going over to look at what he was doing, and he was animating on paper, flipping these pages, and I was looking at it and I was like, "Wow."

First of all, I'd never been around people animating traditionally. All of my training had been completely digital and all of my experiences were totally digital. I was looking at it and I was like, "Wow man, that's really good. It reminds me of Robert Valley's stuff," and he was like, "I am Robert Valley." I was like, "What? They've just been calling you Bob this whole time." I didn't know.

Then you start finding out who everyone else in the room is, and it's like, "Okay, this is the whole team of people who've done all these Gorillaz videos and all this stuff, and why am I here?" I didn't feel like I deserved to be there, but I still tried to soak it all up as much as possible. I remember one time, Pete invited me to sit in on a review session where he was going through all the latest animation and seeing how it was all coming together.

That was such a momentous thing for me, that this person would just bring me into that process and let me observe how it was being done. I was like, "Wow, I want to do this. I want to do this exact same thing. I want to make animation this way." I just wasn't aware of other people who were doing it at that time. I haven't really traced the history, but I feel like Pete and those guys on the Gorillaz videos were one of the main originators of the whole After Effects and motion graphic style that exploded in the years after that.

I just loved the process, just getting in there and just working with all of the elements. It was also raw and immediate. The person who's animating it is just in this room over here. Then the guys, they scan it, this guy's compositing it. I would see at Cartoon Network in LA years later, the way they did animation was: you have a pre-production team in LA who does a lot of designs and storyboards, and then it gets sent off to Korea or somewhere else, and then a few weeks later you get back a cartoon.

This process was just so opposite of that. It was a team of ... it felt like maybe it couldn't have been more than 12 or 15 people coming together and using their resources to, from start to finish, create this incredible piece of animation. I think I modeled everything I've done with Chromosphere and everything off of that experience, small teams, everyone knows, everyone's really good at what they're doing and really good at improvising and coming up with quick solutions and just working together to make stuff in a very quick and almost improvisational way.

That whole period from 2007 to 2009 was really characterized by these very life-shaping experiences like that. Then when I came back to LA, I did end up getting a job doing background painting at Cartoon Network, on a show that Genndy Tartakovsky was making. Genndy's the guy that did Samurai Jack.

*“June” is the story of a woman reconnected by ridesharing*

Mack:

Yeah, phenomenal.

Kevin:

It was like jumping from one person I idolized to the next. If I could organize all of my inspirations in some way, Genndy and Samurai Jack, and all that stuff would just be so far at the top of what I wanted to do. Then Scott Wills, who was the art director for Samurai Jack was also on this show.

It was basically me, Scott, and one other background painter, who was Kristen Lester, who's actually now a director at Pixar. It was just another crazy experience where it's like this guy who's an industry veteran, has these two complete noobs that he's taken under his wing, to teach how to background paint. Scott is a traditional painter by trade. That's how he learned. He started on Ren and Stimpy. His story's pretty crazy because one of his first gigs was blowing up album covers for Tower Records stores in LA during the eighties, because they didn't have the technology to just scan stuff and blow it up, so they would hire him to just paint a bigger version of an album cover.

He learned a lot of painting through that, and then got hired on Ren and Stimpy and did background painting for that, and eventually found his way to working with Genndy on Samurai Jack.

What I was really astonished by, was that it seemed like he hadn't skipped a beat from being a very accomplished traditional painter to just taking all of his knowledge and translating it effortlessly into digital painting. We were painting digitally on this show. He was doing it just how he would do his regular painting, no problem. It wasn't like he was like, "Ah, I'm not going to work on computers, these newfangled machines," or whatever. He just did it. Then he showed us exactly how he did it. He broke down the process into this very understandable thing, where even Kristen and I, just being complete novices at this, could understand how he was approaching each of these paintings.

It was just a very ordered, understandable and reproducible way of working, that I still paint that way now. It was just such a great way of starting with blocking in simple shapes and then you add light and then shadow. He would group all of his layers in a very organized way, like someone who'd been painting digitally all their life. He just had complete mastery over how to work in Photoshop in a way that was just very, very thorough and very organized. I think for me, it was especially cool because at the time I had no real process to speak of.

I felt like every time I would paint something, it was a totally new approach, that I was just fumbling through to get to some result, hopefully. Then this was the most incredible tool set because it was like, "Well, now I can always make something because I have this process I can rely on. I don't have to make a bunch of mistakes and then end up here. Hopefully I can follow these steps so I'll always end up having a painting at the end." It was ideal. It was an ideal process, especially for that job where you do have to crank through a certain number of paintings every week.

It was a whirlwind at that point, because I sort of started two different careers, where I was working at studios in LA doing either vis dev or art directing stuff, but I was also trying to keep alive the dream of what I had seen Pete doing in London in 2008, making short films and doing it in this way that I was really inspired by. Stéphane and I, at that point, we'd been making films together. We were doing some of the early Yuki 7 stuff at the time, and then eventually started getting gigs co-directing these things. We did this little film for Persol sunglasses, but all of this was happening simultaneously. I was always working two or three jobs at the same time for several years.

It went on that way til 2014 or something. I think my wife and I were having dinner one night and I was just like, "I only want to be doing this one part. I want to be doing all the fun films and stuff, and I want a studio where I can" It just felt like I was in this place where I had this amazing fortune of learning all these different things. I learned how TV animation worked. I'd learned how feature animation worked. I learned how commercial animation worked. I'd even learned how video games worked, how they were made.

I was like, "I want to take all of this," Take all my friends I've met, these incredible people like Stéph or the various artists I was working with at Cartoon Network, like Jasmin Lai or Tiffany Ford, all these people, and form some place where we could do projects that just didn't follow any way that any of the studios in LA were doing things. I loved all the shows that I worked on, like Steven Universe, or Power Puff Girls, or Peabody and Sherman or whatever, but I didn't want to do that process. I wanted to be in that situation, what I had seen Pete doing, where it's a small team of people just creating something really cool together.

Mack:

What was the next step of, "I want to do this, so I'm just going to start a studio."

Kevin:

Luckily, my wife Elizabeth Ito (Creator of City of Ghosts) was just really supportive. We talked to our therapist about it too. It was a big topic. It was a huge decision. It felt like I'm talking about basically just leaving this industry that I worked so hard for so many years to get into, to just strike out on my own now. I think something I was struggling with a lot of the time was, all I ever wanted, if I rewound 10 years ago or so, was to work with all of these people that I've now worked with. Now that I've done it, I feel like maybe that's not all I want. Maybe I want to go a whole step further and build something on my own that was just different from everything else, in some way that was hard to define at the time.

I just started taking the steps really slowly, first just registering a business name. At first, it was just a small freelance business, where I felt like a snake oil salesman type guy for the first two years. Basically, what happened is anytime someone would write to me saying, "Oh, are you available for work on this thing?," I'd be like, "Yeah, maybe, but the thing is I'm actually running a studio now," and I had no studio. I was like, "I have a studio, so maybe." If they were looking for an art director for a movie, I'd be like, "Well, would you be interested in talking about hiring my studio to do all of the vis dev for your movie?," or whatever. Most people were like, "Is this a real thing? Can you actually do that?"

Mack:

Like… "Can you deliver on this? Who are you?" haha.

Kevin:

Yeah. Most people just wouldn't respond because it felt like a crazy proposition to them. One of them actually bit, and it was actually for a movie that just came out recently, but this was back in 2014. There's a movie that came out recently called Paws of Fury. I pitched the directors of the movie the idea of hiring my fledgling studio to do the visual development for the movie, and they agreed. We worked on it for maybe nine months to a year or so. I just built a little team, just all freelance, of my friends, to create all the designs for this movie.

I just did that on the side as I was also still working full-time as an art director at Dreamworks. Basically, that created enough of a seed fund for me to take the next step with Chromosphere, with renting an office space. I built up enough where I could rent an office space for a year, so if we just go under and I make no money whatsoever, I've got enough in the bank to pay for the office for at least a year.

We also got a job designing a little short segment (at the time) for the new Cosmos series. It was a three to four minute little short film about ancient Mesopotamia and how they basically went away because of drought.

*Frame from the Ancient Mesopotamia shot on the Cosmos.*

Mack:

What's really funny to me about this is even just how cavalier you were about how it came up, right? You're pitching your studio and you're not getting responses or anything, and then Paws of Fury is like, "Yeah, sure." Did it catch you off-guard too, since that was the first one where you just like, "Oh, shit. Okay, cool. I guess this is happening."?

Kevin:

Yeah. I was just completely just winging it. I didn't know. I don't think I ever even put together a full budget for it or anything. They wanted to know how much it would cost per week, and I just asked everyone what their rates were and added it up, and then added 10% to that or something, and was like, "I guess this is our rate," and they're like, "Okay." Then that 10% over the course of a year, added up to enough for me to rent a studio, so I was pretty proud of that.

Mack:

Amazing!

Kevin:

We don't do stuff that way anymore. It's been a process like that. There was no one around to show me how to do any of that part of it, any of the business management. That was one aspect where I never had a role model, for better or for worse, who could bring me in and show me, "This is how you run a studio."That was just completely trial and error. It feels like to this day, it's still trial and error sometimes. You still keep finding these situations where it's like, "Wow, we've never done that before." These things just come up. It just gets more and more complicated as you get into it, from running just a small design production, to working on a Netflix series or whatever it is. Things just get a lot more complicated. We try to ask questions and we make a lot of mistakes. I don't know. We're still going somehow.

Mack:

You got Chromosphere. It launches. Was there much of a plan with it initially? Had you given that much thought? Or was it still just seeing what developed ultimately?

Kevin:

That period was really tough. There were a bunch of people I called up for advice around that time. I remember one of them was Ken Duncan, who's a veteran Disney animator, who has his own studio in Pasadena called Duncan Studios. I guess I shouldn't have said there were no role models, because just not where I was actually working with them and day-to-day seeing what was happening, but Ken was very open. We went to lunch and he told me about his experiences and was very clear. I just had lunch with them a few weeks back and caught up again, because we've kept in touch over the years. And I was like, "Man, some of the stuff you told me at that first lunch we had, I still think about it all the time."

It was just things like, "What are you going to do if it gets down to it where you just can't pay the bills or something?" I was like, "I don't really know." He was like, "I've been through some hard times." He told me that he started a studio in 2007 right before the big financial crisis. Suddenly, everything was in turmoil and he was like, "It was pretty dark." He was like, "It's a whole different world, having that responsibility on your shoulders."

I also met up with Chris Prynoski and Ben Kalina from Titmouse, and they told me their experiences. I think the main thing I was asking them was, "How do you know when it's real?" From the point where you have an idea to start a studio and even when you rent a place, how do you know it's finally going to just keep going?" They were like, "I don't know." They just had that look in their eyes that now I recognize. Every year I'm so thankful that it's still going. They were making a thing of it that I've been a full-time employee of Chromosphere since 2016. It's my main thing. I don't have to do anything else. I never thought that would be a reality.

Mack:

I think it just shows that maybe we're all in it together, but we're also trying to work it out ourselves.

Kevin:

It was also funny about catching up with Ken Duncan again. We've talked twice I think, during the pandemic. He was like, "Remember when I told you about how stuff gets crazy?," and I was like, "Yeah," because now we're both in it simultaneously. A lot of people I talked to at big studios seem like they've moved past it, but running a small studio through the pandemic was ... it got hairy. I felt like I experienced what Ken had warned me was going to happen at some point. Our entire business model just basically completely changed during the pandemic, because so many TV productions shut down and TV work had become a real backbone of our studio leading up to the pandemic.

We finished up the shows we were working on before the Pandemic in the first six to nine months or whatever, and then never got another TV show after that. I kept thinking it was just going to come back, and it just never did. We had to pivot completely, 180 degrees, to just all this other stuff that we're doing now, which has been really fun and everything, but there were those moments where I was like, "I don't know what we're going to do." I felt like I was flying an airplane where you see the fuel running out and you see the ground approaching and you're just like, "I don't know if we're going to make it."

Mack:

What did you do?

Kevin:

We looked at everything we possibly could. We called up everyone we'd ever worked with. The things that came out of it that were real savior moments for us, were starting to work with Unreal and Epic. We started applying for and getting these mega grants from them to do work in real time. We started creating short films with the Unreal Engine, which started to financially support us for a good while, and then just started picking up any work we could. It was doing some animations for social media, doing some 3D model designs for this game or whatever. There's been no pattern to it, but also it's been all good. It's all been very fun, smaller stuff, documentary animation, just things like that. We still do development work for some people, but it's primarily been the Unreal stuff, and then pairing that with just adding up all these small projects to make up the rest of it, essentially.

*Frame from Mall Stories - a documentary style short.*

Mack:

Well, it's interesting because I remember following y'all's work when it first started coming out because it looked really good. I will say that it feels like you've got way more range now, and maybe than you ever had before, just through the experience of doing all these different things. It has to make you a bit excited about the future, because I'm sure when you started the company, you had this vision of this little niche that you were going to fill. It's blossomed into becoming more than that. I'd love to hear some of your ideas on where are you guys now, staff wise, what size are you and have you thought, I don't know, what's next for Chromosphere as we look ahead over the next 10 years or so?

Kevin:

We're a lot smaller now. Before the Pandemic, I think we were around 30 or so, and now we're around 10 or 12 most of the time. The studio rebalanced itself, because we got a lot bigger, because we had had a huge design team to work on all the shows that we were doing. Now, it's this very small team, but we have a lead in every area we need, for 3D, or animation, or design or whatever. It's funny. It feels like just back to the start again. In some ways it's a comfortable spot for me to be in, because it is like I've been through this before. I remember when we first started the studio and it was just a couple of us and we were just trying out new stuff.

In a lot of ways, the stuff that we're doing in Unreal feels like that moment when I first saw Stéphane comp that little poster for me a long time ago. It's this whole new way of working that I've gotten so excited about, just creating things in real time and being really experimental with it. It's already led to new stuff. We did the opening titles for the Beavis and Butt-head movie that came out last year. We did that all in Unreal.

Mack:

I had no idea.

Kevin:

We never would've known that if we hadn't gotten into this situation in the pandemic and found our way to Unreal, and then this strange job comes up out of nowhere and we're like, "We could do that. We know Unreal." We're pushing really hard into more of our original projects. We're pushing hard into educational based projects. We've started applying for grants, like federal grants and educational space for projects we're developing. We've learned a lot about that during the pandemic too. We're working with educators and people to figure out how we can use art, just for better purposes.

It's become a huge passion of ours in the studio. Everyone feels very strongly about it. We want to find a way to use what we're doing for education in some way. We've made that a big initiative at the studio. We're just exploring everything. We're looking at creating 3D assets to sell in the Unreal marketplace, so other people can build things with our stuff. It's honestly just super fun. It's so new again, which is just great. We never wanted to get to a place where we're just a factory, just churning things out and anything like that. All these circumstances have forced us into a place where everything is just new again.

Mack:

Kevin, this was fantastic, and super excited about your talk this summer. Have a good weekend, and we'll be in touch soon..

Kevin:

Yeah, you too. See you guys.

Mack Garrison 4/28/23 Mack Garrison 4/28/23

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mack Garrison 2/27/23 Mack Garrison 2/27/23

Takeover Tuesday with Sarah Chokali

An interview with Sarah Chokali: a passionate and multidisciplined motion designer based in Brooklyn, New York. I was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq, and have had a lifelong interest in the power of visual storytelling.

Q&A with Sarah Chokali.

Read time: 5min

Mack Garrison:

Thanks for participating in our Tuesday Takeover series, Sarah. For folks not familiar with you or your work, could you give us an introduction and a little background on how you got into the creative space?

Sarah Chokali:

Thank you for having me in the Tuesday Takeovers alongside inspirational artists I’ve admired.

I'm Sarah Chokali, a passionate and multidisciplined motion designer based in Brooklyn, New York. I was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq, and have had a lifelong interest in the power of visual storytelling.

Growing up in a challenging environment sparked my creativity and my love for art at a young age. I've always been fascinated by the way that visual expression can create a connection between people.

I’ve started my career as a graphic designer around 2014. However, my passion for animation led me to discover the world of motion design. Since then, I've been on an ongoing journey to learn more about using motion to communicate and bring ideas to life. I aim to create impactful visual experiences, and I’m not tied to one design discipline. I am working on experimenting with different techniques.

Currently, I’m working with the dream team at Grandarmy at their office in New York City.

Mack Garrison:

You've got an entertaining portfolio in a variety of styles! Do you have a preferred medium you like more than others?

Sarah Chokali:

That's a great question. I'm a bit of a medium maverick. I don't believe in playing by the rules and sticking to just one medium. To me, the magic happens when different mediums come together to create something truly unique and unexpected as long as there is a clear contrast, whether in values, shapes, textures, and/or colors.

Having said that, After Effects is like my home base, the central hub where all my creative ideas come together. It's where I can bring all these different assets and techniques together.

*Opening shot from Sarah Chokali’s demo reel.*

Mack Garrison:

Some would say that 3d motion design work and illustration work are on opposite sides of the creative spectrum. How does one approach influence the other?

Sarah Chokali:

It's true, 3D motion design and illustration can appear to be on opposite sides of the creative spectrum. But for me, it's less about the differences between the two and more about the different processes that go into each.

I think of it like this - sometimes, I sketch an illustration on my iPad using my pen on the screen, then I'll bring those sketches into Adobe Illustrator and use the pen tool with my mouse to refine the lines. Both steps are part of creating an illustration, but they require different approaches.

The same goes for 3D motion design. During the process of building abstract shapes and bringing them to life in 3D whether using simulations of keyframes, it can be very different from the traditional illustration process. Both methods bring me joy and excitement; by combining different techniques in one place, a new style can be born.

The switch between different mediums is challenging. It didn’t come easily to me, especially when I’m fighting that resistance to using my comfort tools instead experimenting with new techniques. It takes time, practice, and dedication to combine different techniques. I had to sacrifice a lot of my social life and even some sleep in order to learn 3D, but my drive to create unique visuals kept me motivated.

I don’t recommend the combination unless you have enough energy and time. Nothing is more important than our health.

Mack Garrison:

Great answer! I really love your character work; both illustrative and the 3d versions. Where does the inspiration for each come from?

Sarah Chokali:

It’s flattering to know that you find it this way; thanks a lot.

My inspiration for the characters comes from my desire to challenge gender norms and celebrate femininity. Growing up in an environment where being a woman was seen as a sin and with limited representation, I've always been drawn to creating strong female characters. I find joy in bringing these characters to life, both through my traditional illustrations and through my 3D animations. I consciously and subconsciously find it as a way to give a voice to those who may have felt suppressed in the past and to provide a positive representation of women in my work.

*Character from Sarah’s “Parallel Project.”*

Mack Garrison:

What’s an ideal project for you, and is there a brand you would love to work with?

Sarah Chokali:

Since I’m currently not a freelancer, I’d say what makes a great project to me is the project where I need to push out my limits and seek to create unique visuals for it.

Mack Garrison:

It's always hard to choose a "favorite" project, but is there one piece that really sticks out to you?

Sarah Chokali:

Ah, that’s so tough, especially given that the most interesting projects are still in production. But I just started a new passion project where I share a breathing exercise for the social media scroller. This project is dedicated to creating animated content that offers a peaceful refuge for the mind. Also, it is gonna be an exercise for me as a motion creator.

Mack Garrison:

Can’t wait to see it! I know you're a big advocate for women in tech. What are some initiatives you're currently working on?

Sarah Chokali:

It has always been a pleasure and great responsibility to advocate time and efforts to help unrepresented groups. I’m involved with Code Lab initiative in Baghdad, which focuses on creating the first AI hub in Iraq by organizing bootcamps and workshops. However, I’m temporarily not as active as I used to be when I was present in Baghdad. My goal is to create impactful content that serves to inspire or represent oppressed voices, especially women in my country.

Mack Garrison:

How has growing up in Iraq shaped your professional career?

Sarah Chokali:

With every challenge comes a new opportunity to learn and develop. Living in Iraq was like living life in a difficult mode. Not only I experienced economic sanctions, two wars, and a civil war that cost me to lose friends and family members. But I also experienced living in a society where women are titled to be only good wives and caring mothers. While I was lucky to have supportive parents, the environment was unfair to women. Women’s freedom and independence are far away from being a reality.

I was vocal about my rights as a human being to work and choose my path. My desire to make an impact and work passionately as a creator was unrealistic to dream of in the environment I lived in.

But I was curious about animation creation. When my uncle’s house got a computer, I stayed there playing with MS paint and was fascinated by that software. Yup! I imagined I could create things frame by frame with that software.

It’s more like my motion design career helped me get independence. Additionally, when I paid for my work, I’d save 75% of it to invest in optimizing my work process to overcome the challenges I was facing.

My background has shaped me into a more determined and resilient individual, always seeking to learn and grow in my craft.

Sarah Chokali — *Sarah is one of Iraq’s Influential Women In Tech - click the image to see the article!*

Mack Garrison:

Any final takeaways for our audience?

Sarah Chokali:

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about my story with motion design.

With motion design being a rapidly expanding field, it's truly an exciting time to be a part of this industry. Accessibility to resources has never been easier, and if creativity gives purpose to your life, then listening to your intuition, overcoming obstacles, and putting in hard work can lead to fulfilling that purpose.

However, keeping up with the constant advancements in technology and technique can be intimidating, which is why it's crucial to prioritize rest. This includes taking breaks from social media and focusing on physical and mental health. Social media platforms are designed to consume as much of our attention as possible, making it even more important to reduce the time spent scrolling and redirect that energy toward what truly matters. It sounds easy but we all know that many of us find it challenging to limit the impact of social media on our energy.

Mack Garrison 1/18/23 Mack Garrison 1/18/23

Takeover Tuesday Abbie Bacilla

An interview with Abbie Bacilla: 2D and 3D motion designer and illustrator.

Q&A with Abbie Bacilla.

Read time: 5min

Matea Losenegger:

Thank you for taking part in our Tuesday Takeover series! Can you give us a little insight into you and your work?

Abbie Bacilla:

Thank Y’ALL for considering me for Tuesday Takeover! My name is Abbie Bacilla, I’m a 2D and 3D motion designer and illustrator. I work primarily in tech, but love to do character animation on the side.

Matea Losenegger:

What made you pursue design and animation as a career?

Abbie Bacilla:

Animation was always something I wanted to pursue; I wanted to work for Cartoon Network or Disney when I was in high school, but CalArts was (and is) way too expensive. Instead, I went to a small liberal arts college and shifted to graphic design, because I thought it would lead to more jobs. While in college, I happened upon a night class for motion design. My professor gave me the impression that it was way easier and faster than frame-by-frame animation, so I gave it a shot. I ended up liking it so much, I shifted my whole career to it!

*Excerpt from How Conservatives Created Cancel Culture #shorts*

Matea Losenegger:

What is it like to work at Frame.io on a platform that’s growing so fast within our industry?

Abbie Bacilla:

It’s incredibly exciting to work for a product that other motion designers use. It’s the reason I wanted to work for Frame.io in the first place – it’s a great product with great people working on it! I’ve been at Frame for almost five years, and I’ve had the privilege to watch the company grow from under 100 to over 500. It’s a unique situation for sure, and made me learn a lot of motion techniques and soft skills very quickly. I highly recommend working in a small in-house team at least once; it’s very rewarding to build a brand and make content with a tight-knit group of creatives.

Matea Losenegger:

How would you describe your art style and what was the path that brought you to it?

Abbie Bacilla:

I like to keep my Frame.io and personal art styles separate. My Frame.io “art style” is more about the motion; we like to look at the minimalist typography trends that other tech and film brands are achieving and apply it to our own brand voice. My personal art style stays in the realm of round, colorful and expressive characters, mainly in 2D but sometimes in 3D. I love stretching and exaggerating emotions with a character’s face and body language.

*Playing Cards - character loosely based off of King Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn*

Matea Losenegger:

The characters you create are so fun and playful. What is your process for bringing them to life?

Abbie Bacilla:

In the beginning, LOTS of pinterest boards and instagram bookmarks. I try to actively seek inspiration rather than wait for it to jump in my lap. I’m mainly inspired by runway fashion, drag, video games, cartoons, and my own life experiences. When I’m sketching, it’s really important for me to streamline the character’s shape language and cut unnecessary detail. In the future I’d like to experiment with more geometric, sharp character designs, rather than my usual bubbly style.

Matea Losenegger:

Do any of your projects stand out as a favorite?

Abbie Bacilla:

My short film that I launched in October, Spacepup, is my favorite so far! It was originally created for the anthology series Things Took a Turn, but I’ve submitted it to a multitude of festivals in New York. I’m hoping it’ll get selected for at least one, so I’ll be able to watch it on a big screen with my best friends in 2023.

Matea Losenegger:

What was one of your most challenging assignments?

Abbie Bacilla:

The first fully-3D launch video I made, Frame.io’s iPad app in 2019. I had a very rudimentary knowledge of Cinema4D at the time, and was limited to Arnold as a third party renderer since I only had an iMac Pro to work with. I was put in charge of the story and boards, so I had to partially direct all the live action bits. I learned a lot from creating that video, and it gave me a taste of what a director role would look like!

Matea Losenegger:

I see you’re a four-time School of Motion alumni and have a wide skill set in 2D and 3D. Are there any areas in animation that you haven’t explored yet or would like to?

Abbie Bacilla:

There are too many things to learn! I know every motion designer is saying this, but I’m going to try and dive deeper into Blender. I follow a lot of Blender artists on Twitter and they’ve inspired me greatly. Other than that, I’m at a point in my career where I need to double down and expand/improve what I can do with Cinema4D and After Effects. Cinema4D is just a rabbit hole of possibilities. I just need the right project to inspire me to learn more!

Matea Losenegger:

On your site you mention that some of your hobbies include video games and drag shows. Have you found any inspiration from those things for your work?

Abbie Bacilla:

Yes, absolutely! There are so many creative AAA and indie games that inspire me all the time – my latest favorites have been Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, Hades, and Cult of the Lamb. I’d love to create 2D character animations and assets for an indie game someday, ideally for a side-scroller like Cuphead or a fighting game like Skullgirls.

As for drag, it’s not the most obvious source of inspiration for motion design, but that’s why I love it! Drag is great inspiration in terms of color palettes, shape language, visual storytelling, comedic timing and motion in general. I’m a queer artist living in NYC, so I have an abundance of local drag I can go see. But I also watch shows like Rupaul’s Drag Race and Dragula – they’ve really popularized the art form and made it more accessible. Highly recommend both shows as well as supporting the local drag in your area!

Matea Losenegger:

What does 2023 look like for you? Are there any projects or upcoming endeavors you’re excited about?

Abbie Bacilla:

I’m collaborating with a friend on a character-heavy short, which I’m very excited for. Other than that, I haven’t consistently kept up with my drawing since covid started. I think 2023 will be the year I develop my visual style and start posting illustrations and 3D renders more.

Matea Losenegger:

What advice would you give to aspiring creatives?

Abbie Bacilla:

This is a common one, but I would find a hobby or source of joy outside of motion that can inspire your work. For example, my latest short film was inspired by my dog Ernie. Not that I’m saying to get a dog – it’s a big responsibility and it’s not for everyone – but it could be pottery, a sport, a tabletop game, book club, anything that will get you outside your home and office and talking to people!

Matea Losenegger:

Thanks so much, Abbie! This was a great chat.

Mack Garrison 1/16/23 Mack Garrison 1/16/23

Takeover Tuesday Zak Tietjen

An interview with Zak Tietjen: an animator & illustrator/designer living out in Columbus, Ohio.

Q&A with Zak Tietjen.

Read time: 5min

Mack Garrison:

Zak! I've been lucky enough to work with you over the years, but for those that don't know who you are, tell us a bit about yourself.

Zak Tietjen:

Thanks so much for having me! I’ve really enjoyed reading other interviews of people I’ve admired & some friends of mine.

I’m an animator & illustrator/designer living out in Columbus, Ohio. I love working on a variety of projects from 2D shape animation to cel animated characters and all the way to realistic 3D animation. I have a wife, 2 little girls and 2 dogs who I love spending my free time with at playgrounds, hiking, or cooking up some new recipes.

Mack Garrison:

As more and more folks choose to live and work in smaller markets, tell us a bit about how you were able to build a successful freelance career in Ohio.

Zak Tietjen:

Honestly, I feel like I sort of stumbled into it. I’ve been freelancing for about 6 or so years now and thankfully I’ve been able to build up a lot of connections outside of Ohio. It started slow but it was very important to me to build up trust with any studios/agencies/clients that I worked with. Never miss a deadline, always communicate when you need more time or don’t know a certain skill/technique (but willing to learn), and try to meet or exceed expectations for the project. And honestly, just don’t be a jerk haha. These are all things that several people before me have said, but following those loose guidelines is what I think allowed me to thrive working remotely, before the pandemic made it more common. After doing that enough, you start to get good word-of-mouth. Friends would recommend me for projects or studios would come back because they know I’ll make it easier for them by working hard and hitting deadlines.

*Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight - Main On End Title Sequence.*

Mack Garrison:

Let's jump into style. How would you describe your aesthetic and your work?

Zak Tietjen:

Oof, that’s a tough one. I’ve been told that I have a certain style but I guess I don’t really see it that way. Admittedly, I love dabbling in a bunch of different styles but I think what people see as a through line is how I animate. I love bringing some of my humor into my character work, when possible. My wife won’t admit I’m funny, so I like to use my work as an outlet. I also really love a nice blend of styles, since that reflects a bit of my skillset. When there’s a lovely blend of 3D & 2D (heck, throw collage in there too!), that’s what excites me! I get bored staying within the same style and I like to jump around. It might also be a bit of envy (or overconfidence haha) when I see artists I admire creating amazing work in other styles and I think to myself “Oh! I want to try that!”.

Mack Garrison:

What are some of your favorite types of projects to work on? Do you have a favorite project from over the years?

Zak Tietjen:

What I love about this industry is that there is such a massive variety of mediums that we can work in. I could be working on some fun cel animation and brush up on my drawing skills, or finding new ways to keyframe some bouncy shapes in After Effects. Then I’ll get tactile and step away from the computer to explore some collage style animation, or rig up some goofy 2D characters. And there are so many opportunities that excite me. The majority of my work is what I’d consider ads, but I’ve also done title sequences, billboards in Times Square, UI animation for tech conferences and graphics for large sports stadiums. Because I’m able to hop around a lot, I think that helps keep each project interesting.

A couple times a year I’m asked to give a talk to the seniors at my alma mater Bowling Green State University and I always try to explain to them that working in this industry doesn’t have to feel like you’re doing “soul-sucking ad work”. I try to find opportunities in every project to do something I consider fun. Whether that’s taking a 2D illustration and giving it a bit of faux 3D in After Effects or pushing the creative a little bit beyond what’s expected. This also brings it back to building that trust and trying to exceed expectations, when possible. Each project presents its own challenges, and at my core, I’m a problem-solver. It’s fun for me to break down a challenging shot and see how we can break it down into smaller actions.

Mack Garrison:

Who are some artists and studios that really inspired you?

Zak Tietjen:

That’s always a tough question to keep concise haha. I find inspiration from so many things and artists, but I’ll try to avoid the usual freelancers & studios that everyone is familiar with. Nocky Dinh is an amazing artist who I had the pleasure of working on Hawkeye with and I was blown away by her talent. She can seemingly crush both 2D & 3D styles. Continuing the trend of title design, Arisu Kashiwagi was another amazing artist who I found on Instagram and I was surprised how much of her work I already had seen & loved. And then Petrick is a collective I believe in Germany, but they’re chock-full of absolutely stellar designers & animators. Everytime they release something online I’m blown away by the wonderful blend of styles and humor. And you know I’m a sucker for people who blend multiple styles together.

*Marvel Studios’ Hawkeye - Main On End Title Sequence*

Mack Garrison:

What are some things folks should consider before they go freelance?

Zak Tietjen:

For a lot of people, going freelance straight out of college sounds both appealing and terrifying haha. I know it’s obvious, but you’re all on your own. You will often need to communicate directly with clients without the buffer of a studio, so you want to make sure you have good communication skills. For me, I think it helps to have worked in a studio for a few years so that you have an understanding of the full process, from producers to art directors and sound mixers. And one of the bigger tasks that often deters people from freelance is time & money management. If you have a partner or even children, those are big factors. My kids are eating machines, I need to make sure I’m planning our finances out months in advance.

It’s great to work for yourself and build your own schedule but you’re solely responsible for everything. Sometimes getting a nice check at the end of a project, it’s tempting to go get that new gadget in your amazon wishlist, but you have to plan ahead and make sure you have funds set aside for taxes as well. I could go on and on about all of the boring ‘adult things’ you should consider before freelance (I didn’t even talk about insurance or retirement!) but I’ll spare everyone haha.

Mack Garrison:

What's the hardest part of working for yourself and what's the best part?

Zak Tietjen:

I know it’s not for everyone, but I actually really enjoy working from home. I like being able to decide my own schedule. Over the years, I’ve begrudgingly forced myself to be a morning person, so I really enjoy waking up early and starting on work for a couple of hours before the kids wake up, and then spending time with them before school. This also allows me some time to go to the gym, which I think really helps fight off that feeling of sitting at a computer all day.

I’m also the chef in the house and we have a lot of mouths to feed, so if I’m ahead on my work, it’s nice that I can start prepping for dinner or run to the grocery store.

On the other hand, being solely responsible for your work & income can be a bit daunting. Thankfully, I feel like I’ve made enough friends and have a good system of keeping track of my invoices & upcoming projects that it’s rarely an issue, but occasionally there’s still that self-doubt in my mind that’s asking “What if I never get hired again?”. I’ve always been someone who tries to plan ahead for the future so having a career that’s constantly uncertain can be worrisome, but I feel like I’ve been able to figure out my own ways of staying organized and allowing some wiggle-room for uncertainty.

Mack Garrison:

For any studios or agencies reading this post, what's the number one takeaway they should know when booking a freelancer?

Zak Tietjen:

I’m not really sure I have any advice for just studios or agencies, but I do usually try to approach working relationships like friendships. We’ve all had a friend who didn’t treat you the same as you treated them. Maybe you’re the one who always paid for food or you helped them move into their new place but they can’t help you when you need it. So I try to see things from both sides.

I’ve been fortunate enough to build up some nice relationships with studios who hire me often and when they do something kind for me, I’m definitely going to remember that and return the favor. Let’s say it’s 7pm on a Friday and the client has some easy last-minute feedback (easy being a keyword haha). If I’m at home, I don’t mind quickly changing that for the studio because one day my kids will be home sick from school and I’ll have a slow day or maybe I need to take my dog to the vet, etc.

Showing kindness or understanding in a working relationship goes a long way, and if you don’t take advantage of it (freelancers or studios & agencies), I think the output of work is likely to improve, in my experience.

Mack Garrison:

What are you most excited about with the future of Motion Design?

Zak Tietjen:

A bit of projecting here, I’m sure, but I’m super excited for all of the motion dads & moms! Relatively speaking, I’m still pretty young in this industry (the peppered gray in my hair would disagree), so I’m always wondering what kind of longevity I have as a freelance animator/designer. From my experience, typically you would hustle in a big city (L.A., New York, etc.) and either become a Creative/Art Director, or open your own studio and eventually you’d find your way to retirement.

Well, things seem to be changing now. You no longer have to live in those big cities to get work or grow as an artist and some people are just rocking it as amazing freelancers. That and now people being more open about a healthier work/life balance, and many are relocating and starting families. I’m just excited to see where that takes us as an industry. Will I still be jamming as a 60 year old freelance animator? (Can you throw my face through one of those aging filters please haha)

Mack Garrison:

Anything else you'd like to share with our readers?

Zak Tietjen:

This industry can feel so large and daunting but all takes is a simple trip out to a conference (Dash Bash Vol. 2, anyone?) to make it all feel small again. There are so many wonderful and kind people that I constantly bump into both online and at meet-ups, and I’m incredibly grateful for all of the friends I’ve made. There’s nothing better than seeing another friend pop-up on a kick-off call, on the 1st day of a long booking.

By nature I’m an introverted person, but I extremely value the friends and connections I’ve made along the way. So if you haven’t tried to put yourself out there and go to some in-person meetups, I highly recommend it!

Mack Garrison:

Thanks so much, Zak! This was a great chat and I know a lot of folks will be happy to have your insight. And see you at the Bash this July!

Mack Garrison 1/9/23 Mack Garrison 1/9/23

Takeover Tuesday Diogo Rosa

An interview with Diogo Rosa: Portuguese graphic designer and creative director.

Q&A with Diogo Rosa.

Read time: 5min

Mack Garrison:

Thanks for participating in our Tuesday Takeover, Diogo. For those that are unfamiliar with you and your work, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Diogo Rosa:

I am a Portuguese graphic designer and creative director who collects a vast and varied amount of ambitions and passions. I love cinema, design, art, food and I recently discovered that I like to travel more than I thought I would.

The idea of being able to experience other cultures and other realities beyond my own is something that fascinates me.

I have been working as a freelancer for the past 7 years now, which allows me to travel while I work. I started my career while I was still in the second year of my design degree at the University of Aveiro. Since then I have worked with numerous brands, studios, and companies. I have had the privilege of working on significant projects that effectively and actively want to create a positive impact on people and society.

*Snapshot from Diogo’s “Spice Trade” project.*

Mack Garrison:

You have a wonderful blend of whimsical characters to more graphic looks. How did you develop such a wide range of styles?

Diogo Rosa:

I'm not fascinated by the idea of doing the same thing over and over again, some people say that sometimes my head can be a little chaotic and complex, but in my opinion, it's just a wide range of ideas coming at the same time, and a huge desire to put them all into practice. I get bored easily, so I find tools to ensure that doesn't happen. That ended up defining a little bit of what I do professionally. I'm always pushing my limits to learn and do new and different things, and when that happens I want to see that reflected in my work.

*Character from Diogo’s “O Rosa” project..*

Mack Garrison:

What are your favorite types of projects to work on?

Diogo Rosa:

Those that allow me to tell stories. Since I was a kid I always loved the idea of storytelling. These stories can be found in many different forms: in movies, visual identities, logos, posters, illustrations... the list is endless.

Mack Garrison:

It's always hard to choose one piece, but is there a project that you're especially proud of?

Diogo Rosa:

By the time I finish a project, it is not difficult to choose, however, this decision is ephemeral. Since progress is my central goal, I strive to make the next piece better than the last. They all tell different stories and represent different contexts. By this I mean, that right now my piece could be one, but tomorrow it could be another. But, if I had to choose only one, it would be the one I did not do in a professional context, but as an escape from everyday routine, almost like an illustrated diary of my ambitions, anxieties, and desires. This project would be "O Rosa".

Mack Garrison:

How did you initially get into design and illustration? Who were the folks that inspired you?

Diogo Rosa:

I remember my parents saying that I wanted to be a chef when I was a kid, yet every time they looked at me, I was drawing, painting, or building something. I don't see it so much as a premeditated choice, but something that happened naturally and organically. Ignoring the cliche, I assume that everything that surrounds me is a reason for inspiration. However, my most recent passion for traveling around the world has acted as a base for many of my new projects.

Mack Garrison:

Could you tell us a bit about your process? How do you try to tackle creative problems?

Diogo Rosa:

There isn't usually a consistent and uniform line of creation for me. I like to adapt to the clients and the project itself. Everyone and every project require different ways of thinking, and it doesn't help me to have something very rigidly structured. Don get me wrong, the structure is always there, however, for the initial phase, where the creative part is a huge portion of the equation, I like to have a more flexible and fluid process.

But there is something I always do before I start designing. I open my notebook or a blank artboard in adobe illustrator and start putting all my ideas there, from the craziest to the most basic and simple. And in the middle of all these experiments, there is always something that can work as a base or structure for the project.

About the creative problem, well... we all procrastinate, we all have moments where we feel uncreative, and in those moments the only thing that helps (at least for me) is to just keep pushing.

Mack Garrison:

What are some of the tools you use to create your work?

Diogo Rosa:

Throughout my career, I have lost count of the number of tools I have used to create projects, and the number keeps growing, every day we have new tools to respond to new needs, and I make the effort to learn them. Whether these tools are digital or analog. Right now I use Adobe Creative Suite, however, I believe we just need to be creative and stop thinking we need to use X & Y tools to create something magical.

Mack Garrison:

As a successful freelancer, any advice you'd like to give to the next generation of artists?

Diogo Rosa

Thanks for calling me successful, but I still have so much to learn and to grow, and maybe that's what I can share. To not stop growing and learning. No one knows everything, even when we think we do.

It is so easy nowadays to create, share and learn. This easiness brings with it a higher level of competition. With more people doing it, the more saturated the market becomes. Nevertheless, there are audiences for everyone.

My advice is not to waste time with doubts. It was something that I struggled with for a very long time, with so many ideas running through my head, plus all the doubts about which one I should do... It's not worth wasting time on second thoughts, but rather gaining time on doing what is on your mind.

Mack Garrison:

Anything else you'd like to share with our readers?

Diogo Rosa:

Work on your dreams and yourselves. Keep trying to keep yourself fulfilled and happy. And above all, if we help others to achieve their goals, others will help us to achieve ours. We don't have to drag other people down to feel empowered. Be ambitious and humble at the same time.

Mack Garrison:

Thanks so much for the great chat, Diogo! And for the folks reading this, make sure to check out Diogo’s Behance linked here.

Mack Garrison 1/2/23 Mack Garrison 1/2/23

Takeover Tuesday Andy Evans

An interview with Andy Evans: an independent Motion Designer with a strong focus on 3D & Art Direction.

Q&A with Andy Evans.

Read time: 2min

Mack Garrison:

Thanks for participating in our Tuesday Takeover, Andy. For those that are unfamiliar with you and your work, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Andy Evans:

Hey, thanks for inviting me to this! I’m Andy Evans, a freelance motion designer based in Reading, UK. I went freelance a month before the pandemic struck which was beautifully timed but I’ve been busy ever since. These days my work has transitioned over from 2D to 3D projects but I still call myself a generalist.

Mack Garrison:

Your 3d work is so fun! How did you initially get into the animation space?

Andy Evans:

Thanks! I’ve always been into drawing from a young age and I grew up watching Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon in the 90s. Fast forward 20 years and I started to grow an interest in graphic design. I went on to study this in which one of the modules was motion graphics. At the same time, I discovered Andrew Kramer’s videos on YouTube and it spiralled from there. After graduating, I worked at a few studios and agencies in London surrounded by incredibly talented people who knew 3D inside out. I would always pester them and ask the most basic and mundane questions, but I learnt so much.

*Collection of shots from Andy’s “play” page on his website.*

Mack Garrison:

Are there certain types of projects that you love to work on? What makes a good client?

Andy Evans:

My favourites are always the ones where there’s lots of room for creative freedom. When the client understands the process and enjoys the outcomes, it always ends up becoming such a positive and fun experience.

Mack Garrison:

Tell us a bit about your process, how do you approach a creative challenge?

Andy Evans:

I try and keep as open-minded as possible during the early stages while sticking to the fundamentals of graphic design. I then sketch these ideas out on paper before bringing them into the digital scene. At the same time, depending on deadlines, I need to be considerate of how long things can take as 3D always takes longer than you think! .

Mack Garrison:

I love the "Play" page on your website. How important is play in a creative workflow and how often do you get the chance to mess around?

Andy Evans:

Thanks! I think it’s very important to have some fun. With some projects, there are restrictions on brand guidelines but I always try and bend the rules. On the other hand, projects can be so open that messing around is to be expected! There’s nothing more satisfying than putting your stamp on something.

*Work Andy did for Adele’s performance at Hyde Park.*

Mack Garrison:

It's hard to pick one project as a favorite, but do you have any that stick out as being really fun?

Andy Evans:

I recently was lucky enough to work on the visuals for Adele’s concert at London’s Hyde Park this summer. I was surrounded by so many talented people which made the process so much fun. The energy and enthusiasm from the team were electric!

Mack Garrison:

Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to aspiring creatives?

Andy Evans:

Never stop learning! Keep experimenting and try new things. Don’t feel pressured by social media to compare yourself to others. Just be yourself :)

Mack Garrison:

What do you think the future of Motion Design looks like? Anything you're particularly interested in exploring?

Andy Evans

The fast development of A.I. has been seismic in the past year. Every week there seems to be another company that’s flexing its AI muscles which is fascinating to see. I have started dabbling with it for ideas so I’ll continue to explore that.

Mack Garrison:

Any upcoming projects or personal endeavors you're really excited about?

Andy Evans:

I’m currently working on something that involves boring everyday objects but is portrayed in a fun and unexpected way. Watch this space!

Mack Garrison:

Thanks so much for the great chat, Andy! And for the folks reading this, make sure to check out Andy’s site!

Guest User 6/29/21 Guest User 6/29/21

Takeover Tuesday with Tatiana Shchekina

Q&A with Tatiana Shchekina, a motion designer, animator, 3D artist, and storyteller with more than 10 years of experience.

Q&A with Tatiana Shchekina
Read time: 10min

Madison Caprara:

Hi Tatiana! Really excited to learn more about you. Could you give us a little overview of yourself and your work?

Tatiana Shchekina:

Hi Madison, I’m very excited about this takeover! I’m a Motion Designer and Art Director originally from a Russian city in the far east with an unpronounceable name. Over the past 15 years, I was fortunate to work as a Motion Designer in television, advertising agencies, as well as in-house at big companies like Microsoft, AT&T, and Amazon. I’m also constantly working on personal projects. I’ve been incredibly lucky to live in places like Seattle and New York City.

Madison Caprara:
So, how did you initially get into the industry?

Tatiana Shchekina:

I studied Architecture and Interior Design in college and I was making a lot of 3D stuff for my student projects. I became fascinated with Cinema 4D and how powerful and intuitive it was. Around 2005 or 2006, there were very few tutorials or resources online. I wanted to find a mentor who could help me learn C4D properly. By total accident, I found out that our local TV Network had a bunch of designers working in Cinema 4D.

I went there, showed them my ugly C4D renders, and asked if I could help with anything. They let me hang out at the office and I ended up picking up a lot of design and animation basics there. Since I was there almost every day, they would have me do small tasks, and eventually ended up hiring me as a full-time Designer while I was still in school. Only later I found out that I was actually working as a Motion Designer!

Madison Caprara:

From Architecture to Motion Design. That’s incredible!

You relocated pretty far. How difficult was it for you to go from working Motion Design in Russia to the U.S.? Were there any significant challenges?

Tatiana Shchekina:

It was relatively easy for me because I didn’t need a visa sponsorship. I am a lucky Diversity Visa Program winner. The program gives an opportunity to people from all over the world to get a Green Card by randomly selecting them. After winning, I could pick anywhere in the U.S. to live and to work. I picked Seattle as my destination, it wasn’t too big or too small, and had a decent amount of Motion Design jobs. Also, the winter is pretty mild there!

Fortunately for me, American Motion Designers use the same software as Russian Motion Designers (Ae and C4D). The work process is also very similar - from brainstorming to animation. I had eight years of experience working as a Designer in television by the time I moved to the United States, and I was lucky to find a full-time job in an advertising agency just a month after my move. One big challenge I had that is not connected with Motion Design is driving. In Russia, you don’t have to have a car if you live in the city. Most places are accessible by public transport. So I never learned how to drive before I got to the U.S. To get to my first job here in Seattle I had to get up at 5 AM and take three buses. But I was happy to do it because I was still able to do Motion Design on the other side of the world. It seemed like a miracle at the time.

Madison Caprara:

I’ve lived here my entire life and still can’t parallel park, so I 100% feel you.

What is your favorite part of the animation process: pre-production, production, or post-production? Why?

Tatiana Shchekina:

I enjoy the production process the most. When I have a fully defined idea and I know what I am trying to say, I have a lot of fun with the process of experimenting with different approaches and techniques.

Madison Caprara:

In your opinion, Is there any radical distinction between an Animator and a Director?

Tatiana Shchekina:

I usually direct and animate most of the things I work on, and I think of myself as an Art Director. Most creative people want to have input and direction within their work. Once you get more and more experience animating, it's a very organic process to become a director as well.

Madison Caprara:

Do you ever allow yourself to be picky when agreeing to work on a project? What is it that you look for? What boxes need to be checked for you to say, “yes?”

People usually have different answers to this question, and I love the variety I get when it’s asked.

Tatiana Shchekina:

I’m always excited to work with people who are very passionate about Motion Design. I look for opportunities, where I can work with talented people and learn from them, or projects where I can take on new challenges and grow as an artist. I’m also a huge metalhead, and if Metallica ever reaches out with any project, I will absolutely say “Yes!” One time I met a Graphic Designer who worked with them on one of their tour posters, and the only direction that they gave him was to have skulls in that poster. I think that’s the most awesome brief ever!

A metaphor for being a Motion Designer.gif

Madison Caprara:

Going from the ‘potential future’ to the ‘now’, what excites you most about the work you’re doing? Is there anything in particular we should be looking out for?

Tatiana Shchekina:

I love working on personal projects whenever I have a chance. Working on my own stuff gives me complete creative freedom and helps to push the boundaries of my work, and to try out new things. I’m currently working on my new showreel. I want to update an opening for it, and it’s actually one of the hardest things to do because creating a brand for yourself is not easy. I’m very excited about this process though. I’m also working on a few other short animations that I can hopefully publish soon. At my full-time gig at Amazon, I’m excited to drive and define new visual styles and build out a creative team.

Madison Caprara:

Sweet! Well, we will definitely be on the lookout.

Who would you cite as your artistic influence(s)?

Tatiana Shchekina:

There are so many! From Rene Magritte, Frida Kahlo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Antoni Gaudi to Nidia Dias, Peter Tarka, Luke Doyle, Johana Kroft, Handel Eugene, Jonas Mosesson, Justin Lawes, César Pelizer...This list is really really long! My mom used to collect art magazines and postcards with different artworks from all over the world. I loved going through her collection as a kid, and it definitely influenced me as an artist.

Madison Caprara:

That’s quite the roster!

Right now, how would you define success in your life? And in the future, how would you determine if you’ve reached that success point?

Tatiana Shchekina:

For me, success is the balance in life. The balance is when I can work on something that I’m very passionate about, keep growing as an artist, and also have enough time to enjoy life and to live in different places around the world.

Madison Caprara:
I would have to agree.

So, I know we went over what individuals inspire you, but which hubs or communities do you go to for inspiration?

Tatiana Shchekina:

I get inspiration from lots of different things. I really enjoy traveling and getting inspired by architecture and art. I loved living in Manhattan because I was always surrounded by beautiful buildings and could go to a new museum every week. I tried to walk around every day during lunch or after work to discover new parts of New York City.

Different Motion Design conferences are incredibly inspiring too! You go there and meet a lot of talented designers, listen to talks from the best people in the industry. I was full of new ideas after Blend 2019. It was an amazing event! I’m also keeping up with motion design trends on Instagram, Behance, and Pinterest. There is always so much new work being made!

Madison Caprara:

BIG Behance fan right here!

Well, we’re wrapping it up, Tatiana. Do you have any closing advice or statements you would like to share?

Daniel Moreno Cordero:

Being a Motion Designer is not easy. People that get into Motion Design need to really love the process and be willing to constantly learn and try things out. I have been a Motion Designer for a long time, I’m still learning something new every day and I will never stop learning. The consistent process of growing as an artist can be hard. Don’t let self-doubt and procrastination stop you from making art. Just keep going, and you will see the result!