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