Takeover Tuesday with Jardley Jean-Louis
An interview with Jardley Jean-Louis an NYC born multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Queens.
Interviewer: Matea Losenegger
Read time: 5min
Matea:
Hey Jardley! Thanks for lending us your time. Can you please introduce yourself?
Jardley:
Hey! I’m Jardley Jean-Louis, I’m an NYC born multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Queens. I work in illustration, animation and film and center my work on depicting stillness, education, and under-represented identities and subjects.
Matea:
What inspired you to become an artist and how did you get into the motion design space?
Jardley:
It’s funny, I’ve been an artist since I was a kid and was going to say nothing inspired me because this is how it’s been forever. But I have a memory of being really young and there being a boy who was a really great artist in the class, me aspiring to be that good and taking him on as my mentor. So, that kid and my perseverance to get really good.
In terms of motion design, I think in the back of my head while I was pursuing just art, I wanted to get into the animation space. As a kid that meant the goal of having my own show on Nickelodeon and a film for Disney when I grew up, and later and more concretely, learning more about motion design as an Illustrator’s Assistant for a one-person animation studio while in college. That was my first art job. While my role there was to produce character/background design, the CD also invited me into the depths of script-writing, storyboarding, and animating background characters. Getting that well-rounded experience and seeing the final animation which felt like magic to me, was enough to start me on my own journey of honing my animation skills and looking for my own clients.
“Mementos.”
Matea:
How would you describe your artistic style and what are some key themes and messages that you explore in your work?
Jardley:
My work is very character driven and intent on building a mood especially with lights and shadows. I also without intending to, use a lot of deep rich colors. I work digitally these days, but my work has been described as painterly - which is great to hear because my foundation is in traditional painting and drawing. So, that’s unintentionally translated.
The key themes and messages I explore in my work are quiet life moments that speak to the reality of life, education, and under-represented identities and subjects.
Matea:
Can you walk us through your creative process? How do you come up with new ideas and what techniques do you use to bring them to life?
Jardley:
On both client and personal work - the creative process is dictated by the brief or idea and what mood and feeling the work is trying to convey. On client projects I’m zero-ing in on the themes and message the client has shared with me and the key words in the script that define each scene. On personal projects, I have an idea and I’m looking to draw it out through thinking of what type of composition and lighting accentuates it.
An exercise I do is dump every idea (including a ridiculous idea) onto my notebook. I believe that writing every single idea, not criticizing it, and therefore dismissing it, frees your mind to be more creative and find its way to a strong concept. If you’re constantly cutting an idea off at its legs, you won’t feel safe enough to explore and trust you’ll find an idea.
I then work through concepts by sketching them out and writing questions I have for myself. I find the notes especially stimulating.
I also review my long list of Flickr reference images and spend a lot of time on Behance looking for inspo.
“Friends”
Matea:
How different is your approach to client work vs your personal projects?
Jardley:
Well with client work it involves more pre-production than I do in my personal projects. That involves deciphering the script or brief and providing tangible materials such as moodboards, sketches, style frames or mockups, and storyboard animatics. In my own work I do less of that - the tangible materials. I’m typically holding an idea and composition in my head. I’ll look at a ton of reference images and then go straight into creating it in photoshop or after effects when the pieces feel right. For both, I also am finding the color scheme while I’m working - most times I have an idea of colors, but it’s not settled until I’m working on it.
However, since my recent solo exhibition, I’ve started to see the reason for sketches in my own personal projects. It helps to remind you of what the composition is meaning to be and by having it out on the paper, you’re able to see if it’s working or not rather than just going straight to final. Finding out the imagined concept didn’t work bit me in the ass one or twice on this solo.
Matea:
Huge congratulations on your recent solo exhibition "Joy - This Place I Land." What was that experience like and are you interested in working on more gallery work?
Jardley:
Thank you! The experience was incredible, I’m glad. I was selected as a ARTWorks Fellow for Jamaica Center for the Arts and Learning’s 10 month residency and the solo exhibition came from that.
So it was a 10 month process of figuring out what scenes best represented my theme: what does joy and thriving look like in everyday life. Especially being Black.
Originally I had 6 pieces + an animation I planned, but upon revisiting the gallery space and seeing how much space I had, I added 2 more illustrations. Getting to show what joy is for me, which is really just love in life moments and witnessing how much it resonated with folks meant a lot to me.
I’m not really interested in becoming a gallery artist. I’ll have my work in shows here and there as long as it makes sense to me. Same for residencies. I’m not actively pursuing either. I view it as avenues that are available to me as a creative. Never just confined to one avenue.
“Bart Simpson”
Matea:
I know it's difficult to choose, but do you have a favorite piece in the show and what makes it stand out in your mind?
Jardley:
I have two pieces that stand out for me. “Heritage” for its family ties, warmth and sense of just belonging and “To Be With Friends.” for all the love, lightness, and thriving I continually want for my life.
Matea:
Where do you get inspiration? Are there any particular artists or movements that have impacted your work?
Jardley:
I get inspired everywhere. Walking around and looking at things, overhearing conversations, being with people, looking at the work of fellow creatives, taking in my apartment, processing my life, tv shows/films.
Artists that heavily impact my work are Rebecca Mock and Katharine Lam. Particularly for creating a mood and for their use of lighting. Also Pat Perry, for the still and simple moments of life.
Matea:
How do you stay motivated to create your own work in addition to client projects? Do you have any tips for burnout?
Jardley:
I won’t say that I consistently create my own work and do so alongside client projects successfully. I don’t have a routine. Sometimes it happens that it’s a particularly slow time so I have room for my own work, or there’s an idea I want to get out, or mentally I’m in a space to put the work in and things just flow then. I try to honor where I’m at. I guess I stay motivated because producing client work isn’t my end goal for my career. I want the ratio to skew wherein majority of the time, the work I’m producing is mine. It’s what I’m known for and it’s how I make a living. I still plan on working with clients, but I think my voice and creative project being the end goal is more fulfilling.
For burnout, my tip is to honor it as best you can. When I was a permalancer, that meant speaking up that I was taking some mental health days for myself. When I’ve been working non-stop on client work that means taking as much time as I can in between client work. If I’m on deadline, but am already burnt out and a concept isn’t coming or my brain is frying, I try to take chunks of time during the day to just chill out. Honor it as best you can.
“Heritage”
Matea:
Any upcoming projects you're excited about?
Jardley:
I recently wrapped up an animation where I was the illustrator on it which I’m excited to see in its final. It’s about the stained foundation of America.
I have a personal short film animation that I’m currently researching and world-building on on the early years of the AIDS epidemic and Haitians.
Meet the speakers: Amanda Godreau
An interview with Amanda Godreau, a Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist. Through bold work, Amanda lends her creative vision across multiple mediums, showcasing her appreciation for the beauty of design throughout unique spaces.
Q&A hosted by Meryn Hayes and Ashley Targonski.
Read time: 15min
Meryn Hayes:
Amanda, welcome. For those who don't know you, I'd love it if you could give a quick intro and how you got into motion design.
Amanda Godreau:
I got into motion design completely by accident, which is something that I always love to tell people. I think once you're in it, you really start to see that it's everywhere. I went to college originally for coding and then transferred to college in Florida for graphic design, and they just so happened to have one of the best motion design programs there. And a really talented professor found me, and said, "You need to change careers."
I was like, "All right." And it was just, it's been a whirlwind since. I feel like every single year I've learned something really different.
Meryn Hayes:
I think many people can relate to finding their way into this industry. I think this industry gets people from all kinds of career backgrounds, which I think is one of the really unique things about it.
Amanda Godreau:
I completely agree. I think throwing out the plan has been such a good thing for me. I think even as of six months ago, what I had planned just completely flipped. And I think learning to embrace it has only been to my benefit. It's been to the benefit of people around me, and I think it should be discussed more. I don't think you can plan for most things in life.
Meryn Hayes:
Absolutely. Well, that leads really nicely into my next question; so you graduated about a year ago, right? Did you have a lot of expectations of what was going to happen after graduation? I mean, what was the plan?
Amanda Godreau:
I feel like I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do when I graduated. To be completely honest, I didn't even know if I wanted to continue in the same field. I was heavily considering shifting to another industry altogether. And I knew the one thing in my plan was to rest. I came out of art school extremely burnt out. And that's something that needs to be talked about more. There’s something that TJ touched on last time at Dash Bash, I remember being a student watching his panel, and that it was a very big moment for me. I remember thinking "Someone who has been in this industry for so long is acknowledging it, I need to pivot and think about how to build rest to what I'm doing."
That was the plan post-grad, was to rest, and recharge because I knew that the aftermath of being so heavily focused on my career. To be able even to say you have a career in college is crazy, right? I realized I needed to allow myself time to be a 20-year-old in my early twenties, and as a result that’s been really beneficial to my career as well, I think.
Meryn Hayes:
That's so important because as we all know, finding inspiration in your art, in your work has to happen outside of your computer, outside of your desk. Being inspired by things, having a life, and especially at a young age. Feeling like you have the freedom and ability to find who you are because at that age you're still figuring out, "Who am I?" I mean, I'm still figuring out who I am. You need space in your life and to not have everything planned out in such a way that it constricts you from figuring out who that is before you really even started.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah. And that's all to the benefit of the art. I feel like the moments where I had the hardest time making art, creating art, and making art that I was proud of were the moments where I was pushing myself so much that I had nowhere to draw from. If you're not connected to yourself first, you can't make something that's supposed to connect with others. So, I laid aside any professional aspirations I had. Including what studios I wanted to work with and what I wanted to do. I laid it to bed five to six months after graduating because I realized that even if I could do it, I was really going to enjoy doing it. And ultimately, I feel like enjoying the art you're making and your work is the top priority.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of finding your style and what brings you joy and the work that you do after graduation, what was your approach to finding that?
Amanda Godreau:
Finding the work that I enjoy making, I think, for me, has had to do with connecting with so many different people and so many different types of artists. My number one goal this year was to chat with people, learn, and view outside of my lived experience. And that inspired me to make many choices in how I approach my art. I was really fortunate last year. I got to go to Portugal for NFC Portugal. It was just this gigantic NFT conference, no motion designers, I think I was the only of the few ones there.
Even though personally I'm not active in the NFT community, I got to chat with people who are so invested in it, and at the end of the day, everyone's making art, right? Connecting with just people as artists outside of a commercial or traditional background has been so valuable.
Something I started to do as well was to connect with smaller BIPOC and female-owned brands, and I've been working one-on-one with a couple, developing renders pro bono, and just making art with women that I connect with. And that's been a really good way for me to give back, push my creative vision forward, and also feel like I'm doing meaningful work that serves an ethical but also spiritual purpose for me. And that's been really good.
Meryn Hayes:
That's amazing. How were you making those connections with artists after graduation?
Amanda Godreau:
I was chronically online in undergrad; a lot of these connections were friends or people that I had connected with during this time when everyone was online because of the pandemic. I've gotten to travel so much and be like, "Oh my God, we've known each other for four years; we've never met, let's hang out," And that's led to even more connections and more people. And I feel like it's snowballed into this gigantic network of people that I feel like I've known for years, and also simultaneously feel like I don't know it all.
Meryn Hayes:
I think that's one of the things that I am just so appreciative about this industry and this community is that willingness to just chat. I mean, my background is in photography. I ended up here because I found myself at a marketing agency here in Raleigh, which is where I met Mack and Cory who founded Dash. But before I joined, I had been involved in animation and live-action projects, but this whole motion community was completely over my head. And so, as soon as I joined, I just realized how kind everyone was and willing to share their experiences, which I just feel is pretty rare in most industries, but especially in art. I just can't imagine photographers, I don't know, sharing their problems or I just think it's a really special place to be able to find that.
Amanda Godreau:
I agree. I think this community is extremely generous. I think this community overall is extremely humble and I think it's really open. I think there's a lot of room for people to grow in all sorts of directions and I feel like you can almost always find someone to relate to in at least some sense. And everyone's cheerleaders for each other. I don't think, at least the people I intentionally try to connect with and stay in touch with, I feel like everyone's so proud of each other at the end of the day, not just for professional reasons, but for artistic reasons, right?
Something I've tried to make a very different distinction this year is the difference between being a designer and being an artist. I think before this year, I would be a designer and people would ask me, "What's your style?" And I'd respond by saying, "I don't have a style. I follow a brief. I'm a designer, I'm a problem solver." This year I'm getting to explore an artistic side of myself and acknowledging that side, I wasn't open to it at the time, and just starting to understand the difference has been a really big conversation among a lot of people in the community. I think it’s been a really great one.
Meryn Hayes:
Absolutely. I mean, again, going back to your whole life, you're given briefs in college and growing up, about who you're supposed to be or what you're supposed to be doing. And so, for the first time, you're actually trying to figure out, "Who am I?" Both personally and artistically. So, really giving yourself that space on both sides of that coin is just so important.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, I agree.
Meryn Hayes:
So, timeline here, so you were in the middle of college when the pandemic started?
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, I was in my sophomore year. I had done one year in person, at that point II had done one semester of After Effects and one semester of Cinema 4D when then the whole world shut down. That was completely unexpected.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah. And so, how do you feel, I mean, it's all you've known, so hard to compare, but how do you feel that changed your trajectory of what you were learning or how you were learning or learning from other students?
Amanda Godreau:
I think it completely changed the trajectory of my career for sure. I think as for socially, I don't think it left me with much of a college experience or much ability to connect with other people, but that's a completely different topic in itself. I think what that period of online learning gave me was my career. I started freelancing full-time after my second internship. I completely attribute that to the amazing opportunity that Gunner gave me. They hired me as their intern that summer. I wrote them this very dorky email being like, "I really want to work with you guys, and I can work remotely. I'm super good at it, I promise.
I was able to freelance every single year after that. I think about my choice of going freelance after college versus taking a staff job often.
Had there been more in-person opportunities to be in a studio with people collaborating, looking over monitors, going staff would've been more of a consideration for me. But at the end of the day, when I graduated, everything was still Zoom-oriented. I felt most comfortable staying freelance and meeting new people and teams.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, that's really interesting. We were down at SCAD at CoMotion back in March and talking to students who are about to graduate and obviously, there's a lot of opportunities going in staff or freelance and trying to give them some advice about options. And I always like to be very clear that I only have ever done 9-5 staff jobs, agency jobs, or in-house. So, I don't have the freelance perspective of freedoms, so I can only offer it slightly one-sided, and I hate to sound like Boomery, but I just know that early in my career I learned so much by sitting at a desk next to somebody just looking at asking questions, looking at their screen.
And so, part of me just feels for students who are graduating who don't have opportunities like that, or like you said, even now a lot of staff jobs are remote or hybrid and that's like, "Why am I going to go into the studio to then remote into somebody in Wisconsin or California?" And so, just finding out what people want to get out of that first experience after college and trying to find whether that's freelance or staff.
Amanda Godreau:
I think the industry, in general, is going to find itself with a very different type of workforce because of this, I personally have the opinion that it ripples down 100%. You have people two years before me, so many people who graduated in 2020. The industry was so focused on just how to switch and not lose these giant pitches and how we work, which fair, needed to happen but left a gigantic question mark on how students and upcoming graduates view the industry.
Meryn Hayes:
Good leading question. I was going to go, "How, Amanda, do you fix it?" But you're going to tell us in at the Bash.
Amanda Godreau:
Going back to Ringling in March. I found a lot of good insight. I did this amazing long two-day portfolio review with Doug Alberts from Noodle, and we got to talk one-on-one to students, and I really asked them, "How do you feel about this community? How well do you feel about jobs? What's your experience? Do you feel prepared as a senior?" And I got to get all this amazing feedback that I think is really informing how I'm trying to shape this presentation.
I had an existential crisis when you guys asked me to speak because I was like, "How am I supposed to speak to a room of people who have decades of experience over me?" I think my art is awesome, I'm my art's number one cheerleader, but we're in this very interesting time where there's so much more conversation to have about what we can do to support the youngest people in our industry and how that is essential for the better of everyone. That's what I'm interested in right now.
Meryn Hayes:
I mean, well, now I feel bad that we caused an existential crisis.
Amanda Godreau:
No, it was a good one.
Meryn Hayes:
Okay, good. But I think we would be remiss to not think about the younger generation. I mean, there's two schools of thought that we need to figure out how people retire in this industry. That's a whole other thing. But on the other side of that coin is figuring out what has changed in the last two, three, four decades as people have come into this industry. And hearing from people like you or others who are just getting into it. I mean, you have a valuable perspective, and if we don't account for both sides of that coin... We need to figure out how to include all of those ideas.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah.
Ashley Targonski:
I think what's great about what you're talking about is it's a perspective that not a lot of our other speakers have because they have been in the industry for a while. So, hearing from someone who is newer in the industry, you've gone through all of this, I think it's going to be so interesting to hear you talk about that. And I think that's one of the main reasons we're doing this conference is to have real talks about the industry and really dive into these topics that you wouldn't normally hear.
Amanda Godreau:
I really struggled with figuring out what to talk about because, ideally a presentation, a 40, 50-minute presentation about my work would be amazing. But if I have faith in myself that I'm going to have a very long and probably great career, there's going to be so many more opportunities for me to do that. I think right now, we have a gigantic young workforce that really needs their voice to be heard. Even though this is just my perspective and my interpretation, hopefully, it's a great starting point to get the conversation going. That's my goal.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, I love that. Getting back into some of the work, what was it? So, you started doing graphic design when you switched to Ringling, and then a professor pulled you into animation, and pretty immediately, you headed to the 3D space?
Amanda Godreau:
No, I think we did 3D in our second year. So, the year that the world shut down in the spring, we took one introductory 3D class that was mandatory. I didn't even know 3D existed. I just fell into the course, and I was like, "Oh, this is so amazing."
Apart from coding, I was really invested in photography. When I started using 3D and Cinema- 4D, it felt natural. I could understand light, and the physics of it because I'd had to think about strobes, posing, etc. It felt a lot more familiar to me than traditional After Effects animation. I've always considered myself a designer, and I felt like there were infinitely more possibilities for me to design in a 3D space than a two-dimensional one without having also to animate. Animating is cool, it's just not my first love.
Meryn Hayes:
I love that. And I mean, it definitely seems like a natural progression of where your interests and your skills lie. And so, heading into a 3D direction, how have you been able to find clients as you started freelancing?
Amanda Godreau:
I’ve been really fortunate to have had an amazing and generous network that got me up an running while I was in school. It was a very, I think, organic thing. Post grad I’ve enjoyed collaborating with the small businesses that I've been working with independently and that’s been a different experience. It’s a very meticulous, and consistent effort. I have this gigantic spreadsheet, and I did so much outreach trying not to sound like a spam email, essentially me being like, "Hey, work with me. I won't charge you or I'll charge you pennies." And they're like, "This isn't real."
I think I get a lot of young people who are still in college or while I was in college and they're like, "Would you recommend me going freelance?" And I would always say, "Absolutely not unless you have a big network of friends and colleagues” it’s a risky career move that requires you to be savvy not just creatively but financially.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's why I got to think, again, as someone who hasn't freelanced, that just so much of it is about the connections you make. And so, going freelance right out of college to be really successful has to be a challenge. And the amount of connections that it takes and the outreach and the upkeep, I mean, those are just things that they weren't teaching when I went to college. And I just have to think a part of, as you say, as things shift with this new generation, how we teach them has to change too. It's not as it was in the olden days.
I was just telling Ashley earlier today we got a request from a client we've never worked with. It was a recommendation from some Mographers that I talked to literally three years ago. I haven't spoken with them since or really kept up a lot and they just must have mentioned our name to this client and here we are. And so, it just goes to show that those connections and that, they really matter and making a good impression and just reminding yourself that stuff might not immediately turn into a project or a relationship, but three years down the line it might, you never know.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, that's literally what I try to remind people. And I also try to remind people that I had a very non-traditional experience. I didn't just go to art school, I went to NYU for coding, before NYU I had a little bit of a stint in a university in Puerto Rico which got interrupted by the gigantic hurricane that we got hit with. That’s what brought me to the US in the first place. Before then, I was always really interested in spreadsheets and finances and business. I assisted wedding photographers for five years from middle school to high school. So, I was really used to working with people who owned their own businesses, doing a lot of the upkeep, the follow-up. I almost feel like the creative side has been the easiest in my freelance journey.
There's so many things that are just soft skills that go hand in hand with freelancing. I almost feel like I fell into it.
Meryn Hayes:
Well, it sounds like, again, you worked really hard, but a lot of the disparate skills all connected to make this a really useful tool for you as you started. I mean, that's something that Ashley and I, producing is just a whole set of soft skills and something that if you go out freelancing without having been in-house or at an agency, you're essentially your own producer as well. And there's a reason why we exist. It's a whole job outside of the creative and not being exposed to what that entails I think sometimes causes people to start freelancing and then they think they're a failure of not being successful when they just haven't set themselves up to be successful because they didn't know it existed. You know? Don't know what you don't know.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, exactly. Producing is a whole other thing. I actually considered doing a production internship after graduating because I'm so interested in it. But again, I feel like that's just where my interest lies. Production to me is as interesting as creating and I don't think that's a very popular opinion. I might be wrong.
Meryn Hayes:
We love hearing it, we love to hear that.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah! Many of my good friends are producers. I strongly believe that the success of a creative project is dependent on the work that goes before you even start thinking about what it looks like. And I think that's pretty cool of you guys.
Ashley Targonski:
Looking at your growth path, I thought it was really interesting that you had a talk with Maxon in 2021 when you were still in school. You've also won their Rookie Award. So, I wanted to see how that journey and experience because you were so new at the Cinema 4D program, but then you're talking about it just seeing it a year later, which is amazing.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, I feel like all my experiences have been so surreal. When Maxon reached out asking me to present at their 3D Show I was like, "Are you aware that I've been using this program for under a year?" At that point.
I think I've had to constantly reinforce that I’m deserving of the opportunities that come my way. Imposter syndrome is so real. Sarah Beth did an amazing talk at the Bash last time. I think perspective is the most important thing we can have. I think my art is awesome and while I might not be the most technically experienced person in the room, I have such a passion for design, I feel like I'm very methodical in the ways that I do and that has inherent value…
It really resonated with me when you mentioned about how you appreciated the topic of which I'm speaking on about at Dash this year because it's something that compared to the rest of the lineup of the speaker, is very unique to my experience. I feel like that's how I've approached my career in general because although this is a very young industry and figuring out how people are even going to retire in this industry is a big question mark, looking at what I can give, being like, "Okay, I'm this person in this room, what can I do to not just be of use for myself, but to others?"
Ashley Targonski:
I really love that. And just I think you understand that while you're still in college and it's something that you're living by even today as you continue to grow as an artist, that's really cool because in college I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing." I'm just going with the flow.
Amanda Godreau:
No one knows. Yeah, I think it's so powerful and it's if you don't learn how to do that, especially as women, especially as a Black woman, it's so easy to undervalue yourself. "Oh, I'm not the smartest. Oh, I don't have the most years of experience. Oh, I've never done this before." I think shaping your perspective is vital to existing in this industry as someone who's not typically what you think of when you think of a CG designer.
Meryn Hayes:
That is so important. I mean, I think nobody knows what they're doing and when you figure that out, it helps a whole hell of a lot. I think as women we've spent way too much time doubting ourselves and trying to find space where normally you would be in that place of self-doubt.
Think about all the other things, all of the other time we would have, if we weren't doubting ourselves for every second of every day or every move, or how do we sound in X email? I mean, I have had to do a whole heck of a lot of unlearning to ignore those instincts. When you get in moments of self-doubt like that, where do you go? What's your headspace? How do you combat that?
Amanda Godreau:
I think I just remind myself that my career isn't that important. And I know that sounds counterproductive, but coming from a different culture where work isn't seen as the number one thing you strive for has been a huge factor. I've only lived stateside for four and a half years, and I think people forget that because they don't hear an accent.
In devaluing the amount of importance that I place on my career previously, I’ve been able to shift my headspace to, "I'm going to show up because I want to, not because I have to." At least for me, that’s flipped my mindset into being able to set better boundaries with myself and others work-wise and personally. I also have put a lot of importance into making friends with people who have nothing to do with the creative world. I have friends who are engineers and city planners, etc. Being around people who can separate my creative value from my personal value, especially this year has made the biggest difference.
It’s made me realize the importance of separating your own self-worth to what other people creatively think about you or as a professional. That's been really important.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, that's a good point. It's like we're so ingrained in our little bubble that it's a good reminder that a whole world, a whole lot of worlds exist outside of the Mograph community. And again, going back to how the world inspires art, talking with people outside of the community and talking with people in different disciplines, all of that is stuff that can give you an idea or inspire you in ways you weren't expecting. And also, it's just nice to meet people who are not the same as you.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, it's so much easier. Like, can we talk about how successful everyone in this industry is? No matter what they do. I remember last year being a senior or graduating and being like, "Oh my God, I'm so behind." I used to be so hard on myself.
It's not until I started hanging out with other people in their early twenties in other career paths, that I got a really healthy dose of, "You need to get some perspective." Because it can be really deceptive to be surrounded by, studio owners, successful freelancers, art directors, and NFT artists who all are financially doing so well.
It’s easy to forget what you do have, and what you should be grateful for. It's been so helpful for me to just sit down and be like, "You're losing perspective. You have ownership of your own time. You set your own salary. You get to pick and choose and say yes and no to work opportunities. And that's not something that most people ever get to do, period."
Meryn Hayes:
Well, I hope everyone comes to the Bash for many reasons, but I hope that that is one thing that people can take away from the Bash. I mean, back in 2021, I just feel like the honesty and the stories we got from our speakers last time were in comparison to all conferences or design festivals. It wasn't just get up there and talk about your work for 45 minutes and, "Oh, I worked with Nike and Google, and look how successful I am." But it's, "Here's why this was a challenge. Here's where I thought my career was over and then I started something new." Or fuck hustle, what TJ said, so having those honest conversations because everything's bright and shiny and if we all look successful, that's great.
But then for students who are just starting, or people just entering the industry, not even just students. You automatically feel like a failure if you're not an award-winning studio owner or you sold an NFT for a bajillion dollars. And so, that imposter syndrome is easy to walk into because you just walk into the industry doubting yourself.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, it's so bad. And like Ashley mentioned I was doing the Maxon 3D show. I won the Rookie Award. I graduated I got to have my work in Beeple’s studio opening in North Carolina. I remember that last experience so well because I felt like I couldn't look at my own work on a screen.
I felt like a complete imposter. I was like, "This isn't real.” "I don't want to look at my work." And I had to seriously sit myself down that night and be like, "What's going on? Am I the only one that feels this way? Why do I feel this way?" It’s so easy to think people don’t feel that way about their own work when you’re just experiencing them through social media. I’ve had students come up to me and say "I don't feel great, and I have to feel great to be able to do what you do." And I'm like, "The secret is I'm still learning how to feel great about it." I'm still learning how to accept it, how to not minimize my hard work, how to not just say, "It fell into my lap, or it was just luck."
And acknowledge that there were so many hours put in, so much burnout that happened. Giving yourself credit for the things you’ve accomplished is definitely something that’s been a learned skill. Despite how I might feel sometimes, I can often acknowledge that you can hold two truths at the same time.
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, I mean, even in this conversation, you said that everything fell into your lap, but you worked really hard and then the right opportunity came along. Those two things, those truths can be true.
Amanda Godreau:
Exactly. I have to catch myself all the time.
Ashley Targonski:
I think that's something I've had to also deal with a lot is imposter syndrome. And I was managing teams and I was still like, "Why are they asking me to do stuff? Because I don't know what I'm doing." And I obviously did. But I think a large thing that you're saying that I really think is great is you are meeting all these people, you're creating opportunities for yourself to have more opportunities in the future. So, just taking every chance you have to be able to have another opportunity later. I think that's so important for when you're young, but then also as you continue to grow throughout your career.
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, I mean, it reminds me of why I do what I do. Yesterday I had this amazing call with the founder of a brand. She founded a brand for this luxury fragrance spray. They've won all these awards. The founder is also Black and she's manufacturing this in the Bronx which is amazing. When I saw her brand I immediately messaged her, and I was like, "Oh my God, I love your perfume. Can I please work with you? You don't have to pay me. Can I just please help support this vision?" And I got a call with her yesterday, and she's said, "You don't know how hard I've looked for a creative that understands my perspective." "I looked everywhere. I couldn't find anyone." "How do you find other people creatives like you?"
And I remember telling her, "I don't know. I don't really know anyone like me."
That's a conversation I've had so many times. I think even last year, Meryn, when I was on Sarah Beth's Motion Coven podcast, I mentioned the number of times I get on a call where I'm the only woman there, and it’s assumed I'm the producer instead of a 3D designer."
I always ask people, "Hey, does anyone ever know another Black female 3D artist?” Looking at how big our industry is, I can't find someone who looks like me in the same feild. I don’t think that's something that everyone who does have that privilege is entirely conscious of.
Motion Design feels like a family to so many folks in it, or at least that’s a sentiment I’ve heard enough to remember. But it has to feel like that for more than a homogenous group. There was a very visible push for DEI initiatives around 2020 and George Floyd’s murder but efforts have become less and less public as time has passed.
Meryn Hayes:
Well, A, I'll see those people out personally. I think it's also how we move forward holistically for a sustained period of time. Like you said that there was this big push after George Floyd's murder. Everyone posted on social media and talked about bringing in more diverse groups and finding freelancers in communities that weren't of their own. But that push has to continue and be sustained across the entire industry. It's hard to push a rock up a hill if you're just by yourself, right? It has to be the community. And so, obviously, that's something that we've talked a lot about internally.
And I was, back in March, in CoMotion, we had a diversity and equity panel. We were talking and someone in the audience asked how we felt about the industry moving ahead, looking ahead. And I think the thing that boggles my mind is looking at the crowd at CoMotion, looking at Ringling, the minority of people in that group was white men by far. There were more women in the audience at CoMotion, and most of them were not white. And so, I have hopes looking ahead that the opportunities that people are given now, finding communities, like the animation industry can happen at earlier ages, right? In college. But the barriers of cost and equipment and finding places like SCAD or Ringling, I mean, that's a huge investment that communities don't have the opportunity to find.
Amanda Godreau:
I also think that looking at colleges specifically, art colleges, student bodies aren't the best way to project what the industry is going to look like. I think that while it's great to have hope in what student bodies look like, that's not going to change until the people doing the hiring have more knowledge, and perspective to be able to acknowledge what our biases are.
You have to acknowledge it in order to move past it. It might not seem like an issue to most people, because in theory your race, gender, or identity has nothing to do with the technical aspects and ability of doing a job. However, it leaves a gigantic void for mentorship. I want to be an art director, ideally a creative director, at some point in my career but I can't point to what that looks like for a Black woman. I can't ask anyone for advice and be like, "As a Black woman, how did you navigate x, y z to become a creative director?" There's no one that I know of for me to ask. And I've asked. I've asked every single time I'm on a call with a studio, when they ask, "Do you have any questions?" My question is, "Do you know any Black women AD’s, CDs?" I'm actively asking.
Even if I am here moving through my career, the road to success for these career paths is inherently absent.
Meryn Hayes:
Insane.
Ashley Targonski:
This ties into something we talked to Macaela from Newfangled about, but they have created a DIB section of their company. And when they work on projects, they find people in those communities who actually work on those projects and understand. They do the research; they talk to them about their experiences. And I think that's so integral to... That's what everyone should be doing. We should really be understanding, we shouldn't have this person on this project that doesn't know anything about what we're doing. Let's talk to the communities. Yeah.
Amanda Godreau:
I also think that leads to a really good opportunity to talk about possible jobs in this industry that don't exist in this industry. Because listen, I can say all day that my information is in my bio, on my website. But the truth is, producers are often also super overworked. You can't expect them to be reading the bio of every single artist that they're reaching out to. It's impossible.
I feel like that's a huge opportunity in motion design that could lead to even more jobs and a more diverse workforce. Producers do so much, they keep track of so many things.
Meryn Hayes:
I was also just re-reading Bien’s blog post for their Q&A, and they were talking about Double the Line efforts. Do you know about that program?
Amanda Godreau:
I don't!
Meryn Hayes:
It comes from the Association of Independent Producers (AICP, essentially for every job they have, they create a second line item in the budget for whatever it is, cel animation or illustration, to bring on an underrepresented minority group. So, a Black cel artist to pair with a senior cel artist so that they get opportunities to work on a project or on a client work that otherwise they wouldn't get. And then they have that as an opportunity to show on their portfolio, like, "Hey, I did this."
And so, bringing people into positions that they previously wouldn't have an opportunity because they don't have the connections yet. We talked about how important those connections are early on in finding jobs or careers.
Amanda Godreau:
That's amazing. I think that's an amazing thing for a studio to be doing. Going back to the conversation about SCAD and Ringling, I think that also has to be part of the conversation is that while it might be really convenient for studios to hire out of Ringling and SCAD because it's the standard, and you do come out industry ready. I think there are a lot of colleges and programs that are also overlooked that might have equally as amazing talent.
Last year I went to speak to the students at CUNY in Brooklyn. To my surprise when I arrived, I realized that not only was the professor Black, but so was the entire student body. Not only that but mostly black women. This was a Cinema 4D class.
I think that's the only time in my career where I've been in a room full of people who looked like me. I felt really conflicted when I left because they were there, talented, and learning with such amazing questions, and I couldn’t give them advice that was relevant to their experience. I had a huge leg up with going to a private art institution.
I carry some privileges. I feel very conflicted when I’m used as an example for someone who is a minority who’s moving through our industry. I often feel like the worst example. I went to a very expensive art school. I so happened to have my own business in high school that paid for a huge chunk of my college education. I come from a family of academics and had little to no barrier for entry when applying for college." While my experience has value, merit and includes a lot of hard work. No one should be used as a rule for "If they did it, why can’t you?"
Meryn Hayes:
Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good reminder. Just like you said that again, it's setting people up for failure, right? When you don't see all of those privileges that you know you've had and that I know I've had, and other people have had. You don't see that. And when you compare yourself to someone else, "Amanda did it, why aren't you doing it?"
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah.
Meryn Hayes:
Thank you. We're just so glad to have you come in and really can't thank you enough for participating, being willing, and we're looking forward to your talk!
Amanda Godreau:
I'm so excited. This is my favorite conference.
Ashley Targonski:
Can we quote you on that?
Amanda Godreau:
Yeah, totally.
Meryn Hayes:
It's going to be the Bash, the homepage. It's going to be a huge quote. Amanda says...”MY FAVORITE CONFERENCE”
Meryn Hayes:
Cool. Good chatting, Amanda. We'll see you soon!
Meet the speakers: Wes Louis
An interview with Wes Louis: a director, designer, and animator at The Line known for his unique design sensibility and his dramatic action-led animation sequences.
Q&A hosted by Mack Garrison.
Read time: 15min
Mack Garrison:
Wesley, I'm really pumped for this conversation because, well, one, if you don't know this already, you guys do phenomenal work. I mean, the cel work you guys produce, just really top tier, top quality.
Wes Louis:
Thank you, man, I appreciate that.
Mack Garrison:
I was talking to Dotti over at Golden Wolf, because she was at the Bash last time. She spoke on behalf of Golden Wolf there. She was talking about how highly she thinks of you guys and that for a long time you kept winning and losing to each other on pitches. It was just always you guys going back and forth.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, that is exactly right. They would do something and then we would do something, and they would do something but it feels kind of healthy. It's strange to say, because you think to yourself, "Well, I mean they are a rival company," but actually we have quite a good relationship with them. Anytime they have their summer parties or other events, they invite us over. We have a good laugh and a few drinks, so it's a healthy competitive space.
Mack Garrison:
I remember getting out of school and being so green in this space, not knowing anything, but how many people were willing to help me. Even growing from junior up to senior as an animator, and then again, starting the studio, and how people were just willing to share advice. I've never met a space that feels as communal as the motion design space really is.
Wes Louis:
I just think it’s what makes the space a better place to work in. No one's holding their cards too close to their chest. It's weird, because intuitively you’d think keeping what's unique about you secret would be the way to go but, the opposite has benefits. One of our other directors, Sam, always talks to guys from Animade or Moth Collective about all sorts. We all go to the same festivals, hang out and talk. "Well how did you do that or show the best way to do this?" it's a weird but nice little community we have
Mack Garrison:
It feels different, because I feel like it's not like that in the rest of the creative space. Even agencies, I know agencies are kind of cutthroat with each other, but studios, for whatever reason, it's not. I think it's because, as a studio owner, I feel like people start studios because they really love a singular craft.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, exactly, you're coming from the same place. And I think with us specifically, because all the directors of the company, we're all animators or compositors, we all come from creative backgrounds. I think we just have more of an understanding of people that work with us as well. So we understand burnout, we understand what it feels like not to want to work on something that maybe you're not feeling inspired by.
Mack Garrison:
So I run Dash with a business partner. We were both animators back in the day. We animated for basically a decade before trying our hand at running a shop and I think there's a difference. When leadership knows how to animate, you don't put your team in bad situations. Even just understanding what's reasonable, what's not, what's a hard request, what's not, and to be able to talk through that. I think you get into trouble when it gets too much on the business-oriented side of things.
Wes Louis:
Definitely. We worked on a Gorillaz music video with Jamie Hewlett. The turnaround for that, I think it was something ridiculous, six or eight weeks, and we did it because, I mean, it's the Gorillaz….
Mack Garrison:
This is the Humility piece, right?
Wes Louis:
Yeah.
Mack Garrison:
That you did that in 6 weeks. That's ridiculous.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, it was crazy. It was like a six-week turnaround to get everything done. Max and Tim were directing it. Tim's a massive Jamie Hewlett fan, so that's like a dream come true project just landing on his plate. We took the job, but I think everybody, including the directors, worked so hard on it. They were working late, working until 10 o'clock at night and all that kinds. We really understood what our staff was going through and I think they appreciated that we acknowledged that we were pushing them to the limit, but then we also said, "We're never doing that again," because you're breaking the people that are working for you. So while The project gave the studio a lot of street cred, it also made us really examine our working practices because the people who work for us are important. I mean animation is hard enough as it is without you having to come home after hours every night and you're not spending time with your friends and family. So you want to try and find a balance. I mean, sometimes it happens where a crunch happens and you have to stay a bit later, but I think nine times out of 10 it's definitely more of an exception than a rule. Whereas I know some companies are like, "No, you've got to work on the weekend and you've got to work on this, you've got to work that." We try not to do that.
Mack Garrison:
A hundred percent. We feel the same way. And I think part of it was also that self-reflection after the pandemic where priorities just totally switched for people. It's like, "Look, this is just a job." We like it, I love animation, but there's stuff outside of it. We all have stuff outside of it, right?
Mack Garrison:
I want to get back into some of the stuff you guys are doing at Line, because like I said, it's phenomenal. But maybe take me back to the beginning.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, so my family's Caribbean, St. Lucian. My parents were born over there. But I was born and raised here in London. As a child I was always into animation, just generally, Saturday morning cartoons, anime shows. I'd always been drawn well. I've been drawing since I was five-years-old... and never really put it down. So it was something that I think people thought it would just be a hobby that went away, and it never did. I was doing anything that could probably lead me into comics or animation, any excuse to draw. Graphic design was the closest thing I could find to do that. And even on graphic design projects, I was always trying to do some sort of character design or animation orientated thing. But yeah, I studied multimedia for a bit and I dropped out of that because I just wasn't happy doing the course, so I spent a few years working in retail and doing office work and all this stuff. And I think it was like 27, that I just asked myself the question, "If money and logistics weren't a factor, what would I be doing?" And animation just kept coming back, so I kind of worked my way backwards and just started saving for it and doing odd jobs so I can save money, so I could take a year or two off just so I can do a course in animation.
Mack Garrison:
So you did graphic design, you kind of dropped out of the multimedia side because you weren't vibing with it as much. You wanted to get more into the traditional, kind of cel animation. Is that what was drawing your interest mainly?
Wes Louis:
Yeah that's what it is. Even when I was doing retail, I remember I was working in a store called Hamleys, it's like a toy store, a big toy store in London on Regent Street. And I remember they would ask me to do graphic design things every now and then, but I was working behind the tills. And I remember applying for a job in the display department, where they would decorate displays and all that kind of stuff. And I thought, "Yeah, this would be perfect." And it's funny, the head of display, showed him my CV, showed my work. He is like, "Yeah, you're amazing," all this kind stuff. He's like, "But I'm not going to give you a job." I was like, "Why?" "Because you're too good for here." I was like, "Why?. He is like, "If you want to go and work in this, then get off your ass and go and find somewhere to work, but I'm not giving you a job here." And he refused to give me a job.
Mack Garrison:
Wow.
Wes Louis:
Yeah. There was also a point where I tried to go full-time in Hamleys, because I was working three or four days a week, and my manager at the time refused to give me a job. She refused to let me work full-time. I was like, "What's going on?" She goes, "Oh, I see you..." Because I would do a lot of doodles on till receipt paper while I'm waiting for customers. I've still got loads of them at home. She was like, "I always see you drawing on these receipts and you're just sitting here." And she goes, "Why aren't you going out and looking for real work in what you love?" I didn't really have a proper answer for her, because I was quite young at the time. But she's like, "Look, I'm not giving you a job here." She goes, "If you want to work a few days a week, that's fine, I can't stop you but don't try and apply for any other department, because if you try and apply, I'm going to tell them not to hire you."
Mack Garrison:
No way.
Wes Louis:
They just literally would not let me work full time there.
Mack Garrison:
That's so crazy. It's that early confidence push and kind of validation that what you're doing, what you're creating means something.
Wes Louis:
I think that's what it was. I actually did reach out to her (Her name is Julia) just to tell her thank you for doing that, pushing me. So I think from then I just went into work with more of a focus. I made a decision to become an animator and spent time working and saving up for a Postgraduate animation course at Central Saint Martins in London. It's funny, because when I went to visit the college they'd had the end of year show, and for some reason, that year it was incredible. So I worked so hard to get on that course, man, believing I wasn't good enough to get on the course. I was doing life drawing classes every weekend. I think I was doing it twice a week. And I went on to an art exchange program in Prague with conceptart.org, hosted by a company called Massive Black.
Mack Garrison:
Well it had to be good validation for you on this career path too, because I know when you find something you're really into, you get into this flow state where it's not work anymore. It's all this stuff that you're trying to get better at and it's hard, but it's fun. You're excited, you want to jump in and just learn as much as you can. It's a totally different vibe versus if you're in something you're not digging.
Wes Louis:
Oh, I think that's 100% true. And I could even point to projects I've done where I know the flow state versus not being in a flow state, for sure.
I did a lot of work to get on the course. I even visited the university a couple of times to speak to the head lecturer just to talk. "Ah," he goes, "you again." So I would go up there, spend about 20 minutes with him, keep in mind I lived an hour away from the university at the time. I'm showing him my sketchbook just asking questions “is this good? Do I need to draw more of this?” It really was an excuse to be in that environment with lightboxes and students flippings animation paper. It was the closest thing to an animation studio I'd ever been in and I loved it. By the time I had my interview he was just like, "All right, well let's see how we can get rid of you then." But he was joking, very British humor. He said, "Your portfolio is incredible. What took you so long," sort of thing. So he was like, "Of course we want you on the course.
Mack Garrison:
Right.
Wes Louis:
I had worked so hard to get on the course, because I just thought I wasn't good enough so I didn't take it for granted. I studied for a year. That's where I met Tim McCourt, who was on the same course as me. After the course finished, I spent about six months trying to finish my thesis film, which I didn't.
Mack Garrison:
That's great.
Wes Louis:
I really tried to finish. I thought there was something wrong with me because it was like, "Why can't I finish this?" And I was trying to get a certain amount of quality in a certain amount of time, but I just couldn't do it. Just not realizing that, actually animation takes time and it takes a team. And I'm trying to do this, Disney level stuff by myself.
Mack Garrison:
That's a lot. That's a lot to put on your plate. So you never finished the thesis?
Wes Louis:
No, I didn't finish but I really tried. I worked on it for a few months after the course but it was so much harder trying to do it from home. About 6 months after uni,I moved to Scotland. I was working at a company called Ink Digital on this film called Illusionist, as an inbetweener cleanup artist. I even tried to finish my thesis film there, redesigned the characters and everything. Even at that point, I wasn't very confident in animation. I just couldn't understand how to do it. I remember meeting with an animator at Django Films (that was the main studio for the Illusionist where all the animation took place) She gracefully took time out to show me around and show me her work and process. Within half an hour she said and My understanding of animation completely changed. If you asked me to do my thesis film today, be it two months or three months I’d finish it. I’d know what to animate, what to cheat etc.
Mack Garrison:
What did she say to you?
Wes Louis:
I said, "So what's your breakdown?" She goes, "I don't really think about it that way, I just do the motion. And then I find a breakdown afterwards." She showed me her sketches and demonstrated her method. It just made sense. It was Aya Suzuki, actually. She's gone on to work with directors like Hayo Myazakiand she's an incredible animator. It was just a half an hour chat and it was like things clicked all of a sudden where the things that I was struggling to do weren't hard anymore, because now I understood what it was. And it was just basically her process of how she put an idea down and got the movement down. I think my problem was getting too in the weeds of it, I was trying to understand what's a breakdown, what's a key. I think those things matter when you're passing off the animation to somebody else, but when you're doing it yourself, it doesn't matter that much, you know? There might be some people that disagree with me, but that was just for me, it just made sense the way she went about it.
Mack Garrison:
Tell me about some of the projects that came after that?
Wes Louis:
So when I got back from Scotland, I met up with Tim again and we worked on our first short film together. We spent about a year doing that at a Partizan. We were very fortunate to have a space to work for free as Tim had a good relationship with one of the producers at the time. We thought it would take us three months, it took us about a year. And we got an award from the Westminster Arts Council. So they were giving out money for people to make films and stuff... so I think they gave us 4,000 pounds, which seemed like a lot at the time.
Mack Garrison:
Yeah, of course.
Wes Louis:
I mean, me and Tim weren't getting paid for it, we were doing freelance work for Partizan so we could keep on going. We learnt a lot doing that. After that I guess the project that made me more well known was Super Turbo Atomic Ninja Rabbit, I just went full steam ahead. It was a style of animation I'd never approached before. I've never done anything like it which is ironic because my love of animation really is rooted in action and anime. There was no reason for me to think I could do it except that I just wanted to so I just went ahead and tried. Also got a friend Rina May to do the music and BXFTYS on sound fx. Actually let me backup, I'm jumping around a bit. After me and Tim made our film, we went around looking for work as directors. Turns out it doesn't really work in that way. You don't just go and apply to be a director.
Mack Garrison:
Yeah, right. Like, "I'd like to work here please." And it's like, "No, thank you."
Wes Louis:
Yeah, yeah. "I'd like to work as a director." It's like, "Not really, no."
Mack Garrison:
That's great.
Wes Louis:
I did show my portfolio though and a few weeks later it was like, "Oh, yeah, we like your work we have some jobs on if you're interested. That was at Nexus in London." And I was working there freelance for about a year and Tim was doing freelance at Partizan and some other places. While Tim was on the job, he met with Sam Taylor, James Duveen and Bjorn Erik Aschim, the other partners at The Line. Sam was looking for a studio space at the time and was asking if we were interested in sharing a space, and not even as a company but just people who animate together and have a shared space while working different freelance jobs. I couldn’t really afford it at the time but we had a friend Fritzi who had a desk and she was letting me use it at the time and eventually I took over from her. While at the studio Tim got approached by some of the runners who were at Partizan who now have their own company, Bullion Productions. They got a job from the Ministry of Sound to do a music video for Mat Zo and Porter Robinson and asked if Tim and I were up for directing because they knew we made our short film at Partizan. So it was like, "Yeah, sure." And then the other guys we were sharing a space with, they were just finishing up their film Everything I can See From Here, so we were like, "Oh, if you guys aren't doing anything, we'd like to hire you to work on our project." So the six of us worked on this project together and it went so well. It was an incredible experience. We just said, "Oh, how about we start a collective, we can just consolidate our work and take it further?" That's basically when we formed The Line.
Mack Garrison:
It's perfect.
Wes Louis:
Soon after Bjorn got contacted by Electric Theatre Collective (ETC) to do some concept art and they were asking, "Do you know any animators or character designers?" He's like, "Oh, I actually know five guys."
So we went over there and we were working together for a while. They gave us some funding to make our first official The Line original projects. Amaro and Walden's Joyride and Super Turbo Atomic Ninja Rabbit. Ideas we had for a couple years. We were working on those productions simultaneously and released them a month apart, maybe two. I think that these projects gave us our notoriety. From then we just started getting commercial projects. We were at ETC for about 3 years I think but eventually ended up leaving to actually start our own studio. No hard feelings or anything, it just became harder to function the way we wanted to as directors. We thought, "Let's see if we can start our own company." I mean the options then were, to either leave and try and make some more money to build ourselves back up, and then hopefully regroup again, which probably wouldn't have happened. Or let's just go for it and start a company. So we pooled some money together, got a studio space and our first job came within 2 months and….
Mack Garrison:
The rest is history.
Wes Louis:
... five years later we've got, I think about we have roughly 40 people with us including the 6 founders.
Mack Garrison:
Man, that's crazy.
Wes Louis:
James counted about, over three or four projects, we had about 110 people working with us at one time.
Mack Garrison:
Wow. That's crazy.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, it is a bit surreal, because you're looking around and you're like- "I don't exactly know how this works but it is working, and it's great."
Mack Garrison:
Oh, no, it's really cool. So a couple of things I picked up on there, Wesley that I think is really interesting and I want to poke at a bit is, so you get out of school, you end up on this Illusionist project, you're kind of navigating the process a bit, but then it kind of starts to click. You and Tim, then after the Illusionist, work on your personal project, right. What film was that that you guys were doing?
Wes Louis:
Drawing Inspiration.
Mack Garrison:
Drawing Inspiration, that's right. So you're doing these films or this entertainment side of things and then you end up from that side into kind of the commercial space a bit from there. But I like how when you even refer to the projects you're working on, you're referring to them as films. Everything you do has this artistic lens. And I do think there's this balance in animation with art versus design, right?
Wes Louis:
Yeah.
Mack Garrison:
How did you navigate that as you got into that world and all of a sudden these projects, which I'm sure you had thoughts on, on how you want it to be, is now getting pushback from clients who are paying you for it and they want it done a certain way and you're like, "That's killing the artistic style of it." How does the artist versus designer kind of come into play for you these days?
Wes Louis:
That's a really interesting question. I mean even the short films that we made, people ask, "How do you make the time to make those films and do what you want? It's insane." And the answer is, it is insane. It sounds very cliche, but we were too stupid to know that you're not supposed to do these kinds of things. We made two short films in a year simultaneously, while trying to do freelance projects. And that's crazy, because I was working, I mean we were working weekends, evenings and stuff, and it's not an easy thing to do. But like you said, if you love what you're doing, you don't really perceive it as work, you just perceive it as this thing that you need to get done.
In terms of the commercial side, I think earlier on I would say we did get projects that you'd get weird client pushback. I remember doing a project and I literally had the clients standing behind me while I was doing a drawing.
Mack Garrison:
No! I would've quit. I would've been out.
Wes Louis:
Oh god, it was like the Apprentice. There were about three or four of them and I was drawing a face. "Oh, do this in the lips. Move it, move it. No, push it up, push it down. Make her eyes bigger. Make it smaller." And the drawing, at the end of it, I just remember sitting there thinking, "This is not going in my portfolio, this is the worst piece of work I've ever done.”
And luckily, I mean they kind of doubled back and they were like, "Oh, actually, this is not working." And then I had to redesign it from scratch and they just kind of left us to it. But actually, generally speaking, I feel like our clients have been really good. And I think that's because of the short films that we've made. And I think the thing that we realize is, if we make the things that we want to make and make it high quality, people hopefully will come to us for what we do rather than what someone else does. And I think that brings about a certain amount of trust from our client as well. So if we show them something that we've done that they're interested in. So anytime we get a pitch in, well a lot of the times they will point to other people's work, but it will always have our work in there. "Oh, when you did this on this project, this was great. We'd love more of this and stuff."
Mack Garrison:
It's almost like, concept-wise with references to other things, but stylistically it always comes back to you all. So you know you're in the right lane.
Wes Louis:
Yeah. So actually when we are doing stuff, nine times out of ten, I would say you do get satisfaction from the client work. Obviously it's not going to be 100% your way and I think there's an expectation of that. Look, someone's paying you to do this and you put your best foot forward and say, "Look, I really don't think this is a good idea because," and they do listen and then sometimes it's someone higher than the person you're talking to is like, "No, we definitely want this." "Oh, okay, that's fine." I always take our client projects as a space to learn as well.
Mack Garrison:
Sure, sure.
Wes Louis:
I'm getting paid to learn how to do something a little bit differently and apply it to my own work and to the studio as well. I mean the whole reason we started it is so that we can make our own stuff. We actually put some of our profits back into personal and development projects. We’ve actually got a few in development at the moment and one hopefully dropping late-summer.
Mack Garrison:
Perfect. That will be a perfect time to roll it in for the summer and share it on the big screen here in Raleigh.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, exactly. It's a short. Our films are quite short so typically they’re made in the style of a trailer or a music video, because to try and do anything longer can be quite difficult if you want something really long form. Doing shorts like this gives us a chance to kind of put stuff out there, our own identity and have people in the studio play around on things that they probably wouldn't normally get to do at other studios. We've actually got another director, who is the first director doing a personal project outside of the six of us.
Mack Garrison:
How does that feel? Because I do think there's something about as you progress as a studio or owner, you can't have your hand in everything. You can't always see stuff. Does it feel weird to get to this space where there's a director kind of rolling with something and you're not really sure what's going on?
Wes Louis:
It's weird. I think even just not being hands-on is a little bit frustrating for me. I got into it so I can draw and animate and I'm not drawing and animating anymore. And even people have said to me, "Oh, I don't really see your work anymore." It really is rewarding though, to see an animator go from a junior assist role to directing a project on her own project; leading a team of people, having her own voice and having the respect of all her peers supporting her, I think is amazing. I think none of us are under the illusion that we're always going to be relevant and it's nice to be able to build a space with the resources we have that can trickle down to the next generation. And they create stuff, and they do better than we ever could.
Mack Garrison:
I think, well because you look back and you look at the stuff that you've gone through and you learn about things that you really liked and the people that pushed you. Even your retail boss, don't do this, or your colleague who's like, "Think about it this way," and there's all these moments with these spaces where that's conducive. And so I think as leaders, you try to create that space at your studio. What are the things that you really wanted? What are the things that you can create an area for someone to try stuff to fail and stuff to grow and to learn? And so that's got to be a huge highlight at The Line.
Wes Louis:
Yeah, it is something that I think we speak about we're proud of. I mean, we don't always get everything right, we're still learning.
Mack Garrison:
Sure.
Wes Louis:
But I think more often than not from what people have said, unless they're lying to us, they're comfortable working or they like it, they feel supported, they feel like they've been heard and they get to put their ideas across. We've got this initiative that our development manager has put forward. So basically, we give 10 days to each person on the staff every year to just go in and play. The caveat is that it has to benefit the company in some sort of way. So it could be they go in, find a new system for production or just learn how to draw something a little bit better. Anything they want. It doesn't have to be something they present, it's just 10 days for people to go and play, because sometimes you wait for downtime to happen and sometimes there is no downtime. So it's like, all right, here's 10 days. And actually, some of the projects that we're working on now came from that. In fact, there's about three projects that have come from our exploration time where people have gone away, had 10 days to think about something that they weren't thinking about before, and then they've come back and said, "Oh, actually, I've got a great idea." It's like, "All right, let's make that, let's put some money into that so you get to have a bit of a creative outlet.
Mack Garrison:
That's cool. I love that. And I love the buy-in from folks too, because it makes people feel like they're bought into the studio. They're bringing their ideas to the table and the studio's rallying around them, which is really nice too.
Wes Louis:
I think that the thing with us is that we're like, "Oh, it would be so cool if we had this when we were coming up." We're like, "All right, well let's just do it for our staff." And it seems to be working.
Mack Garrison:
Do y'all feel good where you are now or do you want to continue to expand? Do you have any big, broader goals for the company?
Wes Louis:
It's funny you say that, because we literally are in a kind of space where we're trying to reestablish and just remember where we came from and use that to inform where we're going. So I'm from the Caribbean, as I said before, and what I've been doing is I've started this kind of program with a company in Jamaica called ListenMi, they're an animation company. And basically I just give them an hour a week or hour every two weeks of my time just sharing insight into just how animation works and helping them, in a sense, kind of level up. Because I think you've got loads of animators or aspiring animators in the Caribbean who just don't have the resources or people to teach them.
And I know I learn a lot because I've spoken to people around me and I've got access to certain things. And I guess for me personally, I would love The Line to be one of these spaces where, I don't know, it has some sort of academic program, training, and internship. And that's something that I have started trying out. I don't know where it's going to go. I feel like this is something that could take the next 10 years, it could take 20 years or something, I don't know. But I do recognize that, for instance, you've got places like Korea where the American animation was being outsourced to them and now they've just got incredible studios like Studio Mir for example. I think that's how you grow an industry. And I feel like the dream for me would be, reaching out to these places and training them up so that they can start. Eventually, we can outsource work to them and they grow and get better. And then they can start creating their own works, and then it trickles down to the schools and now you've got a thriving industry. So that's the kind of influence I would like the company to have.
Mack Garrison:
I really appreciate what you were saying on the community side. It's hard to give back when everything costs money, but one thing you can always do is time and attention. And just giving your time back to people knowing that when you were their age or that early part of your career, that that's what you really just needed is guidance. I think that's really critical. And I don't know, I know our industry is so community-focused, everyone's so nice and I think a lot of people are interested in that. And so I hope more people are doing the same thing you're talking about.
Wes Louis:
Right. Yeah, my short ‘The Mighty Grand Piton’ was big for me. I think the biggest shame for me would be if no one from the Caribbean works on it. I mean, voice actors and musicians, all that kind of stuff is not a problem over there, right, but animation is an area where there isn't really a market
Wes Louis:
It would be great to have everyone at a level where we can outsource work, but i've learned making a series isn't straightforward
Mack Garrison:
Right.
Wes Louis:
I think if you can have people out there on our types of productions I think it would be super beneficial. I think the same thing happened with Flying Bark, with Rise Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Having that type of project forced them to level up. That show is incredible. Now they’re so good now they can do that stuff by themselves. You know what I mean?
Mack Garrison:
Yeah.
Wes Louis:
So yeah, that kind of actually triggered the idea. So I think me doing it, isn’t about money or anything like that, it's like you said it's about time. It's one thing you talk about and talk about, but then I'm like, "You know what, let's dedicate time to it and make sure it's done. And then let's see what happens at the end of the year." And if at the end of the year where they feel like we've contributed something to them and they've used our resources, and they're able to talk to not just me, but some of the other partners and get some insights on how things are done, And if their work levels up, then I know it's working and I know that we're doing the right thing.
Mack Garrison:
I love it. Well you'll have to give us an update when you come to Raleigh on where some of that stuff is in the process. This was a really great convo. Thanks for hanging out with me for a bit.
Wes Louis:
Nice one, man. Nice to meet you and thanks for taking the time to talk to me as well.
Meet the speakers: Aaron Ray
An interview with Aaron Ray: an animation director and designer with an inclination towards illustrative design and character based work.
Q&A hosted by Mack Garrison & Meryn Hayes.
Read time: 15min
Mack :
Hey Aaron, for folks who don't know who you are, a little bit about you and your background and what brought you into motion design as an industry.
Aaron:
So currently I split my time between doing freelance with studios, whether that's art direction, creative direction, or just doing style frames and stuff like that. But I also have a rep for commercial and music video direction, so I'm kind of bouncing back and forth between those things. How I started was early on when I was into skateboarding growing up, just seeing all the graphics and stuff. And this was late '80s and '90s, but specifically the late '80s stuff when I was a little kid, when I first started skateboarding, the graphics were so bold, colorful, gruesome, funny, detailed and illustrative. I had never really seen anything like that.
So I was like, "This is really interesting and I think this might mean I could draw for a living," that kind of thing. I just drew all the time. And then also going back to skateboarding more when I got a little older in high school and college, we were just filming everywhere we went when we were skateboarding. So I got kind of used to using cameras and the idea of editing a video and then probably somewhere out of there, I started to see title design and stuff like that.
I went to college here in Denver and I went to the Art Institute, which is now defunct, and I initially thought I wanted to make live-action movies. But all I had were drawings and my bad skateboard graphics and things like that at the time. I met with an admission person and she said, “maybe you should go into our new computer animation program.” And I said, "Oh, that's cool. That sounds kind of cool." And this was like '98, so this was early, Toy Story had just come out, Pixar stuff was just getting a name and becoming kind of popular, and so the program was really rooted in visual effects for film and 3D character animation.
And so I went into that program and I was pretty unhappy with it because it was very computer based and I kind of learned throughout my time there that I really like more hands-on tactile feeling work. And I liked more design focused work.
It’s Aaron!
Mack:
Well, it's interesting to me. It's like, all right, so you're a kid, you're growing up in the '90s, late '80s, you're loving skateboarding, so it brings you in from the design side of it. And then I'm just presuming here that you started making little random fun skating videos that ultimately brought you into film. Is that right?
Aaron:
Yeah, I bought a camera, a mini DV camera or eight millimeter, and we would just go around filming and editing. I didn't have Final Cut or anything like that at the time. So it was like in-camera editing or eventually we got two tape decks, and I don't know if you've ever done that, but you can run the camera into one tape deck and you're sort of transferring it to another tape deck and a VHS. So you're doing the editing to a tape from tape deck to tape deck.
Frame from the music video Aaron directred for ’Hands/Heart’ by The Raven And The Writing Desk.
Mack:
That's so funny. Are you putting on the classic dad fade where you fade in and fade out at the end in-camera?
Aaron:
Always. Every time.
Mack:
So I imagine the skating stuff, I mean, it's funny how many people I feel like I've talked to that have gotten into this space through skating because really it was kind of pioneers for recording yourself and recording your tricks. And so it got you into that. That always feels very tactile to me. I mean, skating is just rough in and of itself. And the designs on the boards and the decks themselves are really graphic. And so when you get into, it was the Art Institute that you were in Denver, right. And so you get to the VFX, the 3D character animation spawned after Toy Story coming out, which makes a lot of sense because there's this new push and admiration for 3D. But it sounds like you weren't digging it, you weren't really wild about it, but you just kind of pushed through it and felt like, "Well, I just got to get a degree and get out of here."
Aaron:
Yeah, I mean, I got a lot from school though. I learned the tools, I learned After Effects. At the time we were using 3D Studio Max, so I got a good sense of using the tools and understanding 3D. I kind of forgot to mention, growing up, I was really into music, punk music and just independent music in general. And so even before college I was skateboarding and music was a huge part of my life. And when I was in college, it was kind of pre-motion design too. So there wasn't a lot of that. And I think what I was missing is I really loved record covers. I really loved skateboard graphics, I liked filming stuff, but I hadn't really been introduced to motion design yet. And so, I don't know, I think I burnt out and just couldn’t get excited about what I was seeing in school.
In retrospect, I can look back at it now. And the 3D character stuff we see now, I'm like, "Wow, that's so cool." I wish we'd been kind of pushed in that direction versus just the movie VFX and CG stuff.
But music and playing in bands was really a big thing at that point for me. So I wanted to be a designer in the music industry. I wanted to do album covers and stuff like that. So I got this position as a designer for a small record label, for literally no money. I worked there for about three years. But it was a great experience and worth it in the long run, it actually had a big impact on me.
But streaming music started to slowly take over, and you kind of see the writing on the wall that I wasn't going to be able to continue just doing album covers. And I think it was probably around this time that I first saw, you guys remember a studio called Shilo?
Mack:
Out in San Diego or something, right?
Aaron:
They were California and New York City. But they were amazing. I think that's the first time I saw work that I would've considered motion design. There was one piece they did in particular, It was this kind of white cityscape thing. No materials, just white and what do you call it, Ambient Occlusion And the camera's just moving through and it's got this really experimental edit. And there was just this cool hiphop kind of beat that everything was cut to, and there was typography integrated and there were hand drawn doodles popping out everywhere. I was like, "Wow, this is cool." And it was 3D and 2D kind of mixed.
Mack:
That's so neat. I do remember Shilo. In fact, they were an inspiration for me when I was in school. I was like, "Oh man, this place looks amazing. I want to go work here." It does feel like it's a good segway though, from album art into it, right? Because album art seems equally as weird, off the walls, could be a mixed media of a lot of different things.
I'm curious about your take on this, because you worked at that job where you said three years, the first one that they weren't paying you initially and then they're paying you a little bit. And there's a big conversation around the industry even today, right? It's like, "Don't take unpaid internships, don't do work for less than what it costs."
And then at the same time, I hear you say about how much of a big impact that made on you. I mean, I think about some of the work that Dash has done over the years that has opened the doors to other projects. And some of those projects weren't the highest paying gigs, but we said yes to it because they seemed cool. I don't know, just any thoughts on that idea in the space on balancing stuff that you're into versus saying yes to some things?
Frame of Aaron’s work with New Belgium.
Aaron:
I think if there's a benefit to doing something for no money or low money, then I think it's worth it. But I think each person has to weigh those options. For me, I just knew working in music design is what I want to do and this is my foot in the door, so I'm going to do it and I'm going to work hard to do it.
I guess the point is I will do stuff for lower cost if there's a creative benefit or if it will help me learn something new etc.
I’ve had projects before where I’ve thought "I can't believe I'm doing this for this much for the budget, but I think I'm just going to, I'm trying to ignore that and just keep pushing through it because I think the end product's going to be cool." But again I think you have to weigh the pros and cons of each situation because just because you have a cool end product, that doesn't always mean more work or anything though right?
Mack:
I think you made a really good point, Aaron, that you have to judge it against what you're interested in, what you want to do. And something for someone might be too low, but for others it might be the right fit, because I've heard a little adage as well, it's like don't ever undercharge. But we get projects sometimes that look really cool. We want to say yes to it, but they have a third of the budget that we would normally take on. But if it looks cool, it's like, let's do it and let's make it happen. I think it's also a big difference though, in what you're out there to try to do. And I think one of the reasons I love the motion design industry so much is it's really full of passionate creatives.
I think at the end of the day, there is still this desire to make cool badass work. And not all the time some of these groups out there need a helping hand. And if you can do it creatively, I think that's great. So I think ultimately it just kind of depends on everybody kind of where they are in their life, what they want to do.
So, sorry, I didn't mean to hijack the story there for a bit, but it was really interesting. So you leave the record design stuff, you kind of see the writing on the wall, that might not be a long term endeavor, and you had just discovered (Shilo) and this amazing work they were doing the kind of mixed media stuff. And so at that point, you really didn't know too much about motion graphics or motion design itself as a field, correct?
Aaron:
Yeah, not a lot. I mean, maybe motion graphics was a term at that point, but I don't think I was too familiar with it. I guess around that time I was approached by somebody who knew this company that was looking for an art director. And so I interviewed there and I moved from the record label and I got a job at this other place and they were a parent company for a bunch of skateboard and youth lifestyle kind of brands within it. And so I was an art director there where I did snowboard graphics and apparel graphics. I did packaging for footwear and box design and stuff.
And that was also a really cool stepping stone I think for me, because again, I'm learning more about the print design stuff still, but it started to get bigger than just doing record packaging. I went to China to do press checks on snowboard graphics, I art directed national Ad campaigns. So I just learned I think my whole experience from college up through this job was just learning different things and they're all really interesting and fun. And maybe, I don't think I was thinking too much about the future really at this point. I was just kind of going along for the ride and everything was interesting. I was learning new stuff every day. But during this job we started creating more video content and stuff. And then I started getting back into using AfterEffects and then motion design. This is actually the period when I first noticed Shilo, but then a bunch of other motion design studios were kind of popping up.
So yeah, I started doing more After Effects stuff and kind of got back into it. And then during that time is when I, actually taking a step back, at the record label is where met one of the partners of my future company Legwork. Actually two of my partners. But I went to this other job and they went their own way and we kind of parted careers for a bit, but it was during this new job when we started talking again, and then we started talking about maybe starting a company.
Mack:
Oh, nice. Were you guys doing moonlighting on side projects together or was it always like, "We'd like to do that," and maybe this company Legwork, what it ended up becoming is how you could do that?
Aaron:
We probably spent six months to a year just planning it out, designing our logos and crafting our “brand”. We all kept our jobs while we planned it. We designed the initial Legwork logo and then we built our first website. We quit our jobs before we launched the website, And I don't know if we were doing any big projects at the time, I think we went cold turkey and quit our jobs and went right into Legwork. And for me it wasn't that big of a deal because I still wasn't making that much money, But my two partners left better paying jobs to start Legwork, so they had more at stake.
Mack:
You're like, "I'm already broke. Why not just keep doing this?"
Aaron:
I wasn't worried at all. So yeah, I kind of feel bad about that for them!
Frame for Aaron’s “Kiss my airs” campaign for Nike Toronto’s Air Max Day to celebrate 30 Years of Air Max .
Meryn:
Do you feel like y'all had a certain dynamic? To start a business with someone that takes a lot on both sides. Do you feel there was, I mean obviously y'all thought about it because there was six months leading up to it. Was there a lot of thought in terms of what Legwork would become in those early days? Or was it just like, "Let's jump and we'll see where we land?"
Aaron:
Yeah, that's a good question. I think I was idealistic about what it would become or what we wanted it to be. And I learned later, maybe nine years later, that if I was to start a business again, there are definitely things that maybe should have been different. But yeah I think the three of us had a good dynamic. One of the partners I was pretty good friends with because I worked with him probably for a year or so at the record label, and we all kind of ran in the same circles and had a lot of the same friends. The other one I also met at the record label, but he was just a freelance website designer that would do stuff for the record label so I didn't know him as well. But all of us came from the local music scene. And so we weren't the best of friends, but I think we were good enough friends and trusted each other enough to be comfortable with it.
But again, I think we were not thinking that far ahead. I didn't think, "Oh, what happens if you get in a fight with one of your business partners or something bad happens?" In my mind I was just thinking It was going to be a small studio where we had cool screen printed posters on the wall. I was just thinking more about what it was, where I was going to be sitting during the day. Being inspired by all my design books around me and stuff. I didn't really think about the business that much. I just thought we were going to create cool work all the time.
Mack:
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. I did the exact same thing, Aaron, when Cory and I started Dash, it was like, "Oh man, it'll be so rad. We can just hang out all day. We can make cool stuff."
We didn't talk about the fact that we'd be nitpicking each other's emails on how we write to clients. I mean, it’s just dumb shit like that the first year of any studio as you're working through the business stuff has got to be honestly some of the toughest.
Aaron:
Yeah. Was it just you two at first for a while?
Mack:
It was, we just had the two of us, so there was no third party to make a decision, although I guess Meryn kind of came in and is kind of making some decisions for us now, which has helped. Thank you, Meryn :)
Aaron:
Yeah. Well, so the three partners' situation was what it was and it was pretty good. And I think the three of us actually made sense because I was kind of coming from video and animation and illustration and also print design. But then the other partner was a website designer, and so he knew the website design and development world. And then the other partner had a business degree and he was like at the record label, he kind of managed the books and planned tours that kind of stuff. So he just kind of had more of the business mind. So we're like "Oh, this makes sense." But the crazy thing is one year into that structure, I think it was 2009, we brought on three additional partners.
Mack:
What was the impetus for that? Just cool people that you wanted to bring on?
Aaron:
We needed to fill out what we were doing with additional skill sets. One of our friends was a really good developer, so we brought him on and then we didn't really have a sales person, so we brought on this other guy to run sales. And then we needed another developer at the time that did a different type of development. So we had a front end developer and a back end developer.
“If This Then Domino’s” is a website that uses IFTTT technology that allows customers to automatically order Domino’s pizza every time a particular situation occurs.
Mack Garrison: Interesting. So the early days, you guys, what's really interesting to me is that even though it was kind of like you didn't have a long term plan, you did have a lot of really talented people and even as a small entity, you kind of had these different divisions of the company where kind of people were responsible for. And so how would it go? Did you guys develop processes to work together? Would each person go do their thing and bring information back to the table? Sales guy's like, "All right, I got us a project. Who wants to handle it?"
Aaron: When I think back on it, I was the only one who wasn't really from the website world. And so I think in a lot of ways I was just sitting there kind of doing my own thing and if something came up where we needed to do an animation or an illustration, that would be what I would do. I also was handling a lot of the company branding stuff, so I was just working on the visual side of the company and logos and that kind of stuff. But yes that’s essentially how it worked, but really the 6 of us each made up one part of what a full team on a project would be - so in those days we all kind of worked together on each project rather than one person doing a project and another person on a different project.
Mack:
Interesting. So the early days, everyone has their job, their niche, they bring their experience they have to the table. Were a lot of your clients in the books initially? Was it more kind of in the music space or that same kind of stuff that you had talked about? You were in the kind of album artwork, there was skate stuff, the sort of punk side of things. Was that still a lot of the work y'all were doing in the early days?
Aaron:
Yeah, kind of. So I left my job, the place was called Collective, but I left that job on really good terms. So I gave them two months' notice. I said, "I'm quitting, I'm going to start my own company." And they were super cool and supportive and they gave us work. They had stuff to do that they couldn't really do internally anyway, so they just gave that to us.
One of the brands was this old, I’m sure you've heard of Airwalk. They used to be a legit skateboard brand in the '80s and early ‘90s, but then they turned into kind of an “affordable” mainstream brand, So they brought us on for the brand relaunch website which was a really progressive website at the time. That was one thing about Legwork and Matt Wiggins, who was our developer/partner, he's like this genius developer. Okay, sorry, side note: I'm jumping back again here because this is right when the first iPhone came out…
And the iPhone killed Flash. So Matt, and all these guys came from the Flash development world and the iPhone basically didn't allow Flash, so it kind of killed, developers had to switch gears and start using HTML 5.
And so Matt was such a genius developer that he started figuring out how to do HTML 5 websites that felt like Flash. So we did the first Airwalk projects. And it was just really cool and experimental, we were winning awards for it, and then we also won an award for our own website.
I don't think awards really matter so much anymore, but maybe they do more so in the web world. I'm not even sure these days, but back then, winning those awards, we won at SXSW for our website and then the Airwalk site won maybe a Webby or FWA I think. And that actually got us quick name recognition in that world. So we're definitely known as a web company initially and I struggled a bit because I was from the animation and design side. And it took us a long time, I think to even be known as doing animation. That was kind of an interesting journey for me personally.
Mack:
Well, I can imagine, because as anyone knows who's run the studio, there's ebbs and flows on different types of work. So you know, you may find that you're a particular type of designer, you're getting a lot of type of work coming in, but then there's a pivot and then you're kind of like, "All right, how can I help?" And you're in this kind of space to give me more work, why everyone else is overloaded. And that's going to be a hard thing to kind of navigate. So when you guys, you won, so really the growth came from winning some of these awards, getting the recognition with them, landing some other jobs and then landing those bigger jobs got you more recognition and it kind of became more of a snowball effect on how stuff came in. Is that more or less how the growth happened?
Aaron:
Yeah, I think winning the SXSW award for our own website, I think within a year we had a rep for the studio, like an LA based rep. And so they immediately introduced us to bigger agencies. And then we started doing a lot of work just with bigger agencies, almost right off the bat.
Mack:
That's really fun. Well, especially, I know there's a lot of folks out there who talk about whether they want to be repped or is that a good thing or a bad thing. It sounds like for you all, that was a real big key in moving forward and taking on some bigger projects was the award and then getting representation. Do you think that's accurate?
Aaron:
Yeah, for sure. I think times are, I know it wasn't that long ago, but I think times were different in the industry then too though.
I think the industry was less saturated with small and mid-size companies back then too. So I think we were a bit of an anomaly because we did interactive and animation. So that was definitely unique for the time. I even think now it's a little unique and I feel like if I do ever start another studio, I would probably do that again.
Mack:
I think being, at least from my perspective, is a little bit shifted cause we are a general studio. And so I like the idea, I mean, we're still in the lens of just animation or live action, but we still, we're not just 2D, we do 3D, we do a bunch of things.
I think variety is important, honestly, I think what keeps animators on their toes, you talk about your partners having to learn like HTML 5, kind of pivoting completely and then it discovers a new way of doing things. I think that's how studios evolve and last is you have to mix it up a little bit
Aaron:
Yeah, I think you're totally right. Having those two different disciplines when we were slow and on one side we could make up for it on the other side of the company. But in terms of the motion stuff, it was a gradual growth. And we got bigger and bigger projects on that side. And then I think by the end, it's interesting, I talked to a lot of people, some people knew us only as an animation studio then.
Mack:
Huh. Interesting. So, I don't want to spoil anything from your talk that could be coming up.
Aaron:
I think I've already spoiled half of it.
Mack:
Well good. Well, this will just be an accent then to what's coming up. So Legwork continues to grow. You guys talked about the beginning that you really didn't have any kind of a long term plan. It was just like, "Oh, we'll do this. This is good. Oh we'll do six partners, this seems good," right? And you grow a little bit. Did people kind of come in and out for a bit at Legwork? Did some of those partners stay? Was it kind of fluid where folks were coming in and out of the studio for a bit?
Aaron:
In terms of partners, we were pretty much all there until 2016. Having six partners sounds insane to me now, but we did a really good job of working together for that amount of time, which is a pretty long time for six people to stay friends and business partners.
In the beginning we didn't really have any employees. We had a couple interns, maybe a year or two years in, they came on And our first intern became an employee and was with us for 8 or 9 years!
And it's funny, I think one of our selling points early on, and this is no offense to producers because I fully changed how I think about this over the years, but my partners were like, "We don't need producers, we're a small tight-knit team. We're all pretty senior level at this point and we can just do the work. We can talk directly to clients." And I actually think a lot of our clients liked that. And I think that was a bit of a selling point for us for a while. But as we got bigger and bigger, we brought on bigger and bigger projects we brought on producers. And I would never do that again, I value producers so much now. It's insane.
Mack:
Well as soon as you spend 75% of your day writing emails instead of working, you're like, "Wait a minute. What happened here?
Meryn:
And a level of objectiveness that's just like, it's really hard to separate yourself from the art or what you're making and that layer from the client to you, a little bit of protection from yourself.
Aaron:
Definitely. Even now, just working as an independent, I have the producer at my rep company and he does most of the corresponding work. We'll do meetings, creative meetings and stuff like that. But when I do a check-in, I'm like "Here's my deck, here's my stuff for the day" and he’ll send it over. Often when a producer is the middle-person, they're just passing an email over and then getting the feedback. And sometimes that can get muddy if the producer doesn't communicate it correctly. But it's been great Rob the EP. And I actually really like that process because I can stay kind of focused on just doing my work.
Mack:
Well, there's a lot more to talk about here, Aaron, but I think it leaves a lot for what's to come, the presentation. And I know Meryn and I both really enjoyed chatting with you today and getting to know a little bit of background. I'm super excited to be hanging at the Bash this year.
Aaron:
Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you both very much. Looking forward to meeting in person and I’ll talk to you soon.
Meryn:
Awesome. Thanks, Aaron.
Takeover Tuesday with Mike Healey
An interview with Mike Healey: a director and animator based in NY.
Interviewer: Matea Losenegger.
Read time: 5min
Matea:
Thank you for taking part in our Tuesday Takeover series! Can you please tell us a little about yourself and your work?
Mike:
I’m a director/animator based in NY. I fell in love with animation at an early age watching stuff like PeeWee’s Playhouse and Space Jam. After graduating from NYU, where I studied Film/TV with a focus on animation, I founded //kneeon studios and have been lucky enough to be doing that ever since!
Matea:
Many of your projects are very striking and illustrative. Do you have a background in illustration and what was your path to becoming a successful art director?
Mike:
Thanks! I don’t have a huge illustration background but I am always checking out work by illustrators and designers and keeping an eye out for potential collaborators. Whenever a project comes up, I try to find the right fit stylistically and tonally, then reach out to illustrators I know or have been wanting to collaborate with. I love to concept work out with illustrators and then let their imagination run wild. I am a firm believer that two (or more!) brains are better than one, so throwing around ideas in the concept phase is really fun for me and there’s usually a nice blend of all of our ideas in the final product.
Frames from “Curt Schilling’s Imperfect Game” - a film Mike directed.
Matea:
Where does the name //kneeon come from?
Mike:
When we first started out, my former business partner and I wanted a name that evoked bright colors and fun, so the name Neon came up. Sadly that name was already taken so we decided just to spell it differently instead and then it stuck. Wish I had a better answer!
Matea:
What made you want to start your own studio and do you have tips for artists aiming to do the same?
Mike:
I graduated from NYU in 2009 and there were very few job opportunities at the time so I decided to try to start my own company with a friend. We had been freelancing throughout college and trying to direct and animate as many projects as possible before graduating so we already had some potential clients when we got out of school. I had an internship at a production company in my senior year and the producers there were super helpful and gave me lots of good advice on everything from writing decks to bidding to budgeting and producing jobs.
In terms of advice for those wanting to start their own studio, I would say make sure you have a pretty good grasp at the business side of things, or partner with someone who does. It’s also important to have some projects that showcase the kind of work you want to make. Doesn’t necessarily have to be client work—it can be a personal project or short film. But you want your website and work to be a reflection of your talents and give an idea of why a client may want to hire you over some other animation studio. Lastly, keep your overhead as low as possible for as long as possible. It can help you take on projects you truly want to work on instead of expanding too quickly and being forced to take on anything and everything.
Frame from “J.R. Smith Redefined.”
Matea:
You've collaborated with many talented folks. How do you find artists and what goes into putting together a strong team?
Mike:
I always spend time (but not TOO much time) each day on Instagram, Behance and other sites. Whenever I see something I enjoy, I bookmark it. A lot of relationships with artists I have collaborated with have come from me reaching out to them when I enjoy their work. Word of mouth is another great way to find artists. I’m always asking friends and collaborators for any recommendations when I need some help with a project.
To put together a strong team, I think it’s important to find people you really enjoy working with. Many freelancers we have worked with have been with us on a ton of projects over the years so there’s a good short-hand between us. The best projects are the ones that don’t really feel like “work” and everyone has a creative say on.
Matea:
From sports to food/bev, retail, music, and more what is your favorite type of project to work on?
Mike:
My favorite types of projects to work combine sports with documentary audio. We have done so many sports-related projects that we recently started up a sports animation wing at //kneeon called Slam Dunk Club! I love being able to take interviews/doc-style audio and adding fun visuals to tell stories.
Slam Dunk Club brings together a team of directors, designers and animators from across the globe.
Matea:
As someone with a pretty diverse portfolio, is there an area of animation you would still like to explore?
Mike:
I’d love to work on some more long-form projects. We do a lot of work ranging from 15 seconds to 2 minutes in length, but would really enjoy making some longer films. We’re currently in the process of finishing up a 20 minute piece. And since my wife and I recently had our first child, I’d love to explore making some more animation geared toward kids!
Matea:
Your studio's work has a very distinctive voice. Where do you find inspiration and how do you make sure your work stays fresh?
Mike:
Thanks! I’m always trying to look at animation, design and art whenever I have a chance. It can be good to be aware of trends in animation and art so you know what to avoid to try to make something unique. And we try not to make something with the same style twice (unless of course it’s part of a series).
Matea:
As someone who's been in this game for a while, what do you think is in store for the future of motion design?
Mike:
There are always trends and advances in technology that will make animators’ lives easier, and some like AI that may make animators’ lives and livelihood more difficult. I’m not entirely sure what the future holds for motion design to be honest…I think there will be needs for more interactive animation and AR/VR as the tech catches up and becomes more mainstream.
Shot from “Ben’s Original” project.
Matea:
What does the rest of 2023 look like to you? Anything we should keep an eye out for?
Mike:
We have a long-form fully animated documentary being wrapped up and hopefully coming out sometime soon. Recently wrapped up animated segments for a documentary about J.R. Smith that just came out on Amazon Prime.
Meet the speakers: Sekani Solomon
An interview with Sekani Solomon: an award-winning Creative Director based in New York City
Q&A hosted by Cory Livengood and Ashley Targonski.
Read time: 15min
Cory:
So, you're kind of a unique case in that we were going to have you speak at the Bash two years ago, and it didn't work out in large part due to Covid. I think our readers would really love to know a little bit about your background.
Sekani:
I guess I was always interested in creativity and just arts in general. And so when I was younger, let's say around 10 or so, I was always drawing Dragon Ball Z, or cartoons, or my favorite anime at the time. And then when I was in high school, I was like, could I really perceive this as a career? It seemed like the answer was no. So I actually dropped art. And then around 18, we were rebuilding our school website, and I was like, well, I used Photoshop several years ago, maybe I could help with this. And then I kind of reentered the space, and saw that they had significantly more resources on the internet, how to learn this stuff. And it was suddenly a lot easier.
And so yeah, I just kind of jumped in and went crazy, just doing a lot of photo manipulations. I think back then that was the hype, and then decided to take that on the next level with learning After Effects. My mind was blown, because again, at that point this was a foreign thing that I'd never seen anyone do. It's always something I wanted to do, animate. So that was mind blowing for me. And then that evolved into Cinema 4D. That's when I started incorporating some 3D elements into the work. At that point, it was time to apply for college. And so growing up on a small island [Tobago], if you really wanted to have a promising career, at least in the arts, you have to leave. And I knew that.
So I started off actually not being convinced that I wanted to do art. I didn't think that could be a viable career option. So I applied to schools for a software engineering degree, and then actually switched to graphic design and then motion media after I discovered SCAD. I ended up getting the scholarship from them, because I had a portfolio of work already because I was just kind of obsessed, and doing it in my spare time. Got a scholarship locally from Tobago. And so I ended up going to SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. And then during my time there, I had four internships before I graduated. I worked with Loyalkaspar, Gentleman Scholar, The Mill, and Imaginary Forces, and decided that Imaginary Forces worked similarly to how I did, where they wear a lot of hats and jump all around the production process. And then in 2018 I worked at Apple, so it was my first time working in house at a tech company, which was a whole new world. It was eye-opening because I hadn’t worked directly for a brand, and so seeing people at least there work less hours, and could value their time more with a higher day rate.
Sekani is an award-winning Creative Director based in New York City
Cory:
One of the things I wanted to ask you about a little bit was what drew you to move over in-house? It sounds like briefly with Apple, but more specifically I guess recently with CashApp and now Block. And what do you see as the pros and the cons of that approach? And clearly you've stuck with it for a while too, so is it something that you like?
Sekani:
Yeah, no, great question. I think seeing Apple was great, but at the time it didn't feel like someplace I would've stayed full-time, just because they're such an established company, and the checks and balances are so rigorous. Not necessarily ideal for me, but back of my mind, I was looking at what Microsoft was doing in the space. And I was like, wow, it's really cool to see a brand like Microsoft adopting this small New Age 3D motion design approach to showcase their work. It would be cool to begin to try to start something like that at another company if the situation provided itself.
And so later on that year at the end of 2018, I got a message on LinkedIn about this company called CashApp, which ironically I wasn't familiar with at the time, and I was at Buck at the time, and their offices weren't too far from each other. So I did a little interview over at the Square office and then walked over to Buck. And the conversation I had with them was just talking about where this brand could be and how we could interject 3D and motion graphics into it and elevate it. And the idea of being at the ground floor and being able to help shape something was really enticing. Though they had zero 3D pipeline, zero 3D infrastructure, there was nothing.
Snippet of the whacky things Sekani has rendered at Cash App.
Sekani:
So literally starting from the ground level when you're talking about processes, even equipment, pipeline, everything had to be built from scratch. But I think doing that on top of having a brand that was very creative allowed a lot of flexibility.
Cory:
Yeah. A willingness to let you do your own thing to a degree, or at least shape some of the stuff, versus being stuck in the Apple way or whatever company it might be, right?
Sekani:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which allowed me to express myself creatively while pushing a brand. And I used to do a ton of short films, or personal projects, just because I didn't feel like I could get my creativity out there. But now it's like I don't even feel the need to, because I put so much of that work into these projects.
Cory:
Can you talk to us a little bit about what is the relationship between Block and CashApp? I know that's sort of a recent development.
Sekani:
That's a great question because my role has actually changed. I no longer work at CashApp specifically, at some point we wanted to create a parent brand per se, just because the company was scaling and we had acquired a few companies, so we already had Square and CashApp, and we had a acquired TIDAL, the music streaming service, and then we had two of our business units called TBD and Spiral. And so we still had the Square name, which we called the seller business unit, so it wasn't really clear. So we figured maybe creating a corporate brand, to help kind of clear that up. Just to return ownership of the brands back to the business units. And so I was pulled into that project, which was a beast to say the least. But yeah, let's just say it was incredible, and I was the only 3D person on it per se, so I worked on the logo launch film, so it was a very intense project.
Coming from that, I was given a new opportunity to co-lead a new team, a foundational team that lives outside the business units, that work with all the business units at the company. And we're calling it Creative Studio . We created a film called Reimagine that encapsulates what the team wants to do with our partners, essentially reimagine what their creative can be.
Cory:
Oh, exciting.
Sekani:
Yeah, our first piece that we created. And I think it's going to be really interesting because obviously we've seen a lot of cool things come from companies, but typically they're outsourced. So this is a piece that was fully created internally, by internal designers, so quite excited about that.
Cory:
Yeah, that's a pretty big shift from walking into their office and having to build their entire infrastructure at CashApp, to now creating teams and overseeing multiple brands worth of content. That's cool..
Sekani:
Yeah, no, we pulled in some really talented folk recently, Chris Phillips from Buck, aka Phibs, used to lead 3D design over there. And Zachary Corzine, an amazing designer. He's decided to join us as well.
Cory:
Oh, cool. In your work with CashApp, and before Block, just knowing that that was a lot of time and a lot of work, were you involved with more than just motion graphics? How involved were you with things that were outside of the animation landscape?
Sekani:
A lot. From our investor letter that went out, doing the covers for those, I've done a lot of different projects, whether it be maybe a visual for an event we were doing, to animating on a campaign, to in-app imagery. There's a lot of diversity in the ways that 3D and design can show up, which was nice.
Cory:
Yeah. I've also seen that you've done a little bit of work with Maxon and C4D, showcasing things, and doing demos and stuff like that. How do you like working with them and how did that relationship form? A lot of people use C4D, but not everybody gets to go hang out with the people who make it.
Sekani:
Yeah. Actually, it's funny, in 2014, one of my college professors, he was supposed to speak at NAB and he couldn't make it, so he let myself and another buddy of mine, Jason Diaz, go, and we were these young kids presenting at NAB, and from there I had a relationship with them, and presented at a few SIGRAPHs after that, I think 2016, 2018, maybe 2015, and a couple NAB conferences as well. They're great guys, so it's always good to just have that platform to walk through the work and showcase things, which is nice. And obviously when you're a freelancer, it's a lot easier. But I haven't done one in a while, just because I think with the work that I do now, there's a lot of legal constraints and approvals I have to get to even talk through things externally.
Star Wars: The Last Stand is a dynamic, gritty, full CGI depiction of battle warn storm troopers facing off against an unknown enemy.
Cory:
One thing I noticed when I was going back over our last interview from 2020, was you and Mack talked a little bit about the NFT space, and I was just personally curious if your feelings on that have changed at all in the last couple years.
And you know, you were, I believe, and not to put you on the spot, but you quoted as saying they're not going anywhere, they're here to stay. And you might be right, but I'm just wondering if between 2020 and now, you've thought any differently about that, in our industry, you've got Golden Wolf getting acquired by Doodle and things like that. I'm just wondering where your mind is at with that sort of space.
Sekani:
Yeah, I do think they're here to stay, but the scale, as you can see, has dramatically changed. I mean, even though it did allow a lot of artists to make a lot of money at the time, a lot of it was just funneled by pump and dump schemes and bros using artists as a way to make money. And if you're fortunate to be used in that way, then good for you.
I think people really got tied up into this feeling that it was all about the art, which in retrospect, at least now to me, it's clear that it had nothing to do with the art, but the value that it could generate, which really just mimics the fine art world under all these Van Goghs and those types of pieces, people pay millions of dollars for them, not just because they're beautiful works of art, it's because they're very valuable pieces, and an easier way to store value then maybe it stocks or something else.
So I mean, I'm sure there are collectors out there that genuinely care about art, but I do think a lot of them are just doing it for monetary gain, which, it's fine, but I think we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking this is just some liberating thing. And I think a lot of artists probably discovered that when they did their taxes.
Cory:
Yeah, no, that's really well put. I mean, it's no surprise it's the same shift that's kind of happened with cryptocurrency in general, and in some ways even calling it a currency these days, it's more like a stock. It's more like that kind of speculative stuff, which is, again, as you say, totally fine, as long as you know what you're getting into.
Sekani:
Yeah, no, exactly. And I think even Bitcoin per se, I think there is a lot of good utility, but no one looks at it for a utility. It's for the value or the money they could make. And it's like people make a use case for it, oh yeah, NFT has a utility. And I'm like, okay, so this puppy will grow ears and legs. I don't know. Me personally, I'm like, okay, this is just a way for people to make a lot of money.
Cory:
Yeah. I like what you said, if you manage to cash in on that, then good for you.
Sekani:
I've just seen a lot of good artists get looked over, haven't sold anything, and quickly I realized it had nothing to do with the art. But you know what, if you've become notable, it's just the real world art scene. It's nothing new here. People have been doing this for years, so it is what it is. But the thing that I always thought about was, I never saw longevity in it, and we just never knew where the space was going to go. I think 2021 was just a wild year. And even me, I was getting an immense amount of FOMO. I really questioned, what you're doing, it's like okay, you could just sell a JPEG for $300,000. Why am I doing this job? It was pretty wild to see. But who knows? I think for some people, that might be the type of thing that may not happen again. If you were able to cash in, then yeah, I think that's amazing..
Cory:
Well, there did seem like there was this really interesting inflection point where it was, you have all these artists who normally make work for other brands, and for commercials, and for advertising. And there was this period of time where they could just make the weirdest thing they wanted, whatever they wanted, and it could look crazy, and people were really into it.
Sekani:
Yeah. Because then, at that point, you're more so an artist. If you're a motion designer, at least to me, inherent in the world of design is communication and problem solving. This is like, if I'm just making art, that's more like, I don't know, an expression, or you're not necessarily trying to solve something specific. You're creating a story or a narrative, which I think is also fine. But yeah, I guess maybe I've just drunk the Kool-Aid too much. To see the amount of hours that I put into this craft, and at least the job that I do, I like the idea of building towards something. If I could tell the story of this product that could help change the way technology is operated, or better a product, then I like having somewhat of an outcome like that.
I guess maybe at this point in my career, I just like the idea of being able to move, because this is the thing, working at a company, when you work at a studio, you kind of deliver the work, and success is based on the craft and the messaging of the work. But the tech, you could put something out, you see all the metrics and you see how it performs, which I think puts a little bit more pressure, not for it just to be beautiful, but obviously for it to function.
Cory:
Yeah. That's a really, really, really interesting point. And especially when you're at a studio, you put out the work and then you move on to the next one. You never even have to think about that again. Whereas now you're building on top of the last layer, on top of the next layer, that kind of thing.
Sekani:
The craft and the quality is very important, but it needs to also be valuable. And that could depend on a lot of different factors, but it's just something that you have to think about. Whereas if you're a freelancer at a studio, you don't need to really think about it. It's more so a creative director's job, or someone else that's not working on the craft.
Cory:
Do you find your day-to-day these days mostly managing teams of other artists, or are you still getting in the trenches and making stuff yourself too?
Sekani:
I'm doing it all. I'm pretty much still in the trenches, still crafting stuff. I actually have a render going right now.
Cory:
Is that by choice or is that by necessity?
Sekani:
By necessity. This team is really small. The amount of work that we are tasked with is pretty insane. Right now we're working on a series that's minutes long and it's all 3D. But I think the technology that we're expanding on is really interesting. At least for me, it's like I have to be able to work at a macro and micro level. So think big picture about the story in the narrative, and then be able to massage the animation on a specific item or something like that. It's an interesting challenge. You have to wear a lot of different hats.
Cory:
Yeah. That's exciting though. Just to get in the weeds a little bit, out of my own curiosity, because I like Cinema 4D a lot. Do you use cloud render farms? Do you prefer one render engine to another? Or what's your sort of go-to with C4D when it comes to wanting to get the look that you're going for?
Sekani:
Yeah, well, I like Redshift just because I used to use Octane, let's say 2016. It was quite buggy back then, and Redshift came and it was super stable and it had all the tools I wanted. I also used to use V-Ray. So Redshift had a more familiar workflow just because they're both biased renderers, and they kind of have the AOV workflow that I liked.
I typically comp a lot of my stuff, regardless of how good the renderer is, I'll always put it in Nuke. And you can try to do something to push it. And so I usually could achieve the look that I want to, at least close to, between the combination of the render and doing some comp work. But people have been saying really good things about Octane lately, so I'd be curious to jump back into that world and see how it goes.
And in terms of rendering, we are recently just building out some new pipelines. We bought a bunch of computers, and we want to get everything that worked up so we could have just our own personal render farm. It's just easier for us too, because we get to keep all information on our servers and not have to extend notes of third party renderers.
Cory:
Good point. I'm sure there's a lot of privacy concerns with that kind of thing. Plus those cloud renders are great until they're not, and then you're kind of out of luck.
Sekani:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just nice to be able to submit a render to deadline. Just don't have to think about - all right, I got to patch this up, to upload it, and yeah, it could get a little taxing.
I know AWS is developing new tech. You could spin up renders or render nodes directly in deadline, and then there's a render token thing that Octane uses, and it's going to be really helpful in the future where you could render things by blockchain technology, which is interesting. And everything's encrypted, so no one else can see the data, which is pretty cool.
Cory:
Are you mostly remote these days with Block and CashApp, or do you guys have an office presence at all?
Sekani:
Yeah. Well, it's fully remote, so you don't have to come into the office if you don't want to, but I try to go in at least twice or three times a week. We have two offices in Soho, one for CashApp and one for Square. But just after two years of working from home, it is nice to actually be around people, have a conversation with people and discuss things. And just even discussing creative: typing feedback or having conversations via Slack is good but also having to, “Hey, are you available for a call?”
It's just so much easier to walk over to someone's desk and have a conversation, you can point to the screen. So just getting some of that feeling is great to have in person than the rapport you build, and that camaraderie you get, it's pretty nice.
Cory:
I wouldn't mind asking you a little bit about maybe some advice for people who are up and coming in the industry. Do you have any pieces of advice or things that you did, you think, in your youth that you wouldn't do now?
Sekani:
I think it's good to start at a studio. I think if you find a good one, it's good to be staff. You get to learn a lot by working with a lot of people. Also, if you're in college, it's good to do internships, because it provides a more risk averse way to learn. I think when you're a freelancer, there's a lot more pressure for you to perform. And so if you're an intern, the expectations are different, it's like, oh yeah, he's an intern. We're not expecting anything crazy. So it's a good way to learn without the pressure.
Also, if you're a motion designer, I think it's better to narrow down your skillset a little bit. You're a 3D motion designer, which does both animation, or in design, design animation, or you do one or the other, or you're 2D, or maybe you do a little bit of after effects and 3D. It's hard when you say you can do both, unless you can really do both very well, and there's 100% people that can, but from a marketing perspective, it's easier to get yourself in the door with a few things. And when you get in there, you're like, well, by the way, I can actually do this stuff, and the other.
Always seek mentors of people you could ask questions to. And what else? Just make a lot of work, make the work that you want to create. But also, and this is a thing I see when looking at candidates, a lot of portfolios are just built on a lot of random tests, or a lot of abstract stuff, without the thinking or design behind it. And if you're looking purely for craft, then that's great.
Cory:
I do think that's one thing that, at least in the portfolios we've seen that come out of Savannah, that come out of SCAD, they seem to do a pretty good job of having students not only showcase the final product, but also showcase the thought process that got them to the final product. I don't know if that was the case when you were there, but it's something I've been impressed with, their program.
Sekani:
Yeah, no, I think that's really good. They really teach you the process of design, and that's where I learned a lot of my chops from, because I never took a 3D class when I went to SCAD. It was all about design and storytelling, and how to build a narrative, and ways to keep things exciting, and that type of stuff. So yeah, I think if you could have some of that process in your portfolio that could show that, Hey, I can not just make things, but I could think about it conceptually, and this all makes sense, then I think that makes it a lot stronger. In your portfolio, that is.
Cory:
That's interesting, yeah, that you learned the software on your own time, and learned more of that fundamental stuff at school.
Sekani:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. School I think is for learning some of the soft skills, and there's so many resources online to learn the software, but it's really hard to find a course that teaches you about the principles of design, and how they're applied, and storytelling. Those more nuanced things are more difficult to learn. And then there's a matter of taste. How you develop that over time. That just takes time. I mean, I think that's where, when you say this person's talented, I think some people innately have good taste.
Cory:
I'm just curious, out of your whole body of work, is there any project that you're the most proud of, or one of the most proud of, and maybe why?
Sekani:
I think the projects I'm usually most proud of, are the ones that, if I had an idea and a concept and I was able to execute on that successfully. Maybe my film, maybe Hidden, is always up there for me. I think I had an idea for a narrative and I saw it through, and I kind of made the whole thing myself, which was just in my free time. Which was interesting, because back then no one was really using models and cloth [like that]. And now obviously that's the trend. So you look at it now and it feels like what everyone else is doing. But I was fortunate enough to release that before it became a fad. But, I try not to be too precious.
Hidden is a short film about self appreciation.
Cory:
Yeah. Yeah. Well that's so important in the industry, you know? Can't be married to anything, especially if you're dealing with a client.
Because I also came from an in-house studio before working with Dash, and I think one thing I realized is, it's very easy for a brand to get stale or one track, because there's a point where you're focusing more on how much can you release, versus what's the quality, and what's the meaning behind it. So how do you continue to push the brand, and what do you think through when you're thinking about that?
Sekani:
I would say it's just about how the team is organizing the type of people that they're bringing in and just knowing what to keep in house, what to outsource. And at some point, if people just have to be honest, what can really be churned out? And sometimes it's better to put out less and have better quality than to just oversaturate the market.
Cory:
Great. Thank you. Well, this has been really great, thanks for chatting with us.
Sekani:
Yeah. Awesome. Thank you guys for taking the time to chat with me.
Meet the speakers: Macaela VanderMost
An interview with Macaela VanderMost, Founder & Executive Creative Director of Newfangled Studios. Under Macaela’s leadership, Newfangled Studios combines the strategic thinking of an agency with the craft and artistry of a production company. Whether they are creating social campaigns or developing short-form brand films, Macaela, and her team use storytelling and design as vehicles to combat stereotypes, amplify underserved communities, and move the needle forward for her clients.
Q&A hosted by Cory Livengood and Ashley Targonski.
Read time: 15min
Cory:
Hi Macaela, it’s great to see you and interview you for the Bash - we'd love to just know a little bit about what your career looked like before Newfangled. How you found yourself in the motion design space and the studio space even before you started your own, and what that journey looks like?
Macaela:
Sure. I started my journey as a video editor and I worked in reality TV. Anyone who's been a video editor knows that you're the one who ends up staying up all night long, because everything up until that point has had delays or questions around it. And I started feeling a little bit frustrated with that and thinking, well, maybe I actually want to be a producer because I could see the problems at the top. Also, I was in my early 20s. So at that point in my life, I “knew everything” and I could see that I would be a great producer. So then I pivoted to starting to become a producer, and I got a gig as a predator, so it was like a producer/editor on a reality TV show.
Cory:
I've never heard that term before. That's really great.
Macaela:
Oh, it was a thing back in the early 2000s. People were predators. Then I realized that actually it's neither producing nor editing that I want to do, it's creative direction. So it took me a couple of wrong turns to get to realize that I wanted to be a creative director. And that was because I started freelancing, I realized that TV wasn't for me and I really wanted to do advertising. And so I started freelancing at an ad agency and I would be the person in the edit suite working live with a creative director. And they had all the ideas and the vision, but they didn't have to execute every detail themselves And I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to be the ideas person. And so I pushed forward with what I knew how to do and knew how to get paid for, which was editing until I had more gigs than I could handle.
And I decided, okay, when that was the time I'm going to start my studio. So starting my studio meant, say I wasn't going to come in person anymore. Because at the time it was only in-office, and nobody took projects remotely. It just didn't happen. I said, Nope, I'm a studio now, so if you're going to hire me, I'm going to do it in my own space and I'm going to have an intern who's my assistant, and I'm going to put a TV in the room and you can come in and sit with me and this is my edit suite and you can hire me this way. And so some of the people who worked at that big ad agency thought, okay, cool. I'll hire Macaela. She's a post-house basically.
And I started getting gigs that way. I'm not a designer, but I've always had an eye for design and an ability to direct what I wanted it to look like and be able to see it in my mind's eye. At all the places that I worked, there was always a motion graphics component to the editorial work or the branding or the lower thirds or the show open and close. So that was always sort of part of what I did. And I surrounded myself with a lot of people who did that, and I would partner with them to get things done.
And then over time, and this was back in 2009, I realized, okay, if I want to start getting bigger jobs, we need to do the production as well because then I'm going to be able to do the post. So I started partnering with more people who could do production and then got one job at a time. I built it up to what it is now and was able to build it starting out with literally nothing. I didn't have any money or any equipment or anything. I just knew people and was a decent editor and can pull things in. And then I had producing chops so I could do the budget and the schedule and manage the job. And now we're 32 people and we have all the great equipment and resources and wonderfully talented people, and we handle all the way from creative; through concepting, live action, sign, animation, editing, and then the project management along the way.
Cory:
That's fantastic. So even with the live-action work, you're doing that in-house, you're not hiring out other crews and other things like that. I mean, your equipment, your studios, and your... Fairly mixed.
Macaela:
Typically, the way it works with live-action is that you would have staff producers and staff directors, and then the particular crew, you're going to hire out the right camera person for the job. The right gaffer, the person who's going to do the lighting, the hair and makeup artist, all those people are going to be freelanced. But for the most part, we have our go-to people who we've worked with over and over again. I mean those people really wouldn't be staff anywhere that you went.
Cory:
Yeah, that's similar to our experience too with our live-action, which is a little less than you guys, but yeah, it's a very similar process.
Macaela:
So you have your producers and directors in-house, and then you pull in your freelancers for the shoots.
Cory:
When you started was that the goal, going from a single person to a company?
Macaela:
Yeah, it was always that I was going to grow a studio. In fact, this is my third attempt at a studio.
Cory:
Oh wow.
Macaela:
I started Phatcaddy Productions when I was a teenager, and then I started MVM Post, and then I started Newfangled and Newfangled was the one that took off. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I never thought about anything else. I never even considered anything other than entrepreneurship.
Cory:
That's great.
Macaela:
Yeah, there was really never, it never was like, oh, should I or shouldn't I? It was just like, this is what I'm going to do. And I just kept trying different angles until it happened.
Macaela VanderMost, Executive Creative Director, Newfangled Studios
Cory:
These days the inclusion and diversity components of a company have become, and I guess this is a good thing even though sometimes it has bad parts, trendy. But I wonder for you, is that always also part of the equation as far as bringing in underrepresented people as you built Newfangled in particular, the studio that made it? Or is that something that's just more of something that everyone's coming to terms with now and getting more visibility around?
Macaela:
So I'd say we started around 2011. So maybe it's just the stages of survival and what you're thinking about. But at the beginning I was just thinking about getting better at my own skills and getting jobs and partnering with the right people and getting the work done. And it wasn't really as much on my radar. And also I didn't feel very empowered to have a voice back then. And then in about 2011, I started getting a little pushier with my clients about being inclusive, specifically with casting, with the way that we drew characters, with storylines, with inclusive language, not always being ableist with your language or not always being heteronormative with your language.
But at that time I still wasn't... It's a journey like anything else. I was still at the beginning of my journey and then I put out the series Untapped, I think that was in 2016 maybe. So still far before what happened to George Floyd, when everybody realized that this is important. But at the time, that was when we first started really pushing hard beyond the LGBTQ and women or female-identifying people and really expanding it out. And we started doing a lot of pro bono work in the disability community. I think my horizons were just broadening, we were growing up a little bit as a studio. I was growing up a little bit as a human, by that time I was in my mid-30s.
And once I started to have bigger clients and more confidence that when I said something, they would listen versus always being afraid that if I pushed too hard, they were just going to go elsewhere or that I was going to come off as annoying and pushy. And it really had a lot to do with building my own personal confidence and as building the Newfangled brand, people would trust me because they trust my brand, so we started pushing harder and harder and making it more of our core identity. Untapped, I think, gave us some of that credibility.
We opened up the 3% Conference with that video, and we included some really big players from some really big companies that were part of that. And all of that was, we didn't get paid to do that. We just did that on our own time because we wanted to. I think that was really the catalyst for crystallizing it as a core value of Newfangled. But again, it was all an evolution because Newfangled wasn't started by hedge fund people, and here are the core values and our identity, what we're going after with this big business strategy. It was really like...
Cory:
How do I pay rent?
Macaela:
Yeah! I was just this dork who was obsessed with making videos and I did nothing but that for a really long time until it grew into a thing that is bigger than me.
Untapped: Macaela’s Fight for Equality
Cory:
Well, and that's really, that's where the confidence to be able to make those, as you said, okay, now people know my brand and they know that I'm the expert and speaking as an expert on this, you get a lot less pushback I'm sure, than the annoying person you were worried about.
Macaela:
And also it's just the relationship with my clients. I mean, at this point, whether it's about DEIB or anything else, I'm very comfortable to, after the big meeting in front of everybody, call the cell phone of my client, and be like, can we offline about this? And I have that relationship with people. Whereas when you first start out, you don't and it can be scary to do that, to take a stance.
Cory:
Yeah, that's a really good point. Did you ever run into situations with clients where they were pushing back against that? Or have they all been pretty open to those conversations? How do you navigate?
Macaela:
Before 2020 it was constantly a battle.
Cory:
Interesting.
Macaela:
Even post-2020, there are times when we get a lot of the, wow, let's just do it both ways just to be sure.
Cory:
And you know that they're going to pick the other way. Right?
Macaela:
Yeah. I think typically before 2020, for the most part, the people who I was surrounded by had similar values to mine, but maybe not the passion to push it forward. And so while they wanted to see representation in the work, they didn't care enough to stick their own neck out. So I might have put something forward that maybe seemed a little risky to them in terms of will every stakeholder in the whole wide world, including middle America, be happy about this? No, let's just not take the chance. Let's just do the safer thing. So while it's not that, I don't think that anybody I was working with was a bad person or inherently racist or homophobic or any of those things, I think they just didn't care enough to take a risk and say to their boss, I stand by this and here's why. It was just easier to say, that seems a little forced. That was a line I'd get a lot. It seems a little forced.
So I would get pushback for that reason. Or they would say, let's do it with and without. So it started in early 2011 through maybe 2015. It would be a hard no. Like I'm cool, but other people might not be. So let's just be safe and take it. And then 2015 ish to maybe 2020, I get a lot of the, let's just do it both ways. I'm cool, maybe they won't be. And then from 2020 and beyond, all of a sudden it's like, hey, in the brief, let's just make sure we're being diverse. And everything is like this has to be a diverse cast. And it's like the cast is one person. I'm like, do you know what the word diverse means? Making your one character black didn't make you diverse.
Cory:
Yeah.
Macaela:
From 2020 and beyond, it was a mandate, even though they didn't know what they were talking about, and they would just call everything diverse. It just meant we don't have all white people. It's been a journey. We're all on a journey.
Cory:
Yeah. And when you get that pushback as a business owner, an entrepreneur, you don't want to say no to a contract or you've got to pay your staff and things like that. I mean, this is a delicate question but just wondering, how often do you acquiesce? Do you say, okay, we're going to do it your way, even though I know it's not the right way? Or is that something you had to do more of before and less of now?
Macaela:
I would say in that benchmark before 2015 where I became very confident in my viewpoint and not really worried if I was going to get the next gig or not.
Cory:
Yeah.
Macaela:
I would do, I mean, I went as far as editing myself. Personally, I was asked to be in the video and then they asked me to edit myself out of the video because not everybody wanted to see gay people.
Cory:
Wow!
Macaela:
So I definitely cried in the bathroom after that one.
Cory:
Yeah.
Macaela:
I would just do whatever they said because I wanted nothing more than my studio to take off. And these were big brands. Out of the gate, I was working with big brands and so I was intimidated. After 2016, I think partly because I had made this big public stink with Untapped, I just felt empowered to be like, no, I'm not doing that. And I did many times. I did take it both ways. I'll give you another just very personal example. We were doing a shoot for a company and there was a scene and it was like two parents picking up a baby out of a crib and nuzzling them. And so it was at the time I had a newborn baby.
So I volunteered my baby for the shoot and she was in the scene and I cast a lesbian couple. They weren't really a couple, but I cast them to look like a couple. And the scene is, they pick up the baby and they're kind of nuzzling the baby out. And this is when clients were remoted in, this is probably, well, I know which baby I'm talking about. So this would've been 2018. My daughter was an infant. And I get a client comment on the other end from someone who I know well and is a good person who said, Hey, I love that we're being diverse, but could we just get it another way? Could we just have a man and a woman? And I didn’t happen to have a second set of backup actors. So one of my producers who just happened to be a very good-looking guy was like, I'll do it.
And he stepped in with the more feminine looking lesbian of the couple and pretended it was their baby. And then for the whole rest of the shoot, every time that we had the lesbian couple cast for something, we'd shoot it that way and then my producer would step in and pretend to be the dad and we'd shoot it the other way. And that was kind of that mid-ground where it was “get it both ways”. I still made sure that the lesbian couple ended up in the cut, but I was riding the line during the shoot, even though I was pretty upset about it. And it was pretty awkward for my producer who knew what he was doing and knew me.
Cory:
Yeah.
Macaela:
It was pretty awkward for him. But there were a lot of things like that where it was like, I want to do this, but I'm also afraid that I'm going to get in trouble. So can you cover my butt and make sure that you just have the white straight guy in the shot too? And then I would fight the battle later in post. So sometimes it's just a matter of picking the time and place, but still getting to the same end goal of that is what ended up being in the co.
Cory:
Yeah. That's a crazy story. I'm glad that it worked out in the long run though. That's great.
Macaela:
There's just a lot of things like that. It's just very, very, very common that it's the, just get it both ways.
Cory:
And these days you have people on staff who DEIB advocate roles on staff too. And what does that role sort of entail and how does that play into the production, your client work?
Macaela:
We partner with Joy Channel who works as an extension of our staff to push our DEIB mission forward. So for diversity, they help us with qualitative and quantitative studies, so they conduct listening sessions with the staff about what any of the issues are. They do the quantitative, they keep track of our industry benchmarks and where we are so that we know, hey, we're doing good here, but we need to work on this over here.
So that's more on the diversity part. Equity is really about making sure that people have access to the tools that they need and can advance in their careers regardless of their background. And that can be anything from just something that really recently came up from a survey last week. We have some people who don't have great eyesight, and when we're screen sharing, we weren't sending out the deck in advance. We were screen-sharing the deck and sending it out after. That's an equity thing. Some people don't have great eyesight and they couldn't freaking follow along, but they felt embarrassed to say, I can't see it. So that's just an example of things that can be that simple that are about equity. Another example is when we went remote. I’m in my 40s, I have a house with a home office and a yard.
It didn't occur to me that not everybody has a private place to work. And at the time, my designers, I was like, here you go, take your workstation home. And it was two monitors and a giant tower and they were like, cool, I'll put this in the kitchen with my roommates. And so it was an equity issue that we uncovered by social listening. Where I needed to get certain people laptops so that they could go have a place to work. So things like that. That's the equity piece. Inclusion is really about how you include everybody's opinions, viewpoints in an environment where it's one very subjective, two, some people are just loudmouths on my staff, and some people are incredibly introverted. How do you make sure that everybody is included in the conversation?
And then also it’s about belonging. Inclusion is about, “Hey, we want you here for professional reasons. We value your opinion. We think you're good at what you do.” That kind of thing. Belonging is more about, we want you here because we like you, you feel like you belong. You're a part of this team. And it doesn't mean that you're a part of this team because we have a homogenous culture, but you're a part of this team because you uniquely bring something valuable. And we have people who are on the autism spectrum. We have people who are super outgoing and love to be social. We have people who came from very modest, low socioeconomic backgrounds, and we have people who went to Ivy League schools and come from generational wealth. Plus racial plus LGBTQ plus and age, how do you take all those disparities and create a culture where everyone feels like they belong?
We're still working on that, especially in a remote culture. But that was something that we needed to deal with as a studio because we used to all be in person and we used to all be pretty close, hung out, and we were kind of homogenous in that way. We might have had different genders and races, et cetera, on our staff, but ultimately we liked the same things we joked around in the same way we all lived in Boston, we went to similar colleges if not the same college. So we had all of that in common. And as we try to become a more diverse company, it's not going to be like that. And we're remote, so we have to be more intentional about the belonging aspect of it. So what they do is they do things to facilitate all of that internally.
And then for our clients, if someone comes to us with a campaign and we want to make sure that there's representation from whatever community that the campaign is targeted toward or whose story we're telling if they identify with that, they help us otherwise, they help connect us to the right people.
Cory:
Yeah, that's fantastic. I'm taking notes. It's great. I wouldn't mind learning a little bit more about your pivot to remote working too. Do you still have a physical office at all or are you fully remote at this point? And sort of how you pivoted that and the cultural aspect of that, the belonging aspect of that is something that we are struggling with, everyone's struggling with. And if you have any advice, frankly.
Macaela:
I wish I could say we've cracked the belonging aspect of it, we haven't. What I can say is that we're actively trying. But going back to when we went remote, it was probably the same story as every other studio. We sent everybody home with their big bulky machines. And we made a spreadsheet that wrote down what everyone took home.
Before that you could be remote one day a week, that was our policy. So everyone had one of those orange LaCie hard drives issued to them, and we had a VPN where you could VPN into the server and download something if you forgot it. But it was painfully slow. I mean, really, it was like if you needed an AfterEffects project file, you could grab that. But if you were trying to edit or something, definitely it wasn't going to work. So we had a little bit of infrastructure set up to be able to work from home, and that was it. Since then, we tried a whole bunch of different things that didn't work until we landed on something that works pretty well for our studio. It's robust now, but a lot of it is because we get security audits from some of our clients.
Cory:
Think of something else. Yeah.
Macaela:
Yeah.
Ashley:
That's really cool to hear that y'all have created a system where you're able to do a lot of that without it being such a huge pain point.
Macaela:
Yeah, it's really not a pain point at all anymore, but what it takes is dedicated resources. So we have two outsourced IT teams, one that is specific to the data center in Lucid Link and Iconic workflow, really the workflow for artists. And then we have another one who is specific to more general IT, making sure that our security and all of that kind of stuff is up-to-date. So we have two different IT teams, but then you need a point person, which is why we hired an operations manager.
Cory:
Yeah, that's currently me. So again, taking notes.
Macaela:
My God, you need a Kayla, that's my operations manager.
Cory:
We're getting there. I wonder a little bit too when it comes to some of the work that you're doing, is it mostly around producing packages of deliverables that you're handing to clients? Or are you pushing more into placement and strategy and some of those decision-making processes that go behind what to do with the videos that you're creating at Newfangled, or do you stay in your lane as it were?
Macaela:
No, we're very much involved upfront. We have a seat at the table with the media agency, so we don't place the media, but usually, before the media plan even comes in, we'll make recommendations based on the brief and say, oh, well, this could be really cool if we did X, Y, Z. And then once the media agency comes in, we'll usually have a phone call with them and talk about where your media plan and our creative really push one another. But we started getting credibility with that because we got this project with Google where we're creating the playbooks of how Google can best use the different social media platforms. And we're creating, they're these hundred-page decks that explain everything about the platform, how you can use it, the different ad formats where creativity and ad formats can intersect.
And then we work directly with those platforms to build them out, and then Google uses that to train their teams. So because of that project, which has been ongoing for a few years, we're the people who do that. We really have become experts in all of these different ad units. And then it ends up turning into a lot of consulting work also for Google. So for example, Google has hired another agency to do, I can't say too much about it, but a large project that drops in the summer that everyone will see when it comes out, and there's a TikTok component to it. And so any creative that's going to go on TikTok is getting run by Newfangled for notes and consultation. Then the pre-pro book is being run by us, and then we'll do the edit for it because they know that we really understand the ecosystem of TikTok and not that we're completely reinventing what they're doing, but we can nip and tuck and nudge in different directions to make it more social for us.
Breakdown of Newfangled's Google Chrome Integrated Social Campaign
Cory:
That's really interesting.
Macaela:
The understanding of the social ecosystems is our superpower I think.
Cory:
Is there any advice you might give someone who is a freelancer now who's decided to or is trying to decide to take the leap into creating a studio, making that pivot?
Macaela:
A couple of things. I guess if you're already successful, you probably have a decently large body of work. Edit it down. I don't need a portfolio with 50 examples of your work on it. Be really particular about what you put out there, have a really badass reel. I think that's super important. But probably the most important thing is the relationships. So you're only as good as the last gig that you did. If you phone it in on a project, a studio owner or a producer is going to know it, clients are going to know it, and they're going to feel it. Be willing to go slightly out of your lane. If you're an animator, I know that you know how to mock up something in Illustrator, be willing to do it, even if I've hired you for the day as an animator. And I think those are the types of things that help you go from being a successful freelancer to having a studio. Because if you do those things, and I know you're going to work hard, you're going to put in the extra effort. You're going to treat us with mutual respect and kindness. You're going to push for it to be more creative, but you're going to stay on brand, you're going to do all those things that that is what the studio owner wants.
Then trust is built. And once you have trust, I mean, that's when the relationship can take off to anything. And you have to remember that, you might be working with someone who is at such and such a job now that person is going to move up the ranks and move on in their career, and they may take you with them. So many of the most important clients that I have today were not very senior level. And they were working at an ad agency when I met them, and now they're executive creative directors at some of the world's largest brands. So it's really treating everybody with that respect, regardless of where they are, and being really honest and not taking on more than you can handle so that you can do everything really well and then let it build on itself.
Cory:
That's great. Great advice. Yeah, a lot of our clients are born out of those similar relationships. I knew this person at an agency I used to work at, or I used to work with them at this company, and they quit. And then two years later, we get a phone call from them when they're somewhere else.
Macaela:
Yep.
Cory:
Never burn the bridge.
Macaela:
Yeah, exactly.
Cory:
That's great. Just one last question, as someone who you mentioned at the top has tried to start a couple of studios and failed, frankly, but succeeded in the long run, what would you say to someone who's sort of struggling right now, someone who's new in the industry, or just hitting up against that wall, is there any advice you might give someone to get back on the horse as we mentioned earlier?
Macaela:
This might sound rough, but the truth is that this is a hard industry to break into and that the people who are successful almost make it their entire personality. You have to eat, sleep, breathe, and dream it. If the passion is not burning inside of you for it, my advice would be to take those skills and apply them to another role. If you are completely obsessed with it, like, you would rather do tutorials than hang out with friends. You can't watch anything, commercials, anything because you're thinking about “how did they make it?”
Then I think I would just say, just keep going. You continue to make yourself ready and then the door will open and you'll be ready standing in front of it, but you can't wait for the door to open to get yourself ready. So I think it's really just about knowing that level of passion. It's just an industry where you're not going to succeed unless you're completely addicted to it and have that much gas in the tank, which is why I was able to start the studio in my 20s that I probably couldn't start now.
Cory:
Well, thanks so much for taking the hour with us and talking through your career we really, really appreciate it!
Macaela:
Yeah, thank you. Bye.
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.
Instagram – For The Fans by BIEN
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.
IBM – Human + Machine by BIEN
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
Takeover Tuesday with Trevor Wood
An interview with Trevor Wood: a motion designer based in Champaign-Urbana, IL.
Interviewer: Matea Losenegger.
Read time: 5min
Matea:
Thank you for giving us your time! Can you introduce yourself and what you do?
Trevor:
My name is Trevor Wood and I’m a motion designer based in Champaign-Urbana, IL. I live here with my beautiful wife and adorable rescue dog. When I’m not animating you’ll find me at one of the local open-mic nights or on the couch playing Fortnite.
Matea:
You have a vast range of video production experience. How does the work from your time with WCIA 3 compare to commercial production?
Trevor:
I still use a lot of the same processes, techniques, and software I learned while at WCIA 3. The video production pipeline is pretty similar whether it’s for a local boutique or a big clothing brand. Budgets may be different, but it all comes down to the story you want to tell and how you tell it.
Looking back, I was super lucky to get that job because I had the chance to learn a lot of different things like live camera operation, audio engineering, and video editing. I’ve even shot aerial footage from a helicopter, which was a highlight for sure. But the main thing I did was shoot and produce local TV commercials. The ones with that certain charm you can only get on local broadcast television. I loved embracing the format and its limitations, and I still try to infuse some of that charm into every project.
Shot from Trevor’s reel.
Matea:
What made you decide to freelance full time and what was that transition like?
Trevor:
The idea of owning my own business has always appealed to me, ever since I got my first job at a small family-owned grocery store. At one point I wanted to open my own coffee shop even though I didn’t yet drink coffee. It sounded cool to be in charge and make my own decisions. Later, in college I was able to make some extra money on the side doing graphic design and photography. When the pandemic hit I started working from home and I constantly found myself going down motion design YouTube rabbit holes. Eventually someone recommended reading the Freelance Manifesto by Joey Korenman and it felt like Joey was speaking directly to my soul. From that point on all I could think about was going freelance as a motion designer.
After making the decision to go freelance, the transition took much longer than I expected. About two years from start to finish. I was still a little rusty with motion design and had to really refine my chops. I also had no idea how to run my own business, so on my commutes I started listening to all of the podcasts from Motion Hatch, The Futur, and School of Motion. I started doing work on the side after hours and saving all of the extra money I made to create a financial cushion just in case things slowed down. Eventually I had to start turning down work because there was so much demand and that’s when I knew it was time to quit my job and go full-time. After I hit my financial goal, I went freelance in July 2022.
Matea:
You recently collaborated with Ben Marriott. What was your experience working with him and the team he pulled together?
Trevor:
Collaborating with Ben was a dream come true. He started getting big on YouTube right around the time I started pursuing a freelance career. So when he launched Master Motion Design course, I was first in line. I was chosen for the collab based on my work for the course and joined 24 other exceptional students to create the Inside an Animator’s Mind collab. Everyone who was part of the collaboration was so nice and it felt great to be part of such an amazing group. Leading up to the launch we all shared our work in a private forum and had the chance to see Ben’s fantastic intro come to life. It was awesome, and one of the biggest highs of my career so far.
Inside Animator's Mind Collab.
Matea:
Whether it be for a passion project or for a client, what is the secret to cultivating a strong collaborative environment?
Trevor:
As artists, our work is often very personal because it’s a reflection of ourselves and our experiences. But to cultivate a strong collaborative environment it’s important to focus on what’s best for the project as a whole and not what’s best for the individual. That can look different whether you’re working with a client or on a passion project. When I’m working with a client, I try to make sure every decision I make is what’s best for the goals of the project and doesn’t just satisfy my artistic desire. If I’m working with others, I’m constantly asking myself, is this what’s best for us, or is this what’s best for me?
Other than that, just be a good human. You don’t have to be the best artist. I’m certainly not. Just be kind, friendly, and helpful. Those are the main ingredients to a strong collaborative environment.
Matea:
While it goes without saying you have some fun character work, I noticed even your text and graphic animations have a lot of charm. What's your process in giving personality to something that's not necessarily a character?
Trevor:
Even if something isn’t a character, it still has character. Giving life to things that wouldn’t have it normally is one of my favorite parts about this business. My process is iterative, which means I animate the biggest movements first, then refine with secondary motion, overshoot, and anything else that feels right. I use my hands a lot to get a better understanding of how I want the movement to feel, and I use my breath to help make the timing feel natural. Then I’ll spend as much time as possible in the graph editor to make sure every keyframe is perfect (or at least close enough).
Shot from the School of Motion Holiday Card.
Matea:
Where are some unexpected places you've gotten inspiration from?
Trevor:
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where my inspiration comes from. There are so many talented artists out there that are constantly inspiring and challenging me with their work. But probably the most unexpected place I find inspiration is in restaurants. Whenever I go out to eat with my wife I have to make sure there are no TVs within my line of sight, otherwise I won’t hear a word she says to me the entire time. We cut the cord a long time ago, so I rarely see broadcast commercials. So as I’m waiting for our food to arrive, I find myself captivated by them, trying to figure out how they did the graphics, wondering which studio worked on the animation, who designed the style frames. And since the commercials aren’t targeted like most of the ads I see, I get to see animation that’s totally different than my Instagram algorithm feeds me and I find it all very inspiring (and entirely distracting).
Matea:
What is your favorite type of project to work on?
Trevor:
I love when I’m given a project with very clear brand guidelines. I enjoy the challenge of drawing within the lines and knowing the rules (and sometimes breaking them on purpose). It may sound counterintuitive, but I feel paralyzed when a project has an open brief or too much creative freedom. I like to have a bounding box to play in.
Matea:
Is there a style or type of animation you'd like to explore more?
Trevor:
I started learning Blender this year to explore the hybrid 2D/3D style. I just find the mix between those two main styles of animation very interesting. You might have line work at 12fps while something else with photo-real geometry and textures is happening in the background. The possibilities of hybrid styles in general is super exciting.
Water Cycle Project
Matea:
Is there anything you're excited to share this year?
Trevor:
Some friends and I just dropped a collab we’ve been working on since the start of the year. It was a twist on the game telephone where we had to create a story while only knowing what came immediately before. The story doesn’t make much sense in the end but it’s a fun time. I’d love to do more collab projects this year — It was a great time.
Meet the speakers: Ozlem Akturk
An interview with Ozlem “Ozi” Akturk, an Annie Award-winning creator, cinematographer, and producer in stop motion and mixed media with over 15 years of experience in film and animation.
Q&A hosted by Meryn Hayes & Cory Livengood.
Read time: 15min
Meryn Hayes:
It’s great to meet you! I would love to hear a little bit about how you got into cinematography in the first place.
Ozlem Akturk:
Well, in the first place, I was always into art and also photography. When I was a teenager, I saved up money and bought my first DSLR camera. It was a Pentax 35mm SLR camera. From there, I started shooting in black and white, still photography. I loved it, but I also had a love for movies. First I tried to get into art and photography, but then I had the chance to listen to a lecture at a university when I was young and they did animation and also 16mm film workshops. That experience made me realize that there was the possibility to study film and animation.
With that knowledge, I started looking for Universities all around Germany with the focus on film and animation. I love stop motion, but it was a niche everywhere, and mostly in Germany it was more of one. I found a place in Stuttgart and went to study there. I studied film and animation. We could do everything there: animation, filming, motion control. That got me way closer to working with the right tools, that made me realize I would love to do a real stop-motion short with fellow students.
Looking back, we all thought, "Oh, this is so great," and we are great. No, looking back it's horrible. Stuttgart also has a big animation film festival, the biggest in Germany. They invited international people for lectures and there was this guy Christian De Vita who was working on Fantastic Mr. Fox as the storyboard artist. After his lecture, I went to him and asked if he had contacts or knew if there's another stop-motion feature film planned.
It was indeed, Frankenweenie. He gave me the line producer's email address. I applied, a month later he replied back and said, "Yeah, we are still in pre-production. We are interested. It's happening in London." I was in Stuttgart. "Are you interested in moving to London?" I'm like, "Hell yes!" Then that's how my journey started. I went straight into Frankenweenie and what a dream. Because of my technical background, the camera crew wanted me to be there as a trainee.
They loved what I was doing and I worked my way up to become a camera assistant. Yeah, it was two years on Frankenweenie, because again, stop motion takes such a long time, but it was magic, wonderland.
Cory Livengood:
What are some of the differences between your live-action, traditional cinematography and pivoting over to stop motion?
Ozlem Akturk:
Well, as I mentioned, stop motion takes a lot of time. Live action, you shoot, have a little discussion and then you just continue shooting. On stop motion, depending how long the scene is, a second is the animator has to shoot 24 frames. If it's animated on ones, if it's animated on twos, it's a bit faster, 12 frames. But it's time, it's actually time. And a huge amount of details you put into it. It's less forgiving when someone kicks just a bit of light. If the light bulb pops and you have to replace it, you can immediately see the change. In live action, you don't have those problems.
Cory Livengood:
Is The Tiny Chef shot on ones or twos or depends?
Ozlem Akturk:
It's mainly shot on twos. On feature films, it's mainly on ones., but they have the budgets to do it. The other thing is whenever we have motion control, we have to do it on ones, because otherwise, the camera moves frame by frame. If the animator doesn't animate the second frame, you will see that.
Cory Livengood:
I would love to know a little bit of the inspiration. What inspires you as a cinematographer in the outside world? What do you see and bring to your sets?
Ozlem Akturk:
Oh, well, it's always nature, isn't it? Although I also like to get inspired by other people’s work and art as well and think internally about how to adapt it to my scenes.
Cory Livengood:
He does live in a stump, I guess that makes sense.
The Tiny Shef’s Stump
Ozlem Akturk:
Yeah, nature is one of those things. We always try to get some dapples, so it looks like from the top, light is coming through. Who knows? Through plants or leaves. I'm trying to get some structure into the background, some dapples with the lights, so that has a nice wrap around it. But then again, I work on a really small set, where it's sometimes really difficult to get the lights properly in. You just have to cheat a lot or sometimes you just go with it.
The other thing I love is when you can put practicals in it. Nowadays, LEDs are so helpful and powerful despite their small size. We sometimes have...oh, I have to build my own little lights and just put it into the scene, which I also love just working with miniature.
Cory Livengood:
Yeah, that's interesting. How much overlap is there between you and the set designer and fabricators and stuff like that? It sounds like you work hand in hand.
Ozlem Akturk:
Yes, that is right. We are in such close communication. Every time, we have to. There's no way around it. Yeah, it works perfectly. Jason is amazing, he's our production designer, and he's doing such great work and is very hands-on.
The Tiny Chef on-set.
Cory Livengood:
How did you end up meeting Adam Reid and Rachel Larsen and coming up with this idea for the Tiny Chef? What was the synthesis of that idea?
Ozlem Akturk:
Well, I worked with Rachel on Isle of Dogs. We became friends and then after Isle of Dogs, everyone went their own path, but on Isle of Dogs, she showed me she had that green little puppet, but she didn't know what to do with it. So that went back into a box. In 2018, I wanted to do a live-action cooking show, my own project, because I was burned out from doing jobs for other people. I was like, it's not satisfying anymore. I was like, okay, let's focus on your own project. Because I was pushing it away and I was looking for a proper kitchen location, I was on a location scout.
Then Rachel was in New Zealand doing another animation series called Kiri and Lou. She was working there as an animator, but she started on her Instagram account doing miniature food. It looked really real. That just gave me the idea. I instantly contacted her, I was like, "Girl! Let's do a stop-motion cooking show, and your character, let's call him the Tiny Chef. He's the main character."
She instantly loved it. From there, we instantly got on Facebook, social media, Instagram, and YouTube to get the name, and see if that name was available. From there, we grabbed everything, and kicked it off. I told her, "We need an apron, we need a chef's hat." She did it. The next day, she built a chef's hat, but she didn't have an apron.
Cory Livengood:
It's really blown up so quickly too, which is just really crazy.
Ozlem Akturk:
Yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy. I instantly booked the flight to New Zealand and we were like, "We're going to bloody do this," and we did it. The moment I went to New Zealand, I helped again, setting up, lighting the first kitchen set. We did a couple of clips.
Matt Hutchinson is the voice of chef and that's Rachel's sister's husband. He always did that voice and she was like, "It might fit," and it did. It's crazy how everything just came together. Adam saw what we did and he wrote to us. Rachel knew Adam from a festival. He helped us with the website and that's how we came together.
Cory Livengood:
That's crazy. The moral of that story to me just seems like putting yourself out there, meeting people, and just never letting go of those connections. Or not being so worried that something's going to happen right in the moment, but you can come back to it years later. The fact that the Tiny Chef puppet was put in a box and it was later on, here's the idea. Like you said, meeting people at a festival or on a job or whatever it might be, and just cultivating those connections with people..
Ozlem Akturk:
The other thing is you don't have to do it alone. We are surrounded by so many creative people. If you find like-minded people and you feel like you can work together, then definitely do it as a team. It makes such a big difference to go through challenges together and push you up together.
Meryn Hayes:
What do you think about the Tiny Chef that just struck everyone?
Ozlem Akturk:
We had the idea, we wanted kindness and a change, showing people should be kind and also environmentally friendly. We are wasting so much food and we use so much material. We wanted to integrate it with him, as representing him as a soul of the earth and being kind, gentle, loving animals, avoiding littering everywhere, and just being mindful towards the future and hopefully doing a great impact on kids especially, but then we got so many grownups as followers, which is so funny. But it's great. I love that it attracts every age group.
Meryn Hayes:
I also love that with the world being so chaotic at times, just a reminder that being kind and reminder that we've got one earth. All of that kindness is important, and especially instilling that at such a young age for kids, it's just so important.
Ozlem Akturk:
Yeah. That's also why he's vegan. It's not that you have to be vegan, but just to introduce it to people who don't have a clue what it means.
The Tiny Chef making soup.
Cory Livengood:
It definitely normalizes being vegan or being vegetarian, which is cool. What was it like when Tiny Chef went from a social media phenomenon to television?
Ozlem Akturk:
Well, the thing is, every storyline has a truth. It's all the things we went through, it took such a long time to find a network. I say a long time but on the other hand, if you compare it to other creators, we are in a fast lane.
Normally, it takes a minimum five years until you might get a show. We had a high interest of networks, but again, it took so long and it was such back and forth. That fear. Are you going to get it or not? We thought, we just put it in and he goes through the same story. Yeah, it's actually what we lived through.
Meryn Hayes:
How did that production timelines change from when y'all were doing it on your end and then for Nickelodeon? Did that change your process at all?
Ozlem Akturk:
Oh, yeah. You have to wait for approval and that takes a long time. You see it, and on social media, we have an idea and we instantly just flip it over and make it so we are just on it. That's how we also build up the social media accounts so quickly, because we are not discussing too much. We have a brilliant idea. Everyone is laughing. Every time when we know everyone is laughing, that's the idea. We just do it.
On the TV show, you have to wait for approval and have discussions with executives in LA to get the go. You have to understand the show was shot in Manchester UK and being in the UK and working with the 8 hour time difference just made it slower too before getting an answer.
Cory Livengood:
You attracted Kristen Bell, which is really funny. I love that she's a regular on the show now and also a producer, is that correct?
Ozlem Akturk:
Yeah, she's also a producer, she's helping us. She's amazing.
The Tiny Chef and Kristen Bell on S1 E1 ‘Pancakes/S’Mores’
Cory Livengood:
Yeah, I know. It's hilarious. I was just watching before the interview. One of the episodes where they're just chatting on the phone with each other, Tiny Chef and Kristen just cracks me up. It's so funny. Did she just see it on social media and decide she wanted to be a part of that? How did that relationship form?
Ozlem Akturk:
Jackie Tohn found us first because she was obsessed with miniatures and she introduced us to Kristen Bell. Jackie Tohn is really good friends with Kristen Bell. Kristen Bell contacted us and said, "Hey, love what you're doing, and let me know if I can help you guys."
We are like, "Hell yes." We met with her. As you know, she has the production company, Dunshire Productions with Morgan Sackett and a couple of other creatives. She was saying how she could help us. We were instantly, "Yeah, all right. Let's partner up." As a person and Pro, she's amazing. No bullshit.
Cory Livengood:
Well, stop motion takes so long to do, that you don't need everything else to take so long to do. You just need to cut to the chase.
Ozlem Akturk:
But it still takes such a long time. I wish people would react quickly, but no. Especially again, when so many people are involved, you have to be patient and it's okay.
Cory Livengood:
Some of the things I really like about the cinematography of the show, you mentioned one of them, which are the practical lights that you've integrated into the sets and stuff like that. I think that's really cool.
Another thing I like is the depth of field. There are a lot of shots that have a lot of focus depth to them, which must be difficult to achieve. I don't know if there's any tips or tricks or ways of shooting that you've found or anything that allow you to achieve results that are a little bit more traditional feeling in that sense.
Ozlem Akturk:
As in live-action, you have a focus puller, second camera assistant. On this one, you have just an animator. What I do is, if it's really a difficult shot, where the character moves back and forth, then I work with the animator, because he will need to animate the depth of field too.
I will go with him through the points where he starts and ends, and a third point for the middle, I line it up on the lens, mark it up, and also show him how to do it. Because another thing is when you make a mistake and you have to redo the frame, you have to go back with the focus too. But the thing is, because it still lenses, the lens breadth in it. If you go in the wrong direction, it might jitter. I had to tell him that he goes over the point and then goes back in the right direction, so it goes in the right direction again when he rotates it.
Cory Livengood:
The attention to detail that I have to overshoot just to push it the right way so you're in the right groove to animate your focus. That's really interesting.
Ozlem Akturk:
But then again, if you have a bigger budget because, in feature films, we don't let the animator do that. Dragonframe is a stop motion program, which also can control the motion control. Then it's all automated, but again, you have to speak to the animator again to find those start and end positions and the middle point, but the difference is you have the tool which does it automatically
Another thing you do on a feature film, you block it through with everything, just a rough block just to see the focus hit the point. Then he goes for the real animation, but again, on TV stop-motion, you barely have time to block it. You have to go straight to it. Then the safest thing is the animator just does it himself. They are so good, but then again, it adds to the timing for him to finish the shot.
Cory Livengood:
Another thing you do a lot of, which is interesting, is to have Tiny Chef interact with real people in the same shot, which is really cool. I wonder, how much post-production work goes into some of those composite shots, or maybe just in the show in general when putting it together after the shoot?
Ozlem Akturk:
It all depends. The easiest is when they don't cross. That's really little post-production. It's just finding the places where it's the easiest to cut around and then getting the color to the same ratio, so you don't see the line where it's merged. The moment where they cross live-action and Chef, we will need to use a blue screen. Then, of course, that's more work for post-production to clean it up. But yeah, I love it. Just having the challenge and seeing him in the real world.
That's why we are also looking into new technology. Hopefully, who knows? Another thing is we would like to do handheld shots and hopefully build a CGI pipeline to have more and more in crowded situations and outside. We would take plates, film them, and then integrate the CGI into that scene. Hopefully, in a year, you have to always update your knowledge and technology and also implement it. Of course, we are going to keep doing what we love. Stop motion is always our first love, but we also want to push quality, and challenges and want to make sure people think he's real.
Cory Livengood"
Yeah. He is real. What do you mean?
Not only even in the world of video, but you also have books now. What's in the future for Tiny Chef, as far as just the universe goes?
Ozlem Akturk:
Well, the world is our oyster, right? It would be amazing as just said, if we can integrate more into the world and interact more with people outside being in a restaurant. Then the other thing is we would love to do a cooking game or maybe also... what would be amazing, a virtual reality game. People can be in his stump and have to do things as a chef. I don't know, that would be amazing, but continue building his universe.
Meryn Hayes:
I just hear all that and have to think through the business potential and the licensing and the contracts, and as someone who comes from a creative background, how do you navigate that side of this, which is the financials and protecting the copyright? A lot of the people that are coming to this festival, if they're freelancers, they've come into this as artists and are trying to learn the business end as they go. What advice do you have for people on the business side?
Ozlem Akturk:
On the business side. When we started, we knew we didn't want to sell the chef. We wanted to keep the rights as much as possible. That was the first mission. Without anyone agreeing to it, we weren't ready to go and contract with them. We protected our idea. We were really hard with that, but then on the other side, we had the leverage because a lot of people don't have we could build him up on social media and make a brand out of it. I think a lot of creative people struggle with that.
It's tough. They are all sharks and they want to take it away. It's sad, but it is what it is. The thing is, if you have a project where you are behind it with heart, you have to weigh in. If you take the money, you have to play with their rules. Or are you going to try it the hard way and go your own way without any financial help? Then hope you can sell merchandise and make money like that and support yourself, but that's really a long way and hard as well.
We tried that, but our problem is again stop motion, you have to see it as live-action because everything is physical. You have to build it. It's the same people we hire, you would hire for live-action to build stuff. It is expensive and we needed more investments. We said, "Okay, we need the network." That helped a lot, but again, our first mission was to protect the idea.
Meryn Hayes:
It sounds like you and Rachel and Adam had talked about that, the heart or the money, which is a very hard balance, especially early on. You need the money, but coming to the network saying, "We're keeping him, we're keeping Tiny Chef," that's great.
Ozlem Akturk:
Well, when we started, we were working on other projects and we did the extra hours at night. On the weekends, we still do weekends and nights, but anyway, we did the normal jobs or freelance jobs just to get money in. Then we focused on our free time on the Tiny Chef. We were like, we’re going to continue like that, but we're not going to sell it, because we desperately need money.
We protected it really, really well. Nickelodeon was willing to go with our needs and wishes.
Meryn Hayes:
Good for y'all. What advice do you have for someone who's just getting started or wants to get into stop motion or want to make their version of The Tiny Chef type passion project? What advice do you have for people?
Ozlem Akturk
If they want to see the professional side, I would say apply at one of the big studios, Laika or ShadowMachine ... these are in Portland. If you are in LA, then they're smaller stop-motion companies. There’s also Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, Bix Pix, and Apartment D.
I would say just write them, write to everyone. Be specific about what you like to do, but be willing to do anything when they ask you. You have to go through that process. Ask questions, a lot of questions. People are so kind, especially in stop motion ... they're amazing, seriously. Yeah, they're all chill and they will take the time and show you. Nothing to be afraid of. If you want to do it yourself, you can do that too. Nowadays, it's so easy, even with your iPhone, you can connect it with Dragonframe and take stop frames. You don't even need a fancy camera. Then just an easy light setup. Again, whatever you have in the house, if it's like a desk lamp or something, use that just to get a feel about how it works. If you want to become an animator or building stuff, just do it.
Again, there are so many tutorials on YouTube. You can find so much if you Google, it's ridiculous. But if you want to have professional insights, you should try to apply at those companies. Get the connection and networking game on.
Meryn Hayes:
I love hearing how welcoming the community is. I think it's really special that in these communities, people are so willing to help other people who are trying to get into it or offer advice. I think it's just one of the reasons why we do the Bash, is to let the community have a point where they can meet and talk and ask questions and get advice and help. I just love hearing that the stop-motion community is as welcoming.
Ozlem Akturk:
Yeah, it is. Everyone's so nice. It's unbelievable. I never worked in a kinder environment.
Cory Livengood:
This has been a great conversation. We really, really appreciate it.
Ozlem Akturk:
Oh, I appreciate you guys. Again, respect what you guys are doing and it is such a pleasure meeting you.
Cory Livengood:
Yeah, likewise.
Meryn Hayes:
Really excited to see you in July!
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."
Meet Kevin Dart!
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.
Frame from “Forms in Nature.”
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.
Frame from Yuki 7.
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?"
Air BnB - The Good Guest
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.
Takeover Tuesday with Dylan Casano
An interview with Dylan Casano: a motion designer/illustrator from Oakland, California who has over 8 years experience in animation specializing in 2D After Effects Animation, including motion graphics, character animation, and compositing.
Interviewer: Bella Alfonsi.
Read time: 5min
Bella:
Hi Dylan! I'll never stop saying it, your Earth Day 2020 animation is glorious and one of my favorites of all time. But for those who are unfamiliar with you/your work, please introduce yourself!
Dylan:
Haha, thank you! I'm a human 2D Animator and Designer currently based in LA! My personal work tends to be colorful and graphic, and I'm usually breathing life into something that shouldn't be alive, like a taco, a bra, or the Earth.
I think putting sad faces on random inanimate items is hilarious, and you can't tell me any different.
I'm always trying to think of new ways to use After Effects in funky ways to get new looks! I believe every kind of illustration style can be animated, just comes down to how you do it, and how much sleep you want.
I'm primarily an After Effects Animator, with a propensity for adding character to things. I've been picking up Cel animation in the last 6 years because drawing can just make characters waaaay more expressive. Through a Mograph Mentor course with Henrique Barone, I discovered that Cel is very similar to how you would animate something in After Effects, but you’re just drawing it—a lot.
Bella:
How did you find yourself in the motion design world?
Kyle:
I went to school for Graphic Design for way too long and the most valuable thing I learned was that I’m not very good at Graphic Design. Animation has always come easier for me, and I'm a big nerd about it, but in my school there were no Motion Design classes. “Mograph” was barely a thing in schools at my time.
When I was looking for work with my fresh GD degree (Stands for both Graphic Design and Gol’ Dern), I came across a cool Creative/Branding Studio in Berkeley, California who was looking for a flash animation intern. I knew flash from my “Newgrounds.com” days (if you know what I'm talking about then your back probably hurts rn) so I took it on! After I finished the flash stuff, I was moved onto some After Effects projects which I learned as I went. They liked what I did, and I was hired as a Motion Designer.
After 4 years (to the day!) I broke from that Full Time nest to spread my wings in the Freelance world, a phase that would be pretty short lived because of the ever-present and ever-tempting long-term Tech contracts that would beckon me. After a few stints at some beefy internet companies, I decided to venture to the Mograph wilds of Los Angeles to work with We Are Royale!
Shot from Dylan’s reel.
Bella:
The behind the scenes content you share is super interesting and helpful to see as a fellow artist. Have you ever considered creating a class/being a teacher to share even more of your knowledge?
Dylan:
Thank you! I've always strived to make "Behind the Scenes" content both informational as well as entertaining. Sometimes the BTS is more interesting than the piece itself, and the animation process is very complex and really deserves some extra love.
I absolutely LOVE the BTS breakdowns made by Stéphane Coëdel and Chromosphere (look them up!). Their breakdowns always seemed to go further than a lot of the BTS content I saw out there at the time, they would stop and start the animation, break it down layer by layer, and then use fun sound effects and music to bring the whole thing home. I took a few pages from their books.
In addition to BTS content, I've spent some time teaching a Workshop or two at my alma mater and loved it! I definitely see teaching in my future in some capacity. I would absolutely love to teach an online class if there's enough interest out there.
Bella:
As someone with over 8 years of experience in the industry, how do you think it's changed since you first started? Is there anything you're excited or worried about?
Dylan:
Oh yeah, things are always changing! When I was in school Motion Graphics wasn't even a thing; there was Animation, and there was Graphic Design— they are both very different from Motion Graphics. There may have been some private art schools somewhere that had motion graphics classes but for the most part, I wasn’t aware of it existing in the US education system at the time. Now, Motion Graphics is straight up taught in school, which blows my mind!
The ‘Elder’ generation of Mograph (*cries a little*) used to come from various backgrounds like film, design, or even architecture—so it was easy to meet people who had a good general knowledge of all Mograph trades and beyond. Now that it’s been integrated into the school systems, I’ve noticed a lot more specialized (and crazy talented) people, which definitely changes the vibe a lot.
As far as my fears for the future go—I share, with the rest of the art world, the hesitation about the integration of A.I. art into the field. I’m not afraid that it will take our jobs, but I do worry that the lines between Human created and A.I. created art will blur, and integrity amongst artists will be compromized. It is a dazzling tool, however, and I know we will find great uses for it.
“Workout” from Dylan’s personal explorations.
Bella:
What's it like working with We Are Royale? What does being the lead animator/designer entail?
Dylan:
At WAR we do things a little differently. Typically, a Lead Animator/Designer would find themselves mostly delegating and managing people. Because of WAR’s light staff footprint, and our passion for the work, the Leads are still “on-the-box” as it were, typically before the project has even started. We “Lead the Creative '' as our bossboss Brien Holman says, and then we disseminate this special knowledge or technique amongst the rest of the team as the project nears production.
Management was a natural step forward for me at this point in my career, but I just love animating so gol’ dern much that I couldn’t give up being an individual contributor—so I do both.
On bigger projects, I’m definitely finding myself delegating more than animating—but for the most part I straddle the line between Senior animator and management. I learned the hard way that delegating assignments and Animating/Designing are two distinct and very complete jobs, and you can’t do them together very effectively. The lovely people at WAR help me walk that line and help me pick up the slack where needed.
Bella:
When in a creative rut, do you find it helps to step away from what you're working on? Where do you find inspiration?
Dylan:
When I’m in a rut, I find a few things very helpful
1. Just get your first idea on paper, you overachiever, you. Got an idea that you hate because it’s “too basic” or “too obvious” and you can’t think of anything else? Or maybe you don’t have any ideas beyond what was already provided for you? I find it most helpful to JUST DO THE MOST OBVIOUS THING very quickly. Just do it, don’t overthink it. Feel free to keep thinking of ideas, obviously, but your brain just needs some stimulation. Get that idea down on the screen, there ain’t no shame in using your ol’ standby tricks of the trade. Then look at what you got, now tweak it. Still hate it? Please refer to #2.
2. Walk the heck away. Get some water, take a walk, or work on a different aspect of the assignment. Just do something else for a while—ideally with enough time to kinda forget what your art looks like. When I return to a piece after some good time, I definitely have a very immediate reaction, and my first urge gives me a pretty good idea what needs to change/improve; or at the very least, I hate it still and probably need to start over.
3. "Faked-it-til-you-make-ed”. If none of that has worked, boy oh boy, you must be pretty stressed, huh? Well, tough, you’re a hack and you just "faked-it-til-you-make-ed” your little heart out your whole career. Congratulations for tricking literally everyone, everywhere, simultaneously into trusting you. What a mess—your parents were right—wait until your boss finds out you have as much skill as a dressed up Golden Retriever sitting at a computer.
4. Chill out and start fresh. Ok, now that you got all that negative energy out, listen to how ridiculous you sound right now. You’re not a dog. Now breathe. You got this. Now put that thing you made away for a second and start over. I hear you, “But I spent so much time on it, I can’t start over now blahblahblahblah” STOP. Just DO IT. Chill out and start fresh. Stop fiddling with something that’s not working. You’ll either: make something way cooler way than you thought—way faster—and you’ll be very proud of yourself, or hate what you make and that makes the first idea not look so bad after all. At the very least, you’ll get more options for your AD / Client / Sentient Golden Retriever, and they can help steer you in the right direction.
5. Make it fun, silly! We make pretty pictures for a living. Creative brains hate work, so trick yourself into doing work by making yourself laugh. Keep it simple and don’t forget the original reason you started.
Earth Day!
Bella:
Your character animation has a lot of personality, but so does your non-character animation. How do you give personality to something that is not a human?
Dylan:
One main challenge I give myself is to try to move more properties than just the “Position, Scale, and Rotation.” When I just do the ol’ P-S-R, it can look pretty flat and lifeless—try to throw in some path animation, or some clever masking for depth, or maybe slap some effect on there for something unexpected. Surprise your viewer! When you treat a flat shape like a flat shape, it’s gonna look like a flat shape; there, I’ll give you that one for free.
Other than that—it’s pretty much Easing, Drifts, and Overshoots/Bounces.
Easing doesn’t have to be complicated, I have basically 2 Easing curves I use for everything, but that’s a secret so please don’t tell anyone.
Drifts are when something stops moving it kinda just keeps going forever—just like my responses to these questions. Learn how to master this move well and most modern mograph is in your bag. I like to use the loopOut(‘continue’) expression and make my curve kinda end abruptly—that’ll do it.
Overshoots and bounces are essential to breathing life into things. Nothing in this world moves from A to B in a linear way and just stops, nothing kills the illusion of life more than those silly diamond linear keyframes. Introduce ‘em to a nice ease curve and they’ll be living before ya know it.
Bella:
How did you start working with Balkan Bump? Are you interested in working with other musicians as well?
Dylan:
Balkan Bump is a band started by my brilliant buddy Will Magid. He was my neighbor in Oakland and he was always filling the halls with sweet sweet Trumpet sounds. We became friends pretty instantly, because how could you not? I started helping him with his album art and branding pretty soon after that. It has been a very rewarding experience seeing my friend climb in popularity and as a result I’ve gotten to go to his shows and meet some of my favorite music producers like Grammatik, and Opiuo to name a few!
I’ve also been privileged to have worked with one of my favorite bands, Vulfpeck, through a completely different set of friends. Woody Goss, the pianist of the group, asked me to help animate a little Christmas special reminiscent of Charlie Brown one year. It’s still one of my favorite pieces to this day!
I love working with musicians, because a lot of the work gets to be more interpretive and artsy than your everyday commercial work. No one hates you when you make it a little funky.
Bella:
Are there any upcoming projects or anything else you're looking forward to this year?
Dylan:
I am looking forward to getting a few more personal short short animations out there and venturing into the Tiktok world of animation—provided it sticks around with us.
Still from the motion graphic spot for Maksoi.
Bella:
Any final words of wisdom for our readers?
Dylan:
Don’t overwork, don’t burn out; energy is precious and finite. Don’t marry your job and don’t date your coworkers. Then, break every single rule I just said, and have a f*cking blast!
Meet the speakers: Loe Lee
An interview with Loe Lee: an illustrator and art director based in New York
Q&A hosted by Ashley Targonski.
Read time: 15min
Ashley:
Loe, it's great to have you here. I think we can begin by introducing yourself.
Loe:
Yeah, my name is Loe Lee. I am an illustrator and art director here based in New York. Some people I've been lucky enough to work with would be Coca-Cola, the Democrats, VICE, and Uniqlo. I've been both on the agency and the vendor side. One thing that I can usually lend is a bit of experience from both. Recently, I went full-time freelance.
Project with Havas Atlanta for Coke Coffee
Ashley:
How did you get into illustration and art directing?
Loe:
I first started getting into illustration when I worked at an agency called Translation. This was years ago. We did a lot of advertising work. In some of those cases it kind of lent itself to illustration. The first illustrations I did was for a brand back then called Google Play Music. We did illustrated animations that would play together and become social posts. So it was a social rebrand for them. My style back then, since I was just getting into it, was actually mostly vector, especially for animation, but it kind of sparked my, like, "Oh, I can actually do illustration for work." Because before that I was just drawing in my notebook and on coffee cups.
Ashley:
Yeah. It's really cool to realize that something that you love doing can actually be your way forward and how you make money. I know that you create a lot of different illustrations for different platforms like: digital, motion, murals and print, and all kinds of different mediums. How do you balance what to focus on?
Loe:
That's one thing that I feel like I'm weirdly good at. I think because I have a design and art direction background, when I was just doing pure design, I was made to work with all kinds of vendors. So I think that experience of being like, "Okay, well, if I have to break this illustration down for motion, I know what I need to do." Just because I've messed up so many times in the past. For print, I think it's probably not as hard as people think. I think everything is about getting the specs right.
Ashley:
You mentioned earlier that you just went full-time freelance. What made you make that switch from full time? Because I think the last time we interviewed you for a Mograph Lunch, you were just starting at VICE, which is really interesting to see your path to now..
Loe:
I know, I feel like my path is definitely not linear and crazier than I want it to be. I really loved VICE. It was so great. The team was amazing. We worked on a bunch of wonderful projects together. At the same time, I was doing a lot of freelance work. To the point where, if I have to be super honest, I didn't have a social life. I didn't sleep that much. Because after work, I would go home and do work. I would do work on the weekends. Even when I went on vacation and I traveled with my partner or my friends, I was doing work. I was constantly working. I felt like, "It's been kind of tough, I think, on my body for a long time." Doing the freelance thing, I guess I was nervous, because I was like, "Oh, well, I feel like the job is very secure." So many people feel that way. Especially in New York, it's so expensive.
At the end of last year, there was a lot of craziness within the corporate world. There's a lot of restructuring within all the companies. That is also true with the companies I was at. After VICE, I was also at another agency for a little bit. But with all the restructuring, coupled with all the freelance work, I it just wasn't sustainable. It was impacting my health a little bit, which I promised myself I would never do. So I just made the leap within the new year. I was like, "You know what? New year, let's try it out."
Illustrated animation for VICE’s Global Logo ID series
Ashley:
Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions, how do you balance a full-time job and your freelance work? I think that would be difficult for anyone, of course. Especially when it's starting to affect your health. I'm hoping that now that you're fully freelance, that's been a good shift for you.
Loe:
Yeah. I think it's definitely possible with the right parameters. If you're like, "Well, I'm only going to take one freelance job a month."it's definitely a balance.
Ashley:
Yea, and I noticed a theme of your work is mental health. Going into that a little further, I know you focused on sleep towards the beginning. Why was that a focus of your earlier work?
Loe:
This is something that I think I talked about mainly when I first started illustrating. When I was in college, I had this mental health issue that I never really had before. Basically, I had insomnia. It wasn't really something that I had before my twenties. I think a lot of mental illnesses do get diagnosed within your twenties. When I got that, I just suddenly wasn't sleeping for a really long amount of time, and it was starting to impact my life at school. I was passing out randomly. Since I was in New York, I was passing out on the subway. Just because of my sleep, I wasn't regulating it at all. There was nothing really I felt like triggering it. I mean, consciously, I wasn't staying up all night working, right? It's just you tossing and turning, walking around at night. It got to a point where I had to take a medical leave for a semester to deal with it. During that semester where I went to get help, at first, I didn't really know much about mental health back then. That was years ago. I had to go back home to my family, but my family thought I had a brain tumor or something like that. I was going in and out of all these x-rays and scans and MRI seeing what was wrong with me, because, of course, it had to be something physical, right? And then when someone suggested that maybe it was mental, even I kind of rejected it because I never really knew about it growing up. It wasn't really something that was taught to me. The only thing I really knew about was depression and I didn't feel that I was depressed. So to me, things weren't really connecting. But once I learned more about insomnia, what triggers it, how it's not just physical.
Personal project titled “Time to Recharge.”
When I went back to school for my thesis, I wanted to explore that theme more. So I did this project called A Hundred Ways To Worry. I interviewed a hundred people. I collected their biggest worry at the time and I turned it into an illustration book. And then when you flip the book, it has an affirmation. It was a project where you have one thing that you're really grateful for or you're really proud of and one thing that you're worrying about. And then I also made them into cards.
So when I gave them to the recipient ... Only they know. It's all anonymous. Only the recipient knows their own worry and story. The test was like, "See if you're still worried about this in a year or two." A lot of those people have said, because I know them personally, "Yeah, it's kind of funny because this is something I'm not worried about anymore." It shows that a lot of our worries, I mean, not all of them of course, are transient. That project was received really well.
100 Ways to worry project.
Ashley:
Yeah. That's really cool. Because I think when you're in it, it's hard to step back and be like, "This won't worry me in a few years." How do you feel like that experience made you grow as an artist? Or did it help you at all as you continue to grow?
Loe:
It definitely did. A lot of questions that people ask me is how I got my style. I always tell people there's no formula to finding your personal style. I think that just continuously drawing things that you like, you'll notice yourself gravitating towards certain colors and themes. For me, because I had a lot of anxiety, I tended to draw things that were calming. So a lot of blues, a lot of soft colors, and a lot of themes where it kind of brings it back to this dreaming, calm state. Honestly, that pervades a lot of my personal work today because that's when I'm the most content, just lying at home, putting HGTV on the TV for background noise and just drawing something that calms me down. I think that's just something really prevalent in city life as well because there's always so much hustle and bustle, especially when you go outside your home or apartment when you go to work. So it's just one of those things where that theme at least helps bring some peace into my life. It's something that I want to put into the world.
Personal project highlighting Loe’s style.
Ashley:
Yeah. I love that. As you've been creating your style, it's interesting to see how you've incorporated that into different brands. What's something that you start to think of when you get a new client and you're trying to meld those two styles?
Loe:
A lot of my work recently has been commercial work. I'm trying to put more personal work out there, but it's definitely a balance. At first when I started doing commercial work, I bent a lot to the brands. Especially before, I wasn't as confident in what I was bringing, in my direction or my style. So I was like, "Okay. I'm putting really hardcore branding in there." Because I'm like, "This is for a brand. I'm just happy to be here,"But I think now, very luckily, when people approach me, they know it's going to be a mix between real life and a little bit of fantasy or a little bit of whimsy.
Every single client is definitely different, so I think the key is always to ask those questions in the beginning. Something I always ask is, "How strongly should I be taking from your brand cues or your brand style guideline?" Because sometimes people are really strict, and sometimes they want you to do something entirely on your own. I think one example would be ... Even when I was working at VICE, obviously my style and VICE's style is very, very different. I know VICE is a little bit grittier. Sometimes it can get a little bit gross, sometimes it gets a little bit scary, so how can I implement that into what I bring to the table and meld those styles together? Sometimes it takes a lot of reworking, a lot of noticing little things, like VICE uses a lot of black. They use a lot of gritty textures, things like that. So just noticing those small details and adding that to my illustrations. When I worked with Uniqlo, for example, I think our brand messageswork together really well, positivity, vibrancy, living on the edge of helping people in their everyday lives versus going towards a little bit of fantasy. So when I worked with them, they were like, "Go crazy. Have fun. Do what you do." As long as it pertained to their theme, which was living vibrantly in New York. So it really depends, but it's definitely a sliding scale.
Ashley:
When you were first starting out and you had started to develop your style, was it nice to have your personal artwork on your website? Did that help people come to you for brand work?
Loe:
Definitely. I would say that's the biggest advice I give people who are starting out, is that a lot of times people, even for me, too, when I hire for something or when people hire me for something, they want to see the literal thing, which is really funny. Once I was pitching myself for these Subway ads. They were like, "Well, but have you done a Subway ad?" I was thinking to myself, "I haven't illustrated a Subway ad, but I've done plenty of print, so I'm not really sure what the difference is." The difference is there's really no difference. Honestly, now that I've done it so many times. It's just the specs. As long as you work with the specs, it's really the same as any print project.
Hope in the streets of NYC
One thing that I urge is that if you do a personal project, the funniest thing is even if you put it on a mock-up just to show what it would look like, and you post it online, it does get you hired for that specific dream project much easier. I don't think there's any problem putting that mock-up onto your site. I think what’s happening ... at least on my end, after I was doing more mood boarding and direction ... A lot of times, art directors have to do things really quickly. You have a time limit. Sometimes things have to go really fast. There's a quick turnaround.
So when I'm doing a coffee bag, for example, and I see, "Oh, this illustration's amazing, but I have to show some illustration on coffee bags. But for me to mock them up, it's going to take time that I don't have." If I already see on Pinterest, on Behance, or something like that, I can quickly grab it and put it on the mood board and present it, and then find the illustrators who worked on it. It's very easy to grab and see it so literally. It's so easy to pitch yourself and for the agency or the art director to pitch you to the client. Because a lot of clients, they're not art directors, so they can't tell you can do it until they see it.
Ashley:
Yeah. I was going to say, I think some clients ... There's some study about this, where creative people can actually see things in their mind on an object and other people can't. So when you're trying to pitch something to someone who's in an industry that doesn't require that skill, they just can't see it. So that is a really cool thing, if you have it on your website, they're like, "Okay, I already know that they can do this because it's there. I see it. It's tangible." When you get new work, what are clients and projects that you try to take on? How do you differentiate what you want to take on versus what you say no to?
Loe:
I think, definitely last year, when I was super busy, I was much pickier. This year, I'm much less picky because now I'm doing this full time. But I think things that I was really picky about is if it's a project that doesn't really match my style very well, but for some reason they want me to work on it. That happens a lot, actually. I'm not really sure why, but I think they want to see if I can fit the mold. But if the mold is really just so different from what I offer, I don't really take those projects on as much.
I think one other thing is if I see red flags in the process, the pitching process. For me, that would be wanting an answer within ... I know everything is rushed, but if a client or an agency messages me and then I don't answer in an hour, they're like, "Hey, we need this right now." I'll be like, "Hmm. I feel like the process is going to be really crazy." If I don't get back to them immediately, it seems like a fire drill. Everyone's different. A lot of people are probably like, "That's totally fine and normal." But for me, that's an indication of what the process is going to be like.
Or if you get asked so many questions down to the wire, especially when it comes to licensing, I think those are red flags as well. For example, there was one project where they're like, "Yeah, you're just going to do this one thing." And then in the license it would be, "For print." Even though what we discussed was just going to be a card. It'd be like, "Print is vague. It should really just be, 'For this card, for this amount of time.'" And they're like, "Well, we want to include, 'For print,' and leave the timeline open-ended, but the price is the same." Of course that's a big red flag. So you're like, "Maybe this is not for me," because you don't want to get in a place where your card is now a promotional poster which you didn't get paid for. Little things like that. Otherwise, I try to be pretty open to the projects.
Ashley:
Yeah. Sometimes they don't fully know how to build a contract. But it is good, as you were saying, to create those parameters. Be like, "Actually, this should just be what we agreed upon, the card, not all print materials."
Loe:
Mm-hmm.
Ashley:
When you think about art direction or something that would need more of that type of work, do you go about it differently than you would just starting an illustrative project?
Loe:
Yeah, I definitely do. Most times when I do just an illustration and it's a one-off, they know my style and then they come for that specific thing. Of course, they have their own brief and concept, but they want me to do my thing, in simple terms. But sometimes whens a bigger project especially a branding project, they want to see where you will take it. That's where I think the design direction comes in. Because at least for me, I'm very familiar with making decks, especially decks that tell the style and the story of where the direction is heading. So I think that's really where it comes into play. Because then you could be like, "Okay, well, this direction is sliding scale of your style. So here is very commercial. Very, oh, more standard, more commercial, very digestible and approachable"
And then, "Here is something that's really outside of your box. It still has some nods to your brand, but this is really pushing the limit and bringing it a little closer to what my personal style is." A lot of times I like to present one safe option, one wild card, and then something in the middle. When you do those three directions, it's usually a longer deck. It's a longer presentation. It's a longer pitch. But I think for those, it's more like a walkthrough and more of ... Not like a sell, but yeah, it's kind of like your pitch of these ideas, and the rationale behind it. All that good stuff that people are really familiar with when they're trying to sell a client something. And then some of the one-off illustration projects, it's like, "Okay, they're coming to me, I'm going to do my thing, and then we're going to collaborate on that."
Ashley:
I did want to talk about your mural work a little bit because I really love it and everything that goes behind it. I wanted to talk about your Care for Chinatown project. I don't know if that's still ongoing, but if you want to talk about what started it, what inspired it, and then how that went.
Loe:
Yeah. I actually really want to get back to mural work because last year I just could not do it, because it just takes so much time. Because you have to be onsite for days at a time, which I couldn't do. I couldn't take off from work. But for the Chinatown project, that was during COVID and that's when we started working from home. My family's from Chinatown. That's where they immigrated to in the sixties. So we have a lot of roots here. And I have seen this area change within the last 30 years. My family's still here. I'm living here currently. We're just very ingrained in the culture here, in the neighborhood. But it was during COVID, I think that ... It was no mystery that there was a lot of ostracization and xenophobia here.
Here in Chinatown, as you may imagine, it is an extremely popular tourist site for New York City. It's one of those things that everyone always hits and goes to. But during COVID it was like a ghost town, which I've never seen, ever. Except maybe when I was growing up, when it wasn't that safe back then. But now it's very bustling. I think that during that time there was also a lot of ... There was a lot of violence. There was a lot of vandalism. People were coming to the area to mess with the people here, the neighborhoods here and the residents. It was just really tough and difficult for all of us, I think, because nobody is really supporting the restaurants anymore. It was a really tough time for the Chinatown neighborhood, in general. Dealing with the racism, the lack of business, all this vandalism, which we don't have money to repair for.
There is an organization that banded together, which is Welcome to Chinatown. It's actually a lot of working professionals that are younger, that came together to kind of help revitalize the neighborhood. Because one obstacle that was happening,, is that a lot of the residents that are part of the culture, like the people who own the local shops, are family run. Those families immigrated here to give their children a better life, mine included. They worked really hard And then that's really an older generation that is still there because the kids like me, we have more of an office job. That's what that generation wanted for my generation.So those generations aren't always coming back to do the family business.
A lot of those times, those restaurants or those small businesses, they don't know anything about social media. They don't know anything about marketing. That's not really a thing. A lot of people, they don't even know English. So it's really hard to market an area if you're not physically there. So what Welcome to Chinatown did is ... because they have a lot of savvy people. There's actually a lot of marketing people in that organization. They created the campaign, the website. They throw events. They do experiential stuff. All throughout Chinatown, they plan stuff. When I saw them start doing that, they also rearranged the restaurants to ship food to the hospitals, because there's a lot of hospitals around us as well.
Ashley:
Yeah.
Loe:
Because the hospitals were overworked, and then they needed the food. And then the same thing with the restaurant scene of the business. So that partnership really helped a lot of people. When I reached out to this organization, one thing that they wanted me to do is help do these art projects or these murals within the community and for businesses that wanted them. Of course it'd be donated, and then we would raise the money for the supplies. It was really great.
Sins
Loe Continued:
What I really loved is that a lot of times for these projects, they also f turned into mural workshops. It was all planned out. It would be announced where you could go. You would have to get access, of course there was one mural where we did it in the community center. All the kids there helped out. They honestly painted the mural way more than I did. I mean, they did most of the work Once you showed them what to do, they're like, "Oh, this isn't so hard." And then they were able to take it away. When I say kids, I mean kids in high school.
Ashley:
Oh, I was thinking little kids!
Loe:
I was like, "Ah, painting murals, and then they're swinging the paint brush." That'd be really cute, but I think the people at the offices would not like that ... But no, they're high school kids. They're really interested in art and they're going to go to college soon. I think that was really close to my heart \There's a big organization called CPC. They help the lower income communities here. My family was part of CPC when they were growing up. They took them off the streets. So to be able to help the kids of this generation in CPC, earn more about art and that this is a viable career path, I think that was probably the best part of the whole project. More than just making pretty murals, which is really fun. But just showing that there are ways that you can help the neighborhood and it could be done through design and art.
Ashley:
Yeah. I love that there's a community of people that are, like, "Here's how we can help," and that you were able to be a part of that.
Loe:
Yeah.
Ashley:
I was curious, to pivot a little bit, about your thoughts on AI. Especially being an illustrator, is there anything you're worried or excited about with the topic of AI?
Loe:
It's really funny because everybody's talking about this, right? All the illustrators are like, "Oh, my God, the AI is going to make us obsolete," all these things. My old boss was like, "Who says we're not obsolete already?" And I was like, "Oh, my God.." But I don't know, it's definitely interesting. I think there are a lot of ways that AI can help people. There's some people I know that it's actually helped them find, for example, gaps within their resume, gaps within their writing. They're not trying to copy it, but it's helped them learn and improve. So things like that I think is really helpful. But when it comes to I guess the AI generating of images, I do think it can help you generate new ideas if you're feeling stuck. But I think it's definitely a tricky topic. It's one of those things that's like, "I don't really know who asked for this, but here it is."
Ashley:
Yeah.
Loe:
Right? It's to make art, I think, more accessible to a population who doesn't really specialize within the industry. For me, I'm probably not the target audience for an AI art generator because this could go as a direct competition to my work. But I still think that there's definitely a missing element that only humans can create or provide. A lot of the projects that you get, of course it has to do with art, but a lot of it is also about collaboration.
We can only hope that through the proper channels people will want to work with artists themselves. When people go back to the Polaroids and the records, or things like that, even though it's a really weird comparison, you still want to work with people. You still want to work with specific artists and specific agencies and specific companies. So I don't think it'll be a dystopian robot takeover.
Ashley:
Yeah. I think we hit on earlier, people come to you for your style, but then also because of that collaboration. So I think it's, as you were saying, hand in hand. You have to be able to create the art, but then you also have to be able to work with the brand, meld the two brands together, understand your client. There's so much more that goes into that. I know a lot of people are afraid of AI, but I think I feel the same way as you do.
Loe:
Mm-hmm.
Green Day
Ashley:
I just have some questions for advice for illustrators. My first one is, what advice would you give someone trying to get into the industry as an illustrator?
Loe:
I think if you're looking to do more commercial or branding work, putting those mock-ups on the site like we talked about and showing that, oh, you can adapt your style towards these different brands, I think that helps a lot in terms of selling yourself.
In terms of just putting it out there, sometimesI feel like a lot of people put a lot of pressure on social media. Where they're like, "Oh, I'm going to post this artwork," let's say on Instagram. Then they're like, "Huh, that sucks. Nobody saw it." And then you're like, "Oh, What's even the point of doing this?" But I think spreading it across different platforms, you have Dribble, Behance, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, all these things.
You never know who's going to see it. Sometimes when I talk to art directors, as the vendor, they'll show me the mood boards. And then the pieces where all I did was put it on Behance or put it on my own personal website, because I was like, "Oh, no one's going to see this. It's a niche little thing that only I like." If I see it on the mood board, I'm like, "How did you find that?" So you really never know how anybody finds you. Because I think someone was like, "Yeah, I saw you on a blog post." And I was like, "Wow, that's so crazy," because that's the last place that I would think. But you really don't know. Or someone was like, "Yeah, I saw your stuff on LinkNYC," which is those charging ports on the street. I was like, "Oh, that's so funny." Sometimes, I think we put a lot of pressure on social media and it kind of discourages us to put the art out there. You never know who's going to see, so I still think putting it out there is fine. It can never hurt you.
Ashley:
Mm-hmm. I think that's great advice. Because it could just be a random passerby looking at something, and like, "Who is this artist?" That's really cool. And then I know that you ... I don't know if you're still represented by an agent, but at one point you were. Are you still represented?
Loe:
Yes, I'm still represented by the same agent, Rapp Art.
Ashley:
Can you talk about the process of getting an agent? And then any advice you would have for someone who's looking for one.
Loe:
Oh, yeah. I think this is something that a lot of my friends ask me when they want to switch to illustration. When I applied for an agent, I went on these industry sites, like ADC or Society of Illustrators or Director of Illustration to see who my favorite illustrators were represented by. That was how I saw this list, or I made this list of reps that I really wanted to apply to.
When you see someone, you're like, "Oh, I really love this artist," and they're represented by Rapp Art or Debut or something like that, you want to apply. At least for me, I had to cold apply. Of course you get mostly silence. At that point, I just started doing illustration. I always thought when I got a rep that I'd be like, "Oh, my God, my life is set. I got a rep. They're going to be throwing me work constantly. I'm totally set." When I finally got into Rapp Art/Mendola, I was ecstatic, because I really love a lot of the artists in there. I love the whole team now. They're so great. I couldn't live without them now.
But there's definitely a reality check in that, just because you have a rep, it doesn't mean that you're going to get a constant stream of work. You still have to put in the work to get work. A lot of people are like, "Oh, I just want a rep so I don't have to do this outreach pitching anymore." And I'm like, "No, You're going to be doing that still. Make no mistake, that is still happening." At least for me, I think a lot of the work I get is 50% myself and 50% the agent. There's a lot of agencies where if you get the work yourself, you may not have to pass it off to your agent. It depends on your contract.
That's part of it too. They've thrown me a bunch of really great projects. I think that's a great way of how I got started. But now, it's more like 50/50. I would say I got my first really big project from them. And then once you do a good job on that project, then I think more projects start rolling in. But instead of depending on your agent to get you work, you guys are working together in tandem to get work together.
Ashley:
Yeah. I didn't even realize, when I first got into the motion industry, that agents were a thing. So it's so cool to see that it could be a good partnership for people in the industry.
Loe:
Yeah. I think for anyone looking to be represented, I would definitely do a deep dive on the reps you're looking at. Because I love Rapp Art. And then there's other ones that have over a hundred people on the roster.One thing I hear is that if there's a lot of people on the roster sometimes you can get lost in the list and you don't get any work. The agent doesn't know you as well, you're new, so you don't always get mentioned.
If that agent who has 500 artists doesn't really remember you in that moment, and they always pitch the same, let's say 100 people, then I would say, yes, that is tough, because that's something that I've heard from other artists. But at the same time, when you have a roster that's 10 people or 20 people, it's much harder and more competitive to get in, as well. So I would do research on what you want.
Ashley:
Yeah. I think that's great advice. For someone who is struggling to find their style or niche within the industry, do you have any advice for them?
Loe:
I think my biggest advice is always just to keep drawing. You don't always have to share what you draw. I know an artist that's like, "I really like Adventure Time." And then they started drawing a lot of stuff like Adventure Time. But then eventually, as they kept drawing, they're like, "Well, I like different things. I'm a different person." So eventually they start going more in the direction of what they like.
When I started drawing, I really liked a lot of black and white ink artists. Because I didn't own an iPad or anything like that, so I was just drawing on ink and paper. I didn't learn illustration either, so that's the way that I started. I always list an artist named Maggie Enterrios. She's also known as Little Patterns on social media. I was in love with her drawings in college. I've told her this. So I was drawing just like her when I was in college, in my notebooks. But of course, if you look at my style now, it is just so different from that. I also love artists like Dave Arcade. I love movies from Studio Ghibli. I think you take all these inspirations and you eventually find what your own thing is. It's kind of annoying to say, because that's not the easy way. It's just like, keep doing it, keep doing it, and it takes so long, but it's really the only way. It's like learning how to cook. It's like, yeah, you can do a quick workshop on how to cook these things, or you could do a quick training, but to really find the nuances of it, and find what you like, and discover, "Oh, this is my way," you have to just keep doing it.
Ashley:
Mmm-hmm.
Loe:
As long as you keep drawing and finding things that you like, what make you unique, you'll eventually find your own themes, things that you like to draw, ways that are more comfortable for you. You'll find it, but you just have to actually put in the work to doing it. You know?
Ashley:
Yeah. Kind of like learning the rules before you break them.
Loe:
Yeah, exactly. That's the way I did it, anyway. I was kind of emulating a bunch of people I liked. And then eventually you become confident in what you like and your direction, and you find yourself. In a cheesy way.
Ashley:
No, I love that. I think especially with media now, seeing all of these different artists and being inspired by so many people, I think that's a great starting point. Find what you love that's out there, and then build off of that.
Well Loe, it was great to meet you and I’m really excited for you to speak at the bash later in the year!
Loe:
Yeah. It was great talking to you too. Good to meet you!
Meet the speakers: Ariel Costa
An interview with Ariel Costa AKA Blink My Brain: an Emmy award winning Creative / Animation (mixed-media) Director based in Los Angeles, CA.
Q&A hosted by Mack Garrison.
Read time: 15min
Mack:
Ariel! Welcome. We're thrilled to have you come to The Dash Bash!.
Ariel:
I'm honored.
Mack:
I'd love to find out where Blink My Brain started. What's the idea for it? Where did you get the idea that you can make the weirdest stuff out there and make it commercially viable?
Ariel:
But it's not for all brands. I'm aware of that, but that's okay. I passed the point that I was trying to fit in and trying to make my craft more popular. When I mean popular, I mean more accessible for clients.
I've been working with Motion Graphics for almost 15 years now. It's been a while. During this timeframe I've been trying to explore and do all kinds of animation. I dove my feet into 3D a little bit, and cel animation. But collage was always part of me because I remember when I was a kid, I usually cut out characters from my mother's magazines to make action figures.
Mack:
Oh, cool. That's cool.
Ariel:
Yeah. That was super fun. Eventually, I started to draw my own characters. I had my own studio back in Brazil. I ran my studio for four and a half years. I figured that I was becoming more of a manager, a business guy.
It's natural because if you have a studio, of course you need to count on smarter people to do the job for you because you're going to be busy doing other stuff, taking care of people. It's more about making everyone in your environment happy to produce good stuff.
It’s better now, but during the time, motion graphics was something very new for the entire world, and especially in Brazil. The agencies back there, they didn't know how to work properly and how to ask for some motion graphics work. So that made my life at the time very miserable because we already had the Motionographer and all the websites.
We used to have way more websites at the time, to get references, to be inspired. I was feeling very hungry to produce those kinds of things.
The combination of not having the opportunity from the agencies in Brazil to do that, and my managing role that I had to take at the time made me very miserable inside. So, I was not happy at all.I wanted to develop my craft. I wanted to do something cool. I was always looking for everyone's work and getting inspired. I said, okay, now I want to be doing this stuff. I want to produce. I want to create.
I decided to leave my studio. I built up a website, with a bunch of fake ads. Now I know that people call it spec works, but at the time, it was completely fake stuff. I put a bunch of well-known brands in there, like Nike and stuff. I did some side frames, just so I can show people what I was capable of doing. I just wanted to send out some portfolios.
I bought a flight ticket to Los Angeles. I just said, okay, I'm going to just toss the coin and see what happens. I sent work to a couple of studios and said, "Okay guys, I have this ticket already. I'll be in LA next week. I would love to schedule a conversation with you."
Luckily for me, at the time, professionals like motion graphics artists were in a very high demand, but there was not a lot of people doing this kind of stuff. I got a call for a couple of studios. I luckily got a job. I came here to the United States. I worked for this nice studio called Roger. From Roger, I felt like I needed to expand more of my stuff because to me, it's always about learning. It's always about connecting with people and trying to absorb the skills. It's about evolving. I don't want to be better than anyone else. I just want to be better than I was yesterday. I'm doing it for me, for myself, for my soul. I want to learn. I feel happy, I feel alive when I'm learning something new, when I'm out of my comfort zone. I decided, okay, let me just give it a shot. I'll send some of my stuff to Buck. I got a nice response from Buck. Then, I luckily was hired. I worked at Buck for two and a half years. Then again, I think I was not designed to be staff.
Mack:
Sure.
Ariel:
For some people, it works and it's fine. Whatever works for you. It's not for me because I like the freedom that I have, to do whatever I want, to have my time.
Anyways, Buck, I feel like it was the school that I never had in my whole life. I had the chance to meet such amazing people, not just talented folks, but incredible people and friends that I carry up to today.
It was an amazing experience for me. But after two and a half years, it felt like, okay, I feel like it's time for my next leap. I know that I don't want to be searching for another studio for me to work.
Blink My Brain, it started as a joke. I wanted to create the Blink My Brain as a website of references.
Blinkmybrain
I wanted to do something like that because Blink My Brain, to me, is something that you get so focused on something that you love. You were watching those references. It just got paralyzed. You were asking for someone, "Please. I felt like my brain just froze. Please, can you just blink my brain so I can come back to life?," something like that.
I always loved this name. I decide, okay, and I want to go as a freelancer, but I don't want to go as a regular freelancer. I wanted to be more like a problem solver, rather than just a tool.
I don't want to go to studios and just be the after-effects guy, pulling buttons here and there. I want to operate more as, it's a one-man studio. I always tell my clients, "I can operate according to your project. So if your project demands me to hire more people to help me out, I can scale and I can get those people. I can get a producer."
I just want to be a problem solver. I want to just offer my services as more of a creative director. Also, I can provide you all the tools you need, but without the hassle.I don't want to compromise myself, of having a studio again and becoming a manager again. I'm okay if I can become a manager for a couple projects, but I don't want that to be my main role.
Mack:
So prior to starting all of this, this endeavor, what were you doing in Brazil that got you in motion design?.
Ariel:
Man, I always knew that I wanted to do something involving creativity. I had a lot of phases in my life. There was a point I wanted to do comic books. There was another point that I wanted to do painting.
Something that I carried for a very long time, when I was trying to discover myself in a creative way, is my desire to become a live action director. I always wanted to become a live action director because I wanted to tell stories.
It’s Ariel!
There was something about the camera, the lenses, how it can capture and frame an action or something. That was very appealing to me. It was more like, deep inside of me, I always loved the design of a shot, the design of the composition, the lighting, the entire thing. I love the structure to create a very appealing image, something that was very, very, very nice. In Brazil, we don't have a lot of... of course, at the time, didn't have a lot of film schools. I ended up doing media art back in Brazil. They have these television programs where you can be behind cameras. Eventually, you can move yourself to a director to the commercials and stuff like that. That was my main plan.
They have a channel in Brazil, that’s just for colleges. So, every college has its own show in there. So, I got this internship there. The only role that they had at that time was to create the promo, the graphics and the opening for the shows and stuff like that. It was after effects, this weird software that I had to learn in, I don't know, two weeks. It was fun. It was a fun, scary moment. But once I figured out the possibilities, I completely fell in love with its abilities. In my mind was, okay, I'm able to make cinema here without needing this big crew.
Mack:
So you're running your own shop again. I know there's probably things you want to do differently. You knew what you didn't like. You wanted to lean into what you like, which I'm sure comes back to this very unique style. Did you know that when you started Blink My Brain that you were going to lean into this particular style?
Ariel:
Nope. That's the thing. I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know what I was, who I was. That was two different things. First, I knew that I wanted to become independent. Once I decided to leave Buck, I did what everyone that wanted to get work to do. You do a portfolio, make a portfolio.
I made my portfolio. I showed to a couple of friends. They told me, "Ariel, that's cool. It's an amazing portfolio, but I feel like this portfolio, it's not you. This is Buck."I look at and say, "You are absolutely right. I love the work that I did at Buck, but it's hard for me to show to other people what I can offer because this is not my portfolio." There's a bunch of other people working on the same project that I was working.
So, I decided to come up with a personal project and something that I was... it needed to be completely different of what Buck was doing at the time.
Then I brought back the collage kind of thing. It's something that, it's not shell animation, it's not so organic. I wanted to do something monochromatic. Buck, it was all about colors, all about gradients and stuff. Then I decided, okay, I want to do a piece of art. I was watching Seven, Dave Lynch. So I thought, man, that could be cool. That could be really, really interesting.I came up with this concept of... it's not more like a storytelling, but it's more like a concept. It's a representation of the seven deadly sins. So I decided, okay, let's do something different. I want to do something very provocative, very shocking and something that it's not... I want to be totally the opposite of what Buck is doing because Buck was doing something that was very, not just...How can I say? Of course, it was beautiful, but it's kind of kids friendly. I want to do something very, very opposite, very aggressive, very-
Mack:
Edgy. Different.
Ariel:
It's like a statement. I'm here and I'm not here for bullshitting. I just wanted to show attitude. I just want to show something different. So, yeah. Then I created these project scenes and I put it out there. I was really, really surprised with the reception.
Sins
Mack:
I'm assuming that it just starts to grab and garner attention. People are like, what is this? Did you land some big clients right off the bat from that?
Ariel:
Yeah, from that. Luckily for me, I brought back to life this passion for collage. I found, okay, now this is something that I really enjoy doing. I want to do something more focused into that.
The idea of creating this contrast between the vintage, like old photos, with the modern, put them in a digital, manipulate, mix it up with something else and create something, give a different life to an old photo. To me, it was very interesting. After that, I received this email from Warner Music. They saw this piece, Sins. "Man, I saw this piece and I feel like you could be a good fit to do a music video for a band," at the time, like Green Day. I saw, man, really? Oh, that's cool. So, I did a little treatment. They liked it. Then I did the music video for Green Day.
Green Day
After that, my name passed along inside Warner and went to Rhino, which is a sister company from Warner. They usually take care of the most old school bands. At the time, Led Zeppelin, they were about to release their... it's a box with the best of the best of shows.
Mack:
Oh, yeah. Like a box set. Yeah. Yeah.
Ariel:
Yeah, a box set. It's a BBC release. It was something big for the company. They wanted me to create a music video for one of the songs. That would be part of the campaign of release.
They invited me to do something for Led Zeppelin, which was awesome for me. It was surreal. Even today to me, something that I cannot believe that I had a chance to work with Led Zeppelin. I thought it was impossible because they're no longer a band. But it was a great moment because even though they're no longer a band, the brand Led Zeppelin, for me to working with them and getting feedback, from the band, it was amazing. After that, I had a chance to work with some incredible other clients, that I'm very grateful to be on this journey. Yeah.
Led Zeppelin
Mack:
So you come up with this edgy aesthetic. It lands the Green Day music, lands the Led Zeppelin endeavor. I'm sure stuff starts to roll in. Now all of a sudden you're in this. You've defined the look for yourself. You've created this edgy persona.If you look at your website right now, the first thing that you see is fuck average. That's the first thing that you see on the site. Right?
Ariel:
Yes.
Mack:
I mean, it is bold. It is in your face. I always find myself giving critiques to students who are trying to get in the space. "Put the work on your website that you want to do. If you don't want to do that work, don't put it on your website."
Ariel:
That's it. That's it, man. That's it.
Mack:
So, here I am looking at your site. It's got this aggressive but confident mentality. There is a very clear style. Now you're in it. So, I'm assuming that the clients who do reach out to you now, they get it. They don't question that aggression that comes with it because that's who you are. Is that right?
Ariel:
I did a couple of projects that were still simulating what Buck was doing and was trying to understand that. I was pushing myself. I think it was a naive and very young part of myself, trying to discover himself. I was trying to compete with people on Instagram and say, "Oh my God. Now that guy did this. I need to do something similar, but better or similar but with different colors."
I was seeing projects that other people were doing. Oh my God, I wanted to do that. Why didn't I come up with it? It was a battle that I was having with myself. It was a very poisonous kind of thing, relationship, with me and my work. I was not happy at all with that.
Once I started to stop caring... not caring, but stop trying to be someone else, I told you, okay, now I want to do what I want to do. I don't care what other people would think about my work.
I want to do what makes me happy. I'm going to stop doing this, and I want to do what... I'm going to stop mimicking other people. I'm just going to be real to myself. That's when I found, really, joy.
Of course, I still see work of other people and I think, oh my God, it's amazing. It's beautiful. But this is not something that I want to do. This is not something that I want to mimic. I love seeing other people’s work out there. Now I feel like I'm more mature. I know how to appreciate other people's work.
Mack:
Well, it's really interesting because social media can be amazing because it connects us with all these artists, all these different shops, all these studios. You get all this great inspiration. You see this amazing stuff. But it can also be toxic because all you see is amazing stuff.
Ariel:
That's it. That's it. It's light. It's light. It's beautiful. My creative process, every time that I'm trying to create a concept for a project, I'm just seeing things that, it's not related to motion graphics. I'm just seeing science books or anything that is nothing related to the work we do. That helped me a lot, to see the possibilities that I have. I'm not limited to just one thing. I can spread my stuff elsewhere. It's fun.
Mack:
You've done such a good job of creating this space for yourself and who you are, your brand. You have a very distinctive style, and you're happy with the stuff you're making. I know that as creatives, one of the things that we all navigate with and struggle with is burnout. Right?
Ariel:
Burnout is something that will happen. To me, it's just like exercising. You might love doing exercise. You might love to work out, lifting weights, lifting weights. But if you train every day, your biceps, you're going to overtrain sometime. You're going to have muscle fatigue out of that. It's the same thing with our brain. No matter if you love what you're doing, but if you are doing in a very constant way and if you're dealing with stress...Because in the end of the day, it's about the client's needs. I know I create this craft, but I tend to do sometimes projects that I'm not creatively proud of, but we have to pay the bills. It's normal. It's part of the industry.
Now that I'm almost in my forties, things that have usually upset me in the past, they don't upset me anymore because I know how to deal with that. I know how to recognize when I'm leaning towards the burnout path. I tend to avoid that. But it happens, for sure, for sure.
Mack:
I think it's just being in tune with who you are, how you're feeling and to acknowledge it. I think sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as creatives, to be creative on demand.
We’ve talked a little bit about your past, the beginnings, what you were doing in the middle years, where you are now. But what I'd love to end this conversation with, Ariel, is a little bit of the future, thinking ahead.
We're in this really weird and kind of unique space of motion design. Technology is making things easier than ever, but it's also introducing some controversial things, like AI, the generated art, the ChatGPT, what's come out. As you think about Blink My Brain in the future, are you excited about these new technologies and how you can use it in your work? Or does it make you nervous with how automated it is?
Ariel:
I have mixed feelings about all of these. At one point, I see that could be a really nice tool for you to create some sort of inspiration or to create color palettes, to create maybe some textures out of that or things like that. But it bothers me that people are putting out something that they just typed in a prompt and they just proclaim themselves as AI artists.
Everyone is free to do whatever they want. Again, I passed the point of judging people, but this could be a really dangerous path, if you think about it.
One of my friends told me that one agency in Brazil just fired 20 people, just to be doing things with AI. So, they're doing AI for commercial release now. They're using the AI creation. This is something that I'm not pro. I like the idea, of course, you can generate whatever you want and just post it, whatever you want.
But again, I feel like this should be used as a source of inspiration and not as a source of making money. I posted the other day that I lost a pitch for a guy that did AI.
Mack:
I saw that.
Ariel:
Yeah. I spent, I don't know, two weeks doing a treatment for that.
It was for a band, a band that's supposed to be all for creativity. It's an art, craft, just like we all are doing the animation. They decided to go with the AI. I saw the result the other day. It was the most generic kind of... The visuals, it's very similar to everything that you are seeing out there. They just generated the same frame five times, putting in sequence. Every scene is just a version of that shot. That felt weird to me.
Mack:
To me, it's the originality that comes along with that, using the tool for inspiration, using the tool to build off new ideas and to push the boundaries of what's possible with the accent to help with that direction.
But as soon as you look at it as a replacement... Like the agency you mentioned, that let go of the 20 staff members, a replacement, the band that looks at it through the lens of, this can be our music video, a replacement.
You get to this negative space. That's where it's this constant churning of just the same old, same old. It's not new. That's what I said. It just feels like it's being borrowed from what's out there. I don't like that.
Ariel:
It's not a tool. It's doing the work for you. You're not doing anything. You're just typing shit in the prompter. It is a tool once you use that as a source of inspiration, again, as you can create. I want to spark some ideas for new characters or for color palette. I just want to see what I can come up with. That is a tool. But once you use the results, the outcomes of these typings into your work and you post it and you say, "Okay, I'm a AI artist," that's not a tool. That's a fucked up thing.
Mack:
I think with the originality of an artist and pushing that and being more different, it even highlights the importance of more artists finding their own Blink My Brain, like you did. Because finding your style, finding something that's unique for you and pushing that forward is more important than ever, as these tools are generating more commonalities in the space.
Ariel:
I feel like to me, I'm kind of oversaturated with this AI thing. I don't even use the Midjourney. I used to use Midjourney for a source of inspiration and things like that, just to come up with some ideas for colors and stuff. But it felt so saturated because now everyone, no matter what prompt you put in there, it feels like everything's the same. So, I just stepped away from these directions. I don't think, again, it's for me. Yeah. I'm not against it, but I don't support it if you use it in the wrong way.
Mack:
Yeah. I feel the same way. It's going to be an interesting future.
Ariel, just wanted to say thank you so much for hanging out with me and we’re excited to have you at the Bash.
Ariel:
It's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing, dude.
Meet the speakers: John Roesch
An interview with John Roesch: Lead Foley Artist at Skywalker Ranch and co-founder of Audible Bandwidth Productions.
Q&A hosted by Meryn Hayes & Cory Livengood.
Read time: 15min
Meryn:
Meryn Hayes: For those who don't know you, could introduce yourself.
John:
Sure. My name is John Roesch and I'm a professional Foley artist that has been working in the film business for almost 44 years now. Playing in a big sandbox, making sounds that if I do my job right, you don't know I've done.
Meryn:
Foley is one of those jobs that people don't tend to appreciate until they hear a movie without it. We're really glad that you're joining us to talk about such an important part of the entertainment industry not many people know about.
Where the Sounds From the World's Favorite Movies Are Born - WIRED
John:
Well, I'm glad I am too because like you say, Thor is running towards saving the day, so to speak, and we're close up on his feet and he's running really fast. And wait a minute, if there's no sound there, I'd be like, "Is this guy really a hero?" Or same thing for a gal. So our contribution, and of course we're a small spoke on a big wheel, can lend credence to giving a sense of reality because of course, as we know, all filmmaking is just that, it's smoke and mirrors. But we want to make sure that you, the audience, feel that you're completely immersed in it and it's "real" to you.
Cory:
I'm curious about how you found yourself in this part of the filmmaking process. I know you dabbled in acting and directing at a younger age, how did those skills translate to Foley if they do at all? And how did you end up in your big sandbox, as you say.
John:
I was an actor in high school and I went to NYU film school and then I went to the American Film Institute thinking I'll be a director. And just so happened that a gal that did my script supervision for the one AFI film I did, she said, "Hey John, I need help doing sound."
And next thing I know they look around and say, "Well, this guy's got sneakers. Are you a runner?" I said, "Yeah." A guy goes, "Well, this film has running in it. Come to the Foley stage." What is that? The Foley stage? "Come to the Foley stage." Okay. So I show up and they say, "See that guy on the screen there?" Yeah. "Okay, run for him." All right, so I ran across the room. They said, "No, no, no, you have to run in front of the microphone. Like, "Oh, I see." They're going to record the sound. I went home that night and I thought, "That is the stupidest job ever."
And next thing I know, I get a call from her husband, Emile and he said, "Hey, I really like what you did. Can you come in tomorrow to this other stage, do Foley?" I thought, "Okay, I guess." So I'm leaving my place in Venice, California and I had a convertible, I was backing up and, oh, there's the landlady. "Hey Joaney, how you doing?" She says, "Hey Johnny, where are you going?" I said, "I'm going to the Foley stage." She's not going to know what that is.
Cory:
Yeah, of course!
John:
She says, "Hey, that's what I do. They just fired somebody there. Maybe they'll hire you."
Cory:
Your landlady?
John:
I thought, "Man, has this got kooky or what?" I'm not so sure. So I said, "Yeah, okay, sure. Thanks, Joan." So I drive off and do that. I get home and on my answering machine, the low budget film I was going to AD got pushed back out to three months and rent was going to be coming due. I thought, "Well, maybe I'll just call Joan and just see what happens." And that was 44 years ago.
Cory:
That's incredible.
John:
To answer the second part of your question, it indeed is important to have a bit of the thespian in you because the hardest thing to do are actually footsteps, to give them life. And to do that, you have to kind of act, if you will, that part of whoever's on camera. Are they a little drunk? Are they the hero or heroine or are they the bad guy or the villain? You're trying to embody something that's not there. You're trying to give soul to something that's not there. And that really comes from acting. So yeah, there you go.
Cory:
Yeah, that's interesting. Anytime I've seen video, probably of you before we met, of course, on television of Foley being created, it always felt very performative to me, like an actor in a way. And almost no matter what sound is being created, it's always very interesting.
John:
Yeah, it is by definition. In fact, it's called Foley named after Jack Foley, that is, in deference to him. But it was not called that. It was called the sync effects or the sync sound effects or the sync stage, or actually the A stage was a stage where they did a lot of what we now call Foley. But the true definition of Foley is custom sound effects. That's a differential between a jet plane's engines going by and then somebody grabbing the throttles with their hands and pushing them forward to make sure they clear the obstacle in the distance. Grabbing the throttles is unique to that moment in that film on a per-film basis, whereas the engine spool up, that might come from a library, it could be used in many films. But Foley has uniqueness all unto itself, hence the, as you just said, the performance aspect to it.
Cory:
Do you recall seeing or hearing a film that really inspired you from an auditory perspective when you were sort of starting your career?
John:
Oh, I say 2001 would have to be one of those. Just the way it's portrayed. Space and all that sound kind of in the background and then bursting into the back into the craft. And there's no sound there. I mean, it really kind of leapt forward for me, and I'll tell you all this now, I didn't really pay that much attention to sound until I got into Foley. I was more interested in like, "Okay, how do you block this scene?"
But of course, as time goes along, in fact the measure for me, if I'm watching a film and I start picking apart the Foley, that means I don't like the film.
Meryn:
Is there a particular project looking at the portfolio of work that you've done in your 45 years that you hold as one of your favorite projects or a few different favorite projects, and what would be on that list?
John:
I'd say there are three or four if I could go into that many. One of the hardest ones was a picture called The Abyss and that dealt with a lot of underwater water. And that's extremely difficult because that's an all-encompassing sucking of the frequencies, if you will. So we had to really experiment with that to come up with what's going to work. And of course, James Cameron, you do not want to disappoint him. And I've got a story which I'll probably hold back, maybe I'll share it during the meet and greet. We'll see.
Cory:
Now I'm curious.
The Abyss (1989)
John:
Good. I’ll whet your appetite. Another one, and I'll kind of put those two together would be Back to the Future, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit,. We’d been in a bit of an arc where Foley was really not used that much. And during those years, I call them the Camelot years of Foley, we were given license to do everything.
So when the plutonium is being sucked into the plutonium motor, if you will, on the back of the DeLorean, that was us using glass and certain effects in even a blooping sound. If you take a cardboard tube and you kind of hit it on one end, it can make a [bloop sound]. Things like that, which typically you wouldn't do in a film.
And Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there again too. You had not only humans walking, but you had toons. So we had to do a whole section from them, not only their footsteps, but their props. And that was really just a whole heck of a lot of fun.
One that I think is very important, would be Schindler's List because that's a period of history which we should never forget, I think.
And of course these days talking about animation, Soul is a particular project which I'm absolutely thrilled with. It really embodied a lot of things that are difficult to do for animation, and they were just so beautifully done. And I'm not talking about our aspect per se, although we had a chance, again, we had the time to do it.
And of course, you could take a Marvel film, something big, over the top. Think Guardians of the Galaxy type thing. So those are fun.
And last but not least, there would be what I'll call the student film. And I did a film many years ago called In The Bedroom and Todd Field was the director. And that was something we really did kind of bootstrap that not having much money, if any. And we did that kind of in the off hours because I believe that I... I saw it and I knew this is an incredibly good piece. By the way, if you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. This guy's going on to direct Tár and he's up for six Academy Awards.
Cory:
When you first get a project, walk us through what that process is from the very beginning when you're just starting up until you get to “we're in the studio now, we're making the sounds”.
John:
Okay. Well, we like to beforehand get a look at the film if possible. If we can't look at the film, we would at least like to get notes from the director. And there's something called a supervising Foley editor, he, she, or they, that are given guidance by the supervising sound editor, sound designer. Like, "Okay, in reel one, we want to cover these feet. We want to have you do the pickup of the special sword, yada, yada, yada."
So they will impart that information to us and also talk about the design of it, so to speak. Let's say in animation, if it's a cat running around, if it's a main character, even if there's not a little license or bell or something on it, we might try to cheat something there to give it life. But is that contrary to what the director wants? And then when the day comes we start, we'll look at the reel again and we'll have what are called queue sheets. Which will detail out Heidi on channel one, Dave on channel two, Christo the Cat on three. It'll detail out what we need to do. Footsteps first, then prompts, and then movement, if any.
When I say movement, it could be a leather jacket, which is... Let's see, a Guardian's [of the Galaxy], they wear those type of things, so that would be a separate prop. Whereas if we're just covering general movement, let's say for an animated feature, we might just do a one pass cover.. And that's how we proceed during the day.
And it could be that the director said, "I'm not really sure how I want Sally's footsteps to sound there and overall the feeling of her character." So we might try variations, we might try tests. So we'll do test A, B, C, D and just send them off. We won't say what we used. Test A's a tennis shoe, test B is gloves. We'll just send them off and then the director or whoever will get back to us and give us their feedback and we'll go from there. And that'll be established throughout the film.
Cory:
And how closely are you working with the director? Or is there any case where you're working with the music composer or is that a pretty separate situation?
John:
Typically, music and Foley, the twain don't meet. The only time they do in a sense would be, let's say with David Fincher, because he's very involved in all aspects. So he'll make sure that Trent Reznor or whoever is doing the sound is involved with Ren Klyce, who's typically who he uses. And then they will filter down to us what they need.
So typically we'll start a film, let's say... I don't know any of the recent films. Strange World. And maybe a week into it, they'll fly up to Skywalker [Sound] and sit down with us and play some stuff back. They'll play back some of the Foley and review it and if there's any changes, let us know. Now, mind you, again, if there's something we think we're really not sure about, we'll send a test down first to make sure we're on the right track, because time is of the essence.
Disney’s Strange World
Meryn:
And what about in terms of how long a project might take? I mean, I know it's a process, but say for Strange World, for example, I mean are we talking weeks or is it a one week and you're done or is it months?
John:
No, it's typically two days, maybe three days a reel. Now, Strange World, if I recall correctly, I think that was 18 days, all told. Whereas the last picture we just did, unfortunately, I can't name it. It's volume three, I can say that. I think that was 20 days altogether. And Pixar films tend to be even longer, like 25 days, which is really necessary because again, in animation you can get away with things that you really can't do in live action to some degree, which is wonderful.
Meryn:
I love that you said 18 days was long because in my head I was like, "That feels very short." So I think that's just a good reference point.
John:
Well, I don't know that I'd say it's long, but I'd say that probably is enough. I mean, given our druthers for animation, any project that comes in, we'd like 25 days because then we know it's going to get covered. And we also work of course on commercials, on video games, and a little bit of television that is streaming. Worked on Andor. That was three or four days per episode, if I recall correctly, which was necessary. Again, because I have a lot going on there. But if you're a Star Wars fan, I highly recommend that.
Meryn:
Yes, we are big fans.
Cory:
Maybe one of the best Star Wars shows that's been put out there yet. In my opinion, anyway.
John:
I would agree and I think season two's going to be even better.
Cory:
That's great. Looking forward to it. I'm sure you won't give us any spoilers, but...
John:
My lips are sealed.
Andor
Cory:
Well, speaking of Star Wars, I mean, I'm definitely curious about your process when you're coming up with the sound for something that's totally fictional. A laser gun or a spaceship or something that doesn't exist.
John:
When I see something on the screen, I hear its sound, so then I try to translate in my mind, well how do I create that sound? So like you say, if I'm picking up a weapon that's specialized or loading it, what would that sound like? And is it a used world like Star Wars or is it a clean world like Star Trek?
I'm going to want to embody the world itself and stay within those contexts, within those confines, I should say. And of course, the great thing with Foley, there's no rules. The only rule is there are no rules. So you can try something. If it doesn't work, do something else. That's the beauty of it. And so that would be in essence the process.
Meryn:
Is this a professional hazard where you're just going about your day, you're in your kitchen and you put a cup down and then you hear something and you're just like, "Yeah, I need to write that down 'cause that sounds like..." Your friends and family just like, "Oh, John's always stopping what he's doing and he's writing down that piece of paper that fell, sounds like a bird's wings or..."
John:
Every once in a while, something will happen where something will be delivered or who knows what, and it gets pushed a certain way and moved a certain way and I go, "Wow, I'm going to have to remember that and take it into the stage." And conversely, when we're working on a film, if we establish an unusual prop, I'll take either a text note or a picture of it or even do a video. In fact, Shelley might stand over me and I'll explain what I'm doing, how I'm doing it so I can recreate it throughout the picture and vice versa for her.
Meryn:
Yeah. That's amazing. Is there something that's a really strange sound that you can recall...
John:
Well, I'll tell you the Abyss story then 'cause I think it was probably the most difficult sound, one of the most difficult sounds I've ever done. In the picture, Ed Harris is sitting down in a suit that's now going to have a helmet latched on, and it will fill up with liquid, literally starting at his chin, up over his face, over his head. And he'll then breathe that in.
And the reason for that is that it's going to allow him to go to deeper depths than one could without being crushed. Anyway, that's the theory behind it. So there I am, looking at this going, "Okay, now if I hold a helmet upside down and I take water and pour it in the top, it's not going to sound right. It's not going to sound like a muffled helmet, it's going to sound like [clear]. So how do I do that?
I thought and thought and thought. The night before our last day of Foley, I had a dream. And I dreamed how to do it.
And the way to do it was micing in a certain way, where I was stealing the ambience of a helmet and yet having a way to pour into something also that would approximate a helmet so I could literally get the proper going from low to high up over his head. And then on a separate channel, I took a straw and did a couple bubbles to come out of his nose. Strange job, I know.
Cory:
Are there any big differences in your mind when you're working on a film versus television versus a video game?
John:
Well, yes, certainly a video game has a routine all of its own. And that could be, are we doing the cinematics or are we doing the in-game assets? So if it's the cinematics, we approach it just like a feature film. If it's in-game assets, we might do Batman's cape or 2 or 300 variations of it, one after another. Or footsteps just landing on a surface, on metal. We might do 50 or 100 of those because again, during game play, randomly it'll be pulled from the bucket as to what particular sound that one step is.
So that's very intensive for a Foley artist team to do. Versus if you work on a feature, it's kind of tag team, if you will. And now mind you, television is a bit of a different beast, because not so much when I mentioned about streaming, at least at Skywalker, but television itself doesn't typically have a budget that's as friendly as one would hope.
Meryn:
You started talking about the team just there. I mean, on average, how many people are kind of working together on this? Because it sounds like... I mean, you mentioned earlier it's a team effort.
John:
Totally. The day starts as a team and it ends as a team because even if I'm doing footsteps, Shelley is either helping run the sheets with Scott or Scott's what we call driving. He's telling me where we're going to go,. But she might be making notes for shoes for herself or certainly for doing props. While she's out doing props, I'm in another area looking at a monitor, looking at the actual reel, making notes for myself going, "Okay, so this cut... Actually we're cheating the hand grab of Thor on Loki." we’ll not actually see it, it's just literally on the cut. So I'm going to approach it a little differently than I would if I see it. Or the communicator that's being picked up and is being flipped out that has to have a certain sound to it because I'm seeing some detail here.
Mind you, while she's out there working, then we switch. So she'll do the same thing. She'll be in the monitor checking her notes while I'm actually performing. So that's exactly what happens. Does that happen at all for all of Foleydom? It's hard to say. You have a younger generation that I don't know that knows the joys of having a team.
So point being, I think it's a lot harder in a sense for younger Foley people, especially if they're just working by themselves.
Meryn:
That leads very nicely into the next question that was going to be about advice for younger Foley artists. And maybe the advice is to find people, find your team. Is there any other advice or things you can think about for people who might be early on in their career or wanting to get into this field and they don't know how?
John:
Certainly if one wants to be a Foley artist, I think number one, they need a good background in acting. Take some acting classes. If you can, direct some one-act plays and read a lot. Read Shakespeare, read just a lot of good books and watch films. AFI top 100. Pick them apart. Why do you like this? Why do you not like this? Take a television show, like Friends, and then just put down something to walk on. Because typically Friends is people walking in from off stage and stopping or leaving or maybe walking upstairs, so you can practice getting sync, not worried about the sound that has to really come on a Foley stage.
And of course Mom and Dad out there won't necessarily like this as much. A half hour a day of a first-person shooter video game is okay because you're literally training your eyes not having to look down at your hands, which is extremely important for doing Foley, performing. And, you'd want to have aerobics in your life along with stretching. Aerobics-wise... Swimming, you can't beat that. All those things are really mission critical to be an excellent Foley artist.
Hopefully then you can get on with someone who can mentor you and learn from them. And then also try out your own thing because nobody has the actual answer. It's in a sense experimentation and you'll find your path that way and having a belief in yourself and also being open.
I didn't go out and start out to be a Foley artist, but look where I am. And I don't say this to dissuade anybody from being a Foley artist, I'm just saying just be open. Hopefully you'll have a love of it because I think it's no longer a job, it's a career. And then surround yourself with people that'll hold you up. Because you don't want to be with people that are jealous, either overtly or covertly. That'll do you no good.
And those are people you really don't need in your life because there are people that are going to want the best for you because they realize, "Hey, if we work together and you're doing great, I am too." And why not? Especially these days in this world. Good grief. Hey, I'm going to be 69 by the time I see you all. I've learned the four words, "Be happy, love fiercely." That's it.
Cory:
That's great advice. it's just really interesting and something I hadn't thought of until we met and started talking about this stuff, how the hand-eye coordination, the aerobics, the performance of it and all of that is just a very different viewpoint when it comes to post-production and even audio, to a degree, which is really, really fascinating. It's just so much exercise, which is great.
John:
It's helped a lot, I'll tell you.
Meryn:
I have a burning question from my five-year-old who we watched Strange World for the fifth time last night. What sound does Splat come from? The character?
John:
Splat comes from many different parts. Now, we did some of the footsteps... Let's see, I guess you could say Splat, Foley-wise would come from a bit of a wet shammy, but that's a very small part of what Splat was.
Meryn:
The noises that come from Splat might be my favorite in that film because it's adorable. So everyone should go watch it. We can’t thank you enough for talking to us John!
John:
Well, I wish everybody a wonderful day.
John:
Yeah, absolutely. This was a great way to have a Thursday. Can’t wait to see you in July!
Takeover Tuesday with Kyle Harter
An interview with Kyle Harter: a freelance 2D motion designer based in Orlando, FL..
Interviewer: Bella Alfonsi.
Read time: 5min
Bella:
Kyle! Thanks so much for participating in our Takeover Tuesday series. For those who are not familiar with you or your work, please give us a lil' intro.
Kyle:
Hey there! My name is Kyle Harter, and I’m a freelance 2D motion designer based in Orlando, FL. I add custom 2D motion and design to branded content that drives engagement with my client's intended audience. My work has spanned across explainer videos, digital advertising, commercials, live events, UI/UX, and Film & TV.
Bella:
How do you think going to college has influenced your creative path? Do you think having formal training makes any difference in getting a job in the motion design industry compared to being self-taught?
Kyle:
I went to the University of Central Florida in Orlando. I’m completely self-taught, and didn’t go the traditional route through animation and design courses. However, I did go through the film program in college. I believe that experience really helped me to cultivate and curate my taste, while learning the traditional production process. Of which, I pour lots of time and effort to feeding it and keeping it fresh.
I can only speak for myself here, but I think the self-taught route really teaches a form of discipline that you might not be as quick to in a structured program. You have to be extra guarded of your time and intentions to learning a skillset to step-up your career. I am a bit jealous of the students who go through the formal training route, as there are more opportunities for networking, learning from industry professionals in person, and of course, access to all of the fun tools.
Shot from Kyle’s reel.
Bella:
As someone with several years of experience in the industry, how do you think it's changed over the years? Is there anything you're excited or worried about for the future of motion design?
Kyle:
The industry has changed in a lot of beautiful ways during my time. I think that it’s become one of the more welcoming industries that I’ve been privy to experiencing. From the YouTube tutorials/courses, to the slack/discord groups, and the industry legends who offer quick chats (Ryan Summers) and mentorship, I felt like I was offered free admission to make really cool shit, and have people offer constructive criticism and helpful feedback.
Also, the cost of entry is a lot lower than it used to be with the availability of affordable/free tools.
In terms of concern for the future, there’s the obvious elephant in the room of AI. There’s exciting aspects and concerning aspects of it. At the end of the day though, I do believe the real impact of AI’s implementation is in the user’s hands. There’s a certain amount of responsibility there. I’m excited to see some of the technical parts of our jobs being sped up or automated. That whole process might change the job description of some roles, but at the end of it, it’s the human who has to use it in a professional and ethical way.
Bella:
2D design is your specialty, but you also do some toolkitting, templating, and system development. How did you get into this side of animation and how has it affected your workflow?
Kyle:
I think I got into it the same way I got into learning AE years ago, FEAR. Code, like AE, was always so scary to me because it was a different way of working than the traditional approach of slapping keyframes on a timeline. There was just something about it that motivated me to learn it. Maybe it was to be more in control of something abstract like animation? Who knows haha. Through a lot of time, practice, and asking other smart people lots of questions, I was able to grasp a decent understanding of it, and apply it to my workflow.
It’s affected my workflow in a really efficient way. It helps me to think about creating looks procedurally and with editibility in mind. With that in mind, I use expressions, essential properties/graphics panel, and scripting to automate any part of my workflow. It helps me shut off my computer sooner at night I like to think.
Frame from Kyle’s motion work with Cisco.
Bella:
What made you decide to go freelance full-time? Any advice for someone trying to do the same?
Kyle:
Well I’ve always moonlit as a freelancer when I had full-time gigs. That life was always alluring to me too. The ability to choose what projects you took on, and you could really be in the driver’s seat of your career path are what really drew me in.
In terms of actually taking the leap, I was actually thrown off a cliff into it. I was furloughed in July ’22 from my previous studio gig. I loved the people there, but I had always had this dream of going out on my own. I was resourceful enough to build up a healthy savings during my full-time employment. That helped me jumpstart the business, while still having health insurance until I left for good in September ’22.
My advice would be five-pronged there:
1. Build up a runway of expenses and then some. I’d say minimum of 3 months if possible. We all know how long invoices can take to get paid even if you’re working immediately.
2. Network. Network. Network. I can’t stress this enough. Make sure when you engage people it’s not transactional. Be a human. Get to know people. Let them know what you’re good at, passionate about, and what you don’t like doing.
3. Prioritize your mental health. You will get lonely. You will get stressed about money. You will encounter hardship. If you’re consistently checking in on yourself and giving yourself some space to feel these things, then you’ll be able to make healthier decisions for yourself when it comes to who you work with/for
4. Get a good accountant, and don’t cheap out on it. I sleep a lot better at night knowing the business side of things is in good hands, and I’m not scrambling while trying to outsmart the IRS.
5. Study a bit of personal finance. You’re on your own now. So you have a bit more autonomy in what you do with your money. Reading/studying this can really set you up for future financial decisions.
Bella:
How do you set yourself apart from fellow talented artists when pitching for a project/reaching out to work with a studio?
Kyle:
Your portfolio is always a good indication of the kind of work you’re interested in or are capable of. So I like to think mine is fairly clear in that aspect. That’s half of it though. The other half, the human half, might actually carry some more weight at the end of the day. I stress over-communication, delivering on promises, and anticipating other’s needs when it comes to working on a team. It’s been said before, but a lot of people would rather hire a mid-level artist who carry themselves in a professional way than hire a superstar who is just a giant ball of chaos and bad attitude to work with.
Still from Kyle’s work with Braintrust.
Bella:
Where do you find inspiration? How do you navigate creative burnout?
Kyle:
Like a lot of artists, I find inspiration in everything around me. More specifically, I love art books, films/tv, and interior design too. Especially when people prioritize function over aesthetic. That guides a lot of my inspiration in the wild.
Yeah creative burnout is a doozy. In the past I didn’t do a great job of it. I always thought everything I did had to serve the work I was doing in my 9-5. Now, since I am freelance, I’m able to take intentional time off without guilt. I also feel more joy about just making stuff for the fun of it. Especially when it’s not meant for the reel/portfolio. I just get to have fun and mess up without worrying about meeting a client’s expectation.
Also, therapy is such a healing and helpful process. I can’t recommend it enough.
Bella:
What's your proudest moment in your career thus far?
Kyle:
I’ve been fortunate to work with a bunch of great people, make cool stuff, and even win a few awards. However, I think my proudest moment is to go out on my own, and find success in the form of having control of my life. Not to knock anyone in a staff position, but being a freelancer has been the best fit for my lifestyle and mental health.
Bella:
What's your favorite kind of project to work on and why?
Kyle:
I love a great technical challenge fueled by phenomenal design and stress-free project management. It could be the most corporate thing on the planet, but if there’s great design, fun technical challenges, and really helpful producers then it’s a success in my book. I can’t stress the importance of producers and project managers enough. Please be nice to them. They have one of the toughest jobs out, and we don’t see much of what they go through.
Still from the motion graphic spot for Maksoi.
Bella:
What are you looking forward to this year? Any final words of wisdom for our audience?
Kyle:
I’m looking to try a bunch of different projects in my first full year of freelancing. I’d like to meet a lot of great people, and learn a bit more about managing the business side of things. Other than that, I just want to enjoy the ride I’m on. It’s been great to me so far.
Final wisdom: Remember, you always have a choice in what projects you take on or what direction you head in. Life is short. Do your best to make the decisions that can help you have a fulfilling and rewarding life.
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.
Takeover Tuesday with Jake Sojcher
An interview with Jake Sojcher: a motion designer and visual artist.
Q&A with Jake Sojcher.
Read time: 5min
Matea Losenegger:
Hey Jake! Thank you for taking part in our Tuesday Takeover series. Can you introduce yourself and your work?
Jake Sojcher:
Happy to be a part of it! I am a motion designer and visual artist working primarily with the Adobe Creative Suite, using After Effects, Photoshop, etc. I’m also just generally an explorer, always jumping around between various hobbies relating to art and music.
Matea Losenegger:
What shaped your path into motion design and pursuing a creative career?
Jake Sojcher:
I’ve always loved making things. As a child, I would spend countless hours building spaceships and fortresses with Legos. As I got older, I took various art and music lessons. In high school, I was playing the drums, recording, and mixing audio. Then in college, I got really into photography and video production, so I became a media studies major. I really wanted to pursue a creative career, but I was afraid. I had heard things about how difficult it can be to make it in the creative fields. I was shy and I didn’t have the confidence in my ability to put myself out there. I thought maybe marketing would be a safer creative path, but the only aspect of my one marketing internship that excited me was when I got to assist with a video shoot at the office. After college, I was scraping by on small freelance video gigs, and feeling very unsure if I could make this work. I eventually found a one month temp job editing videos for a local production company. They liked my work, and it turned into a full-time gig. There I got to learn a lot more about the various aspects of post-production. There was another editor on staff who handled motion graphics, and I thought what he was creating was super cool. So I started watching After Effects tutorials on YouTube and asking him for pointers. Eventually when he left, I became the motion graphics guy and the rest is history.
Opening shot from Jake’s reel.
Matea Losenegger:
What inspired your decision to freelance full time and how has the transition been going?
Jake Sojcher:
After a few years at my production company job, I felt like I was ready for new challenges and opportunities for growth. I would periodically apply for jobs at larger companies, but felt discouraged when I consistently wouldn’t hear back. Another coworker of mine had gone freelance, and the idea sounded enticing, but I was also afraid of giving up the stability. Things really changed once the pandemic hit. Until then, I was still very much splitting my time between editing and motion design. But once it became hard to shoot videos in person, I started having opportunities to do even more with motion graphics and really leveled up my skills. I also met my wonderful partner, Lyndsey, on Hinge during the pandemic, and we eventually moved in together. Having a partner who had a steady job, and who gave me lots of encouragement, helped make the idea of freelance feel much more feasible. Then I read The Freelance Manifesto by Joey Korenman, and that was the final push I needed. I left my job, and my boss became my first client. Business was pretty slow at first, but I managed to scrape by. By the end of 2022, after many months of emailing and reel-tweaking, I finally started getting booked more consistently. Work can still ping-pong pretty quickly between very busy and very quiet, so I’m still learning to trust the process. I keep reminding myself that the ebb and flow is just part of freelance life. Overall, I’m really enjoying the lifestyle and the freedom to skip the commute and set my own hours. I especially enjoy having more control over my professional destiny, feeling like my efforts can quickly lead to greater opportunities. I’m really excited to see where the coming years take me.
Matea Losenegger:
From animation to drawing music, photography, and video, you have a pretty diverse skillset - is there a particular medium or type of work you would still like to explore?
Jake Sojcher:
Yes! I’m currently working on building up my illustration skills. I’ve been attending a lot of figure drawing sessions and trying to practice almost every day. Considering most of my work is on a computer, it’s nice to switch it up and spend time with good old pencil and paper. But I’m also working on digital illustration with Procreate and Adobe Illustrator as well. Most of the work I’m hired for involves picking apart graphic art provided by clients and bringing it to life. I’ve dabbled in graphic design enough to scrape things together from scratch when I need to, but I am still learning. I definitely want to be able to animate even more of my own original artwork, both for clients and my own personal projects.
Some characters from Jake’s Crossriver Funding Announcement video.
Matea Losenegger:
As someone with a lot of creative interests, do you find it important to experiment or create work for fun?
Jake Sojcher:
Oh absolutely! One of the big reasons I wanted to go freelance was to free up more time to work on my own projects. I feel very fortunate to be able to do creative work for a living, but there’s also way more I want to do outside of client work. Personal projects are great for building skills I can use professionally, but also for finding my own fulfillment as an artist. It’s nice to have free reign sometimes to make something weird, epic, or silly, with no directions to follow.
Matea Losenegger:
A lot of your work has a very distinct ethereal aesthetic. What inspired this visual flare and where do you seek inspiration from as a whole?
Jake Sojcher:
First off, I love ethereal sounding dream pop bands like the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, and Beach House, so that’s definitely a part of it. I’m also influenced by Vaporwave and Cyberpunk inspired art that I see online. I like the use of gritty urban settings decked out with vibrant neon colors. It feels so cinematic with a sense of danger, mystery, and intrigue. I started playing with Photoshop to add a similar flare to photos that I take around the city. Then to take it even further, I started bringing some of my edits to life in After Effects as well.
Jake has been developing art style that fuses photography and Photoshop to create surreal cityscapes.
Matea Losenegger:
Do any of your projects stand out as a favorite?
Jake Sojcher:
I made a silly little animation of an octopus riding the subway, which was my first time trying to implement a character I drew into one of my photo edits. I also recently made an animation of my home office setup, where I animated all the stickers on my laptop as well as various elements of my desk. I even composited a screen recording of the After Effects project onto my monitor in the video to get extra meta with it. I think that came out pretty cool, so I’m proud of that one.
Matea Losenegger:
When it comes to client work, what sorts of assignments pique your interest?
Jake Sojcher:
Recently I’ve done a couple projects I’ve enjoyed with an ad agency called Terri & Sandy. One project was for an organization called Strands for Trans. Their mission is to build a network of trans-friendly barber shops and hair salons around the world. It’s nice to do work for a cause that I can see is doing a lot of good. The other project was for Sennheiser, which was cool for me as an audio nerd and a long time fan of their headphones. The ad featured Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. In terms of future projects, I would love to be able to work on more music related graphics. As a big music fan I’d like to work with local bands to create graphics for music videos, animated album covers, or stage projections.
Dee Snider - Extended Commercial for Sennheiser.
Matea Losenegger:
What advice would you give to aspiring creatives?
Jake Sojcher:
Don’t underestimate the importance of persistence. It can take a lot of reaching out to people and following up before you hit your stride. Also never stop learning and building up your abilities. You can learn just about anything on YouTube these days. If you have skills to offer, and you keep putting yourself out there eventually people will take notice, even if it takes longer than you initially hoped.
Matea Losenegger:
What are you looking forward to in 2023? Are there any creative endeavors you're excited about?
Jake Sojcher:
I feel like my drawing skills are really starting to come along and I’m excited to find new ways to implement them into my work. I’ve also really started to hit my freelancing stride, so I’m really excited to see where the year takes me.
Takeover Tuesday Reece Parker
An interview with Reece Parker: self-taught Animation Director and illustrator.
Q&A with Reece Parker.
Read time: 5min
Matea Losenegger:
Hi Reece! Thank you for contributing your time to our Tuesday Takeover series. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your work?
Reece Parker:
Of course! Thanks for having me. I'm Reece, self-taught Animation Director and illustrator. Subscriber to the famed philosophy "fake it til you make it'. My work leans hand drawn with dark color palettes, but I dive into briefs that range the full spectrum of 2D - and love it all. The more corporate, the more bright and poppy. The more Reece, the more scribbly and dark. 2 sides to one coin really.
Outside of work, I'm a husband and dad to 3 beautiful and intelligent children (Not sure if they actually have my DNA). I also grew up skateboarding religiously, which persists as the foundation of my own personal culture. Fail, start again, fall, get up, on and on. These things influence my work consistently.
Matea Losenegger:
You've been well known in this industry for a while now. How much has motion design changed since you started and what are your thoughts on its future?
Reece Parker:
I discovered and jumped into the industry in early 2016. It was a breeding ground of beautiful and inspired work, from every direction you looked. It was perfect for myself (and young artists like me), with an ambition to join the ranks of those considered great in our field. It was a beautiful time looking back. Empty bank account mind you - but a bursting industry and one that accepted me almost right away.
In 2023, it's still full of beautiful work, but you might have to dig a bit deeper to find it. Industry expanding, client deliverables following suit. But close-knit community might be shrinking a bit. That might be my own small perspective as I become more and more my own island. Or, maybe that's the natural progression of things. This industry is fascinating and beautiful, but maybe less curated and served up on a platter. It has certainly been a shifting landscape for the past several months.
Technology is doing its best to shake up working artists at the current point in time. We will see how that progresses, but I for one stand firmly in the "not worried...yet" camp. It's funny, I was just chatting with a legacy artist in our industry, whose work was among the first of which I was exposed to, about how we might be affected and the validity of our industry moving forward. We all share commonalities but have different perspectives.
To summarize my thoughts on that convo:
Real clients that deserve our protection are the ones that value our input and collaboration. Skillsets might be outsourced, but tastes and ideas are best formulated as a team and in collaboration with clients - relationships. This is something that isn't replaced by technology and is actually the most valuable. For clients that wish for cheaper, easier, faster, and shittier - those clients might flock to AI. Great! Let them. They also have to know exactly what it is they want, how many times have you encountered a client with that certainty..? Taste, ideas, expertise, and collaboration stand as powerful pillars in our industry - despite the tools.
I may eat my words, but Im comfortable with that if it comes in the future. Screens are king, and content is not decreasing in demand.
Looping gif from Reece’s reel.
Matea Losenegger:
As an expert in cel, what makes a compelling animation or character movement?
Reece Parker:
I found myself thinking about this the other day in-depth...by myself.
I think that answer might not be so obvious, animation is diverse - and styles range. Once you have an understanding of timing, you can manipulate it, exaggerate it, work in and out of many softwares, and it be equally beautiful completely realistic, or totally unique.
I think what makes great animation is great design. Strong posing. That's how I see it lately.
For cel or characters specifically, understanding how the body moves and how to position it in your animation. Action is formed first in our brains, and that is limited by our comprehension of how a character might react in reality. Then it can be manipulated or stylized appropriately per the creative, but the foundation is based in reality. Our level of comprehension of that reality "makes or breaks" our shots.
Matea Losenegger:
How did you develop your distinct visual style and how do you keep your ideas fresh?
Reece Parker:
My style is an exercise in evolving over time. I started in this industry with what I thought "motion graphics" was, that being clean vector shapes bopping around. Turns out I had only been exposed to a small (but impressive) corner of motion design at that time. I'm glad I was so short-sided, because the foundation of After Effects forward workflows really balanced my lifetime experience of drawing by hand. When the right time for me to be more artistically driven came along (rather than driven purely by survival) I found my hand-drawn roots ready for me to tap right in. That mixed with a new breadth of knowledge of a whole other form of artistry, more graphic and math driven. The combination of the 2 is really where my style lives. My preference might be to scribble on everything, but that's realistically not the right solution for everything - I understand that. My evolution through this industry has allowed me to deliver on "different" expertise' under the 2D umbrella with confidence and vision indiscriminately.
Still from Trifilm’s short for Microsoft.
Matea Losenegger:
In a similar vein, do you have any tips on how to combat burnout?
Reece Parker:
Burnout! The dreaded burnout. There's no one size fits all solution here. I have had small symptoms of burnout that I have powered through and left in the dust. Other times it has been more all-consuming. Depending on its severity, my first course is to identify it and try to trace it back to its inception. Might have been a lost pitch that I loved that has a lasting effect I wasn't considering. Could be anything! If It's correctly identified, it's a more seamless path through the tunnel and out the other side. If it's being ignored or unacknowledged, how can we realistically work through it? For me it's not always as simple as "take some time off", my work lives and breaths in my head - on and off the clock. "Taking time" off is only beneficial if I've overcome what's affecting me first.
Matea Losenegger:
On your site you say that "from time to time, I will join a project as an animator or illustrator- if the shoe fits." What about a project entices you into those roles?
Reece Parker:
Working in multiple capacities with clients allows me to be more particular about what I take on. It might be as simple as an awesome brief, don't get me wrong - I love this stuff. If there's something that seems challenging and interesting, then great. Or, It might be a legacy client that has supported me from the start, maybe they are in a bind, or maybe they only see me fitting the job. Great, let's knock it out. Relationships above my own ego, and I'm not in the business of burning those that have been there for me.
That being said, what I find most compelling in my current project landscape are projects that mix leadership and artistry. If I can take one shot, while directing the rest of the shots with an awesome team - I'm very stoked. Put simply, I've found that mix of responsibilities really suits my skillset, and the more I've done it the more clear that has become.
Shot from the TIMELORD spot for Battleaxe.
Matea Losenegger:
When pitching for projects, how do you make sure yours stand out in a sea of other amazing studios and artists?
Reece Parker:
I've been pitching like mad! Sometimes we snatch it, sometimes it blows away. It's the nature of the beast. Luckily I'm not completely reliant on pitching, so it's less depressing to be kicked aside. I don't consider myself wholly unique, I just try to be proud of what I present to clients. If I'm not proud of it, I know that there was more I could have poured into it. If I'm proud of it but it goes another way, then I wasn't the artist for the creative. It's really that simple. Stiff competition at the top of the mountain, really really stiff. But Im proud to be considered in those conversations so frequently now. Learning and absorbing all I can.
Matea Losenegger:
What's it like working for a studio like Hornet? What does it mean to be repped by a studio vs working for them as a staff member or freelancer?
Reece Parker:
They are great collaborators, and supportive. We are more intimately collaborative now, more open, and more frequent communication on and off jobs. I'm really excited to be partnered with them and excited about what the future brings.
Outside of that, I work as I always have. My independence is unshakably important to me, so I made sure that was clear in our negotiations. They were and have been supportive through and through.
Being "repped" means that Hornet (in my case, there are many reps) packages up my work and sells it through to their contacts and clients. If there are jobs that come in that feel like they fit my capabilities, they will poke me to see If I'm free and interested. If so, they pair me up with them in their communication and presentation to clients. From there, I champion the vision and creative treatment of the project. Client presentations, team building and expectations, project style and execution, etc. They help me resource the job, schedule it, budget it, communicate with clients, all the things that can be not so-fun solo.
Hornet's reach is as wide as it gets. They also serve a tier of client that Reece Parker as a solo act doesn't reach. They act as my team if we win the project together.
If I win a project solo, and want to bring them in, I also have that ability. Take some of the load off of my plate. But I also have the freedom to tackle it myself, as I have been doing comfortably for many years. Depends on the context rather than one size fits all.
Staff - Im not sure! I've never been staff anywhere but Taco Bell and Costco. Staff artists are there to support jobs that are being directed, and are assigned and scheduled according to their skillset. Hornet also has strong staff artists, that are super super helpful when building out teams in tandem with freelancers or if we can't resource freelance talent for whatever reason.
Freelance - freelancing has a bit more commonality with being repped, and with being staff. You are poked to join a project that is being directed, to fill a need on that production line. That project ends and you join the next team and next project. Instead of jumping to other people's creatives, I find myself more often owning the creative, and trying to source great talent to join me.
Gifs & illos.
Matea Losenegger:
As someone who is revered for their work, is there anything you would like people to know about you outside of your art?
Reece Parker:
The work may be revered, but I don't think Im special. I think the path I've carved may be at least partially unique but also serves as proof of concept for those willing to do the same. LOVE what you do, and keep working at it as a consequence.
Outside of work, I love life. I love my family to death. Wife, kids, parents, siblings, and friends alike. I've been really fortunate, I try to be considerate of that. I love overthinking, analyzing things with Kiara, building things with my dad, and teasing and dancing with my kids. I try to be carefree when it's beneficial to be, and take things seriously that ask for it. It's served me well in life.
I'm a product of independence, my path throughout my life is proof of that. Skateboarding is an individual activity, it's no coincidence that I have remained solo in my eventual career. But I'm not here without the influence and help of so many others. Indirectly or directly from those close to me. Shout out those folks! Much love.
Matea Losenegger:
What does the rest of 2023 look like for you? Are there any projects you're excited about?
Reece Parker:
Some interesting things! I am nearing the end of building out a new warehouse studio. Sort of a dream come true, but so is my current studio honestly. The new endeavor is symbolic of where the business is going, and I wouldn't have invested in it if the business hadn't earned it.
That's something I've really been contemplating. When I was commissioning my shipping container conversion in late 2019, I remember really carefully considering the financial implications of the commitment - mostly just full of anxiety and fear. But I did it because that was what the business deserved at the time. I had those same feelings and reservations about buying my first iMac, as a replacement workstation for my original MacBook that my wife secretly saved for and bought for me to start my career.
It seems so small now in comparison, but those memories serve as a strong example of my commitment to investing back into myself and the business when the time is right. You can feel it, and it's always scary. But the clear lesson is to invest in yourself.
Projects and new things are hush-hush for now, but yes I am excited, and will share more soon! Thanks, Dashers!
Takeover Tuesday Tory Van Wey
An interview with Tory Van Wey: Senior Brand Designer & Illustrator at deel.
Q&A with Tory Van Wey.
Read time: 5min
Mack Garrison:
Thanks for participating in the Tuesday Takeover, Tory! For those that are unfamiliar with you and your work, tell us a bit about yourself and how you found your way into the creative space.
Tory Van Wey:
Thank you! I'm Tory, and I'm a designer and illustrator based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. I have been drawing pictures professionally for 10 years, both freelance and in-house and I am currently a Senior Brand Designer/Illustrator at Deel - a global hiring and HR platform.
Mack Garrison:
Your work is very illustrative but also has a very graphic design feel to it. How did you develop this style over the years?
Tory Van Wey:
This was a natural consequence of being both an illustrator and trained as a traditional graphic designer as well as the influence of my history as a letterpress printer. Over the years I have pivoted my career to focus almost exclusively on illustration and illustration systems, but my history as a graphic designer and printer always informs the way that I approach a project. Most of my work is built using simple geometric shapes stacked on top of one another to create more complex objects. This lends a graphic quality that is hard to achieve with hand drawing. Combine that with my everlasting respect for designers like Marian Bantjes and Saul Bass and love of graphic structure, and I'll likely always be straddling the line between designer/illustrator.
Some of the work Tory has illustrated for deel.
Mack Garrison:
One of the harder aspects of being a designer in a corporate space is pushing creative boundaries. How have you navigated that? Avoided burnout?
Tory Van Wey:
This is a hard balancing act as the diversity of companies hiring creatives means that there are endless philosophies and attitudes about how design fits within the corporate ecosystem, so the creative experience can vary wildly. I am personally selective about who I work for because my skillset is not a perfect fit for every "Brand Designer" role and over the years I have learned to be honest about what I am looking for in a role, and to not hesitate to say if I don't think it's a good fit. This has certainly cost me jobs, but saved my sanity. I also try to bring creativity into corporate creative in unexpected ways. Perhaps there is a vibrant color pairing that feels a bit more contemporary, or I can learn a new technique that I can apply to a project that would otherwise be on the dull side. If I am pushing my own creative boundaries, or learning a new tool, then I am generally happy.
Mack Garrison:
Who are some of the creatives you've looked up to over the years for inspiration?
Tory Van Wey:
I often look to music and children's books for inspiring design. Carson Ellis and Edward Gorey were very inspiring to me in my early career when I focused on work that had more of a hand made quality to it. I also love poster artist Dan McCarthy and have a healthy collection of his prints. Lately I have really been appreciating the work of MUTI, a design studio out of Cape Town.
Some editorial and marketing illustrations from Tory.
Mack Garrison:
It's hard to choose a favorite project, but do you have one that particularly sticks out to you?
Tory Van Wey:
I had a great time designing this Trippy Tropical shirt for a local SF company called Betabrand. It was a really fun synthesis of my interest in botany, and psychedelic creative freedom!
Mack Garrison:
Looking back at your career, what advice would you give to the next generation of illustrators making their way into the space? Anything you would do differently or think is really important to know?
Tory Van Wey:
My biggest piece of advice would be to produce the kind of work that you want to create commercially, even if you need to do it on your own time. People hire you based off of what they have already seen from you, not what they think you might be able to create. That means you need to push yourself creatively on your own time (or perhaps pro bono for friends) to explore the kinds of styles you want to get paid for later on. I would also tell a new designer to not sweat it if they haven't found their voice yet. There's a lot of pressure to find your voice as an illustrator, and I think it's valid, but there's also a lot of room and opportunity for illustrators that are more flexible and can produce work in a range of styles. I might even suggest it's more enjoyable.
Trippy Tropical shirt for a local SF company called Betabrand.
Mack Garrison:
What do you think the future holds for designers and illustrators? Should we (creatives) be nervous or excited about these new A.I. tools?
Tory Van Wey:
I'm as curious as you are about this! I think the industry might become more specialized as illustrators niche down into areas like product/iconography or editorial or motion. We also might see a more global talent pool as remote and contract work become standard and there are fewer limitations in hiring designers abroad. As far as AI, I think it will likely be a new tool that designers will have at their disposal but I'm not personally too worried about it taking over a creatives' role quite yet. After playing around with most of the AI generators, it's apparent to me that a lot of work goes into creating the right prompt to generate an accurate image and often I could have simply drawn it out faster. I'm curious to see where it goes and how AI is incorporated into our daily lives in an ethical way that compensates creatives, and minimizes bias.
Mack Garrison:
Outside of being an illustrator and designer, what are some of your hobbies?
Tory Van Wey:
When I'm not drawing for money you can find me putzing around the garden like an old lady, attempting to learn a new skill (currently taking a School of Motion course!) or herding my two kids up a hiking trail.
Mack Garrison:
Last but not least, anything you'd like to leave our audience with?
Tory Van Wey:
It's a unique privilege to make a living as a creative. Let's appreciate the folks that came before us that paved the way for our skills to be valued, and the folks that continue to advocate for creatives today. And let's not take ourselves too seriously. I think us creatives can get wrapped up in the idea of our own legacy. Do good work, live a thoughtful life, and don't be a jerk.