Interview with Carlo Vega

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Aaron Zarovsky. [00:00:03] Speaker B: And I'm Austin Shaw. [00:00:04] Speaker A: This is between the Keyframes, Episode 26 interview with Carlo Vega. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Right. But yeah. [00:00:15] Speaker C: All right, welcome. [00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to between the Keyframes. We are here with Carlo Vega. Super excited. Get to have a conversation. I've known Carlo for a pretty long time. Probably met Carlo around the same time and met Aaron, like, mid 2000. And I think also, I know Aaron, you had your stint in New York, but you kind of grew up in Chicago and then made your way back to Chicago, at least industry wise in an area. Know, I think I kind of connect with Carlo is that feel like we grew up industry wise in, you know, at least those formative years. And all three of us go back to the kind of start of the motion design, kind of design driven production studio that emerged out of the post houses in the early 2000s. Right? So we're all kind of origin around the same time and been in the industry, I guess, 20 plus years now. And Carlo and OG, cream of the crop motionographer list with Aaron. [00:01:29] Speaker C: Was that confirmed or. We need to look at the screenshots. I don't even know if those JPEGs still exist somewhere. [00:01:38] Speaker B: Erin's got them somewhere. [00:01:40] Speaker C: Thanks for having me. It's truly an honor. I'm a big fan of this podcast and the series that you guys have started. I think it's fascinating, all the topics and the thoughtful conversations that you guys have. [00:01:54] Speaker A: Thank you. We try to be thoughtful. [00:01:59] Speaker B: Hashtag try. [00:02:02] Speaker A: Intention is everything. Yeah. [00:02:05] Speaker C: And yeah, I go Austin. We met quite a while ago. In fact, one of the first times we truly chatted and interacted was when you were teaching at SVA, I believe, and I went to your class to, I don't know, like, show my work. Was it like a show and a guest speaker, which I highly preference those kind of small group settings. Guest speaker. Or let's do a workshop together. Let's figure something out. That interaction of a small group is really nice. I think I tend to do much better than in a very large group. I don't even know when to talk. [00:03:04] Speaker A: It's hard to do, like, one of these presentations, like a 30 minutes or an hour that have like a five minute Q and A. For me. I really prefer that it's conversation, making something together. Hey, Carlo, tell me a little bit about yourself. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Hear your background. [00:03:28] Speaker C: Professional background. I'm 44 now, so I was studying to be more of a fine artist. I was in a fine art path, and I got really interested in how to make my work mine. What is my thing? What is my thing? I would look around in my classes, and I would see people that were very good sculptors or very good illustrators. And I always thought, like, what is my thing? And I remember the moment that somebody, by chance, showed me flash. It changed my trajectory, blew my mind. I was like, I want to work with technology. And since then, I've always experimented in technology. And that, in fact, is what led me to my first professional job. While I was still in school, I was taking a class, a graphic design class, because I thought, okay, if I have to make money, I think it's graphic design, what I have to do. And we went to a company. This is in South Carolina. I went to school in the University of South Carolina, and we went to a company for a field trip. And my questions were very focused on technical questions about Flash. Do you guys use technology? How do you use animation in your websites? This is, like, late 90s, so it was very limited, and people were very scared of large files. And after that field trip, the guy from the company offered me an internship. And I was so naive, and I said, well, how much does that pay? He's like, no, it's an internship. It's free. Listen, I got a job at the mall. I got a job at the mall. So thank you, but I'm okay. And then he called me and he said, I'll pay you. What do they pay you at the mall? I'll pay you the same thing. And that was my first job. [00:05:46] Speaker B: Dude, I remember this story. I remember you telling this story all the way back when I was teaching the class at SBA. [00:05:54] Speaker C: I was so naive, but really, that really opened up my eyes to how I could use these tools professionally, how I could use them in a setting that we were making solutions, creative solutions for clients. And that just kind of snowballed into getting another job. And I moved to New York right. [00:06:20] Speaker B: After I. Yeah, I was curious, like, how did you get to. [00:06:23] Speaker C: I came to New York with freelance work, and then right after I graduated, and that kind of freelance work became more of a full time job for an agency called Big Spaceship, which was a very small agency back then. I think they grew, but I don't know where they're at. I think they're pretty. [00:06:46] Speaker B: I kind of remember that name, like, earlier. [00:06:49] Speaker C: As far as I know, they've always done great work, but I don't follow. I'm sure they do great work. And then I always had a website where I put a lot of my experimental work that came from my art background or I guess I should say work that had artistic intention. In our world, I think we call it personal work. [00:07:18] Speaker B: Right? [00:07:19] Speaker C: Personal work. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Passion projects. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Passion project. We have a lot of those. But I think for me, it was always, like, work that had artistic intention behind it and try to create a dialogue about how I was using technology and the topics that I was kind of trying to put in there. And back then was a small community of these websites that had all these, like, I think I just had a drop down that you would choose what project you want to see, and it would load, like, full screen. And that kind of led me to a job at heavy 2000s, which was, like, this real. [00:08:01] Speaker B: What's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. Just like a garden of a lot of creatives, right? [00:08:07] Speaker C: Yes. I was very lucky to end up there because I feel like I learned a ton there. It was like, here's a project. Figure out how to do it. And everybody was hungover. At least me, I'm going to speak for myself. I was always hungover, and I was like, what? I was very young, and really, it was like, you would survive, but just figuring out on your own. And I think that I was lucky enough that I've always had the drive to kind of figure things out. And it allowed me the opportunity to work with a lot of talent, figuring out projects together. And it was really like thinking back now, being 44, thinking back at that time, it really is one of the moments that really, again, changed my trajectory, because I learned so much in such a small amount of time, and it allowed me to be next to people with a lot of the same kind of drive and talent that, without me noticing, it really propelled me forward. [00:09:28] Speaker B: And this was like, 2000, 2001 time frame, maybe 2000. [00:09:35] Speaker C: I'm terrible with dates, but maybe 2002, 2003, maybe, because I remember, and then. [00:09:43] Speaker B: I know you had that anecdote where I think you said that G. Monk had kind of passed the job on to you. [00:09:50] Speaker C: Yeah. I don't know if he would remember this. We barely met, but he was looking for somebody to take over his job at heavy. And I got an email from him, and we all had, like, back then, everybody that was doing experimental work, let's call it experimental design work, right? They would have websites, and it was kind of a small community. So he was looking for somebody in New York that would take over his job. And I guess we had been in touch. I'm not sure exactly how that connected, but I took over his job. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Right on. [00:10:34] Speaker C: Truthfully, that was really the first time. I mean, I had been working before that, but that was really the first time that I felt that I was given the opportunity to do highly creative work in a professional setting. Before that, I had opportunities to do the same but more corporate work. And then this was the first true time that, in fact, I was expected to do things that were a little. [00:11:04] Speaker B: Bit different, cutting edge and fresh. Well, I'll tell you guys, I was going to say, for me, I studied studio art in my undergrad, so similar. And then I went to grad school and I started an art ed. And then I took this left turn in design, but I remember, and this must have been around that time, I remember sitting in these, I was in grad school, but I'd be in design classes and sometimes I'd be bored and I'd go to heavy, right? And there'd be all these really cool, whether they were kind of like games or sort of design driven games or little. [00:11:42] Speaker A: Super. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah, it was super in that in grad school New York, I was at Pratt and I'd see, and I remember our teachers, our professor showed us brand new schools reel, right. And it was like, it was so fresh and it's so fun. I'm sitting here at the desk, I. [00:12:00] Speaker C: Have this, I have these guys, a little pin. [00:12:06] Speaker B: And just reflecting on just how much talent came through Heavy.com and just kind of filtered out the hotspots. Yeah, right. And I'm speaking more to that New York scene because I knew there was. [00:12:21] Speaker C: Stuff happening in LA. [00:12:22] Speaker B: There was stuff happening in Chicago and Seattle. But like, in the New York scene, it was, and I know you went through heavy. Did you go right to eyeball from there? [00:12:30] Speaker C: So from heavy, I think, I believe I went to eyeball. Yeah. And I stayed at eyeball maybe a couple of years. Again, incredible experience. Because at that point, it was like getting a, like, this is the industry. I'm working with actual producers. I'm looking at budgets. I am leading jobs. I am also expected to do creative, very high end creative work. And then animation. That kind of matches to that. But now for bigger clients. And that was also great. I had a lot of fun during my time at eyeball, although I don't know where they're at now. Again, I don't follow that very well. I'm not very good at following up. But my experience there was incredible. And when I left, I really wanted to freelance because I thought this was it. I felt burned out. I think after years and years of being expected to do all these very creative things, as we all know, that sometimes that burns you out, especially when you're younger. You don't know how to tame it or balance. Well, you don't realize that this is a marathon. You're just printing. Every job requires everything from you, and it's exhausting. And I think I was super burned out and I felt unhappy. And it wasn't the job, it was just me. And so I left because I thought freelance would do, it would be easier. I messed up because they booked me this Place, booked me for two or three weeks or something. And I went there three days, and I was like, oh, God, freelance is not for me. And I called him and I said, I'm so sorry, I can't do it. [00:14:37] Speaker A: No, freelance. [00:14:39] Speaker C: I had like a panic attack or something, and I was like, I can't do it. [00:14:42] Speaker B: I was just going to say that reminded me of another really funny story. I remember talking to you one time and you told me a thing about somebody, a producer called you to see if they could put you on hold. And you were like, well, if I don't want to take the job, do I have to take it? And they're like, no. And they were like, so how long can we put you on hold for? And you're like, you could put me on hold forever. [00:15:07] Speaker C: You can put me on hold forever because that doesn't mean anything to me. [00:15:11] Speaker A: Right? [00:15:16] Speaker B: I think the whole thing is weird. [00:15:19] Speaker C: I just think, just call me whenever you're ready and I'll tell you right away. Call me. My phone rings. Yes, I'll help you. Okay. I'll help you tomorrow. Starting tomorrow, it's done. But the whole thing sometimes is weird for me. I am sure that it's better for organization purposes. [00:15:40] Speaker A: I was going to make a case. [00:15:41] Speaker C: Planning. [00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. Erin's like, I could tell. Like, okay, here's the other side. [00:15:50] Speaker C: I would love to hear the other side. [00:15:52] Speaker A: Well, I mean, if you're a company that has a certain number of full timers, but then need to, when we get pinged about a job, they're not like, let's go. They're like, maybe you're pitching. Maybe it's something where they're kind of doing a little dance with you. We don't want to commit to being accessible or interested unless we know that we have the talent to back it up. So that's where. Oh, Carlos available, and we have a first on him or a second on him. We can say, hey, Carlo, like, how interested. It just becomes a conversation of how intense is your first. Do we have a shot? If we have a second hold, or if we had first, then we know no matter what, we can take this job because we can expand with our trusted network to accommodate it. But we're very sensitive. We won't pretend to be interested in something that we aren't certain that we could knock out of the park. We'd rather pass and say, we're too busy. [00:16:57] Speaker B: You're forecasting and trying to make sure. [00:16:59] Speaker A: You have your needs, because everybody's schedules are different. So we might have you for two weeks, and then you're going on vacation for a month or you're on another gig, and then so and so becomes available in three weeks. So, hey, do we have an internal person to bridge the gap there? Would that be a healthy thing to do on this job, or would it be catastrophic on the shop? So I think from an organizational standpoint, staffing is one of the hardest things we have to do. [00:17:27] Speaker C: Absolutely. Especially for creative. For creative people that are ready to lead jobs. I think totally. Well, in that case, for example, I would be totally okay being on hold. But it's just these things of like, first hold, second hold. If, let's say, Aaron, you would call me and say, hey, I might have this job starting. And I would say, okay, let me know if that happens. I'm going to hold my schedule. I'm going to keep my schedule open for that just in case. So it's more like a personal thing. But I didn't like the abuse of, sometimes I would get like, can I put you on hold? And then I would also hear my friends saying, oh, yeah, I'm on like a third hold and fourth hold. Get out of here. It's not made up at that point. None of this is going to happen. We're all just making ourselves feel better. [00:18:24] Speaker A: 100%. [00:18:25] Speaker C: I don't know. There's nothing wrong with it. [00:18:34] Speaker B: I sidetracked. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Let's talk about relationships and communication. I do agree that it's relationships and communication. And having a creative resource manager at a studio my size is like one of the most important roles because they have to understand who everybody is, who the creative directors gel with. If it is a creative director, what their skill set is, and then even is it like an animator that does swooshy illustrated stuff, or is it like a typographer? It's very complicated and nuanced. [00:19:07] Speaker C: It's a puzzle. [00:19:09] Speaker B: You got to have all the pIeces. [00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah, this client's been a little squirrely. And then some people can know what they're going to be working on. That's important. So if somebody, some people don't give a shit. They're like, whatever. You know what I do and how I do it. But other people are like, what's it going to be? And is it a hard client or an easy client? They want to know that stuff, right? [00:19:33] Speaker C: I think my only question nowadays is, what's the schedule like? Yeah, I think it's an important one. As somebody that has a family, I just want to make sure that I prepare myself. Or I can say, I don't think I can commit to that, because it's not even that I don't want to. It's that sometimes I don't have the flexibility to do that. And I think that's a hard balance sometimes that anyone with a career and a family has to go through. Right? [00:20:13] Speaker A: Million percent. [00:20:16] Speaker B: All right, I sidetracked us with the anecdote. So you were talking about, you went from staff Eyeball. You're like, okay, I want freelance. And you're like, hold on a second. Yeah. [00:20:26] Speaker C: And I know it's like, I don't think I'm going to be a good freelancer. I have too many opinions. So then I said I started tailoring. I knew I had no choice but to tailor the way that I work. I really didn't see too many samples of different ways of working. So then what I tried to do is let me just try to get small work directly for clients. Some of my friends were staff and some clients. So I started doing some Nike work. I started doing some network work, and all from my own studio in my own space. At one point, I started working with also an old colleague from Eyeball and an old friend that I don't talk to as much as I should, Adam Gault. And he and I were helping each other out on projects whenever we needed to. In fact, we worked from the same space for a while in Soho. Back then you could just rent. [00:21:34] Speaker A: That's so great. [00:21:36] Speaker C: Without breaking the bank. Like Prime. [00:21:40] Speaker B: You guys were doing like, was it CMT, the country music? [00:21:44] Speaker C: Yeah. At eyeball, we did a lot of CMT stuff. And when we both left, we got calls from CMT, from other networks, from other. [00:21:55] Speaker B: You guys did like the MSNBC, like the election. I remember you guys. That was a pretty big project. [00:22:00] Speaker C: Sure. In fact, that led to a lot of work for years, sometimes on my own, sometimes he on his own, and sometimes we would collaborate. And we ended up doing a lot of work for NBC. And we started doing a rebrand of the TODay show, and then we did the rebrand for MSNBC network and then CNBC and then the elections package. And this is like 2012 or so, but I think like the elections package, they still use most of it. They just changed the last two numbers. They got a great deal. But yeah, I'm sure that there's new pieces, but the spirit is the same as what Adam and I created, and that's the last time we worked together. At that point, I believe that he was starting his own studio and I kind of wanted to do something different and I kind of wanted to keep working directly with brands and clients and have the flexibility of not having a space, not having people that worked for me and sometimes take time off and sometimes do my own artwork, which I kind of always try to balance. Having time for my own art practice and also commercial work, which I think that they kind of feed each other and most importantly, feed me. And I'm happier and I can kind of run this marathon along. Happier. With stamina. With creative stamina. Right. [00:23:54] Speaker B: And keeping it graceful. [00:23:56] Speaker C: Yeah. Be nice to people. [00:24:00] Speaker A: What is a motion design consultant? [00:24:03] Speaker B: I wouldn't say. Yeah. That idea of the motion design consultant, that's something I think you kind of introduced to me by how you're working. I think you even use that word. And I kind of co opted it in a lot of the way. I like to work too. Yeah. [00:24:22] Speaker C: I started doing some work for more corporate brands, like financial brands. And at that point they wanted consultants. And I was like, wait, so by me not following the same traditional freelance path, I started getting pulled into these other circles that needed motion, which was early, but I could see the trends that, oh my gosh, everything is going to move. They need somebody to think about movement for everything. So I started, one of the corporate jobs that comes to mind is I did work for the Bloomberg terminal. At one point I had a Bloomberg terminal key, if I would know how to use. But they needed somebody to think about how the charts move, how they load, what are the details of the color of when they load, the fading, even how email interactions happen, how they hide, and what's that speed like just to help bring those digital products into today. And I think that opened up a lot of my opportunities and my eyes to what is possible. Like working with a lot of these brands that are not networks, are not studios, are not what we would think as motion, but they need somebody to think with motion in mind and with design, like designing with motion in mind in order for these products to be as good as they can be. [00:26:15] Speaker B: That's a great description. Designing with motion in mind, right? Yeah. [00:26:22] Speaker C: And it involves working with a lot of different people. You're not just working with animators or with a creative director or art director. You're actually working with business leads that have a marketing goal in mind. You're working with developers. So you have to learn a lot of different technical languages in order to make sure that your work, the work that you are doing, helps them make their job easier, and then they can keep hiring you because you are making their job easier and better, making them look better. [00:27:00] Speaker B: That made me think of something, because it's like that idea sometimes. It's for a student, right? Bringing in the student lens for a sec who's just graduating. It's tough for a student to go right into a job where they're like the solo motion person at a company like that because they don't have that experience to really bring what you're talking about. But for somebody who's been through the studios and been on the production and really has a deep experience and understanding of motion, to go to as a consultant to a company like that can really bring a lot. It just gave me a picture of. [00:27:38] Speaker C: Where on earth you're right. And I think that one has to have some kind of prior experience to bring into those situations where you're the one providing the solution for animation, in this case, for motion. Right. Or for design with motion in mind, and. Or helping them build the right teams in order to take them to their goal, whatever that might be, once you understand it. Right. Because they might not know the team that they need. They know where they want to get, but they don't necessarily know what team they need or how to get there. How to get there, yeah. Or how long it takes. [00:28:25] Speaker A: It takes. Sorry, I was going to say, I feel like even. Still. Even though I feel like we've been doing this for 20 years, the majority of our clients, our process and pipeline is like magic to them. They just don't understand it. And you can really tell when they're forced to ask for a kit because they just don't have the language or skills to even understand how to get it together and what their talent might need on their side to be able to get into it. [00:29:08] Speaker C: One of my friends that also kind of works like me, he told me one day, he said, and he's much more of a. He has like a producer mind, told me this a very long time ago in passing, and it always stuck. He said, all the clients want is the pain to go away. And I was like, oh, God, that's all they want. You're right, because they have, like, six projects in mind. The last thing they want is, like, somebody to come in with a ton of questions bothering them, making the work more difficult. They just want to have one of those six projects for you to help them solve it, make one of them easier for them, and then they always come back. [00:29:53] Speaker A: Well, when you have collaborators, right, or when we hire freelancers, we're like, I love working with them. They're just so easy. That's the word I use. It's just so easy. They just get things. If they have questions, they're so appropriate. And just how they communicate throughout the day is, again, so appropriate. [00:30:20] Speaker C: That's a great point, because no matter where you are, I guess, in this pipeline of work, we all just want to work with in the smoothest way possible. We want to work with people that are pleasant, that can do their job well. Right. And that just make that process easier, because we're dealing about with these very large group projects, very rarely is like, one person does all the work. It's actually huge amounts of decision making that passes down in order to approve budget for you to do something. Speaking of myself, of course for me to do something. So the last thing I want is put my ego on this thing and try to fight for this blue shade of blue that I think is right, especially if it's for a brand. It's so important to make sure that you put your customer service hat on and you know how to manage situations, whether they're easier or harder. And we can all come up with a solution. Right. [00:31:35] Speaker B: We call it, like, the soft skills, but it is just about being professional, just listening. It made me think about, my dad was a freelancer. He was a freelance photographer. And some of those real early lessons are just things I remember him saying about just make everybody feel included in the project. If it's a producer, even if they're not a critic, make them feel included in the project. These little things that kind of seeped in, having been around now with education and a lot of, I think there's like a UX buzzword. They call it, like, pain points, right? Like, making the pain go away. They call it pain like, where are the pain points? In the process? But it's that everywhere. It all hurts all the time. Good one, Aaron. [00:32:28] Speaker A: That's my contribution. There you go. [00:32:35] Speaker C: I think that in my experience, I think those skills have kept me around and bring back clients more so than the work that I do. I always try to deliver as good work as I can, of course, try to always, in a way, a little bit under promise and over deliver, because that's just my personality. However, where I really think that I have a little bit more of an edge is the fact that I always try to make clients feel heard, and I try my best into listening to what the team is trying to do at the end of this or why they're doing this in order to try to help them get there. And I think that that, to me, has worked in the long term to bring back those clients. And just like Aaron, I'm sure you don't want to look for freelancers all the time, right? [00:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:45] Speaker C: You want to find good people that you can rely on. I think that clients are also the same. They want to find either an individual or a company that they can rely on to always kind of come back to. And you can create these long term relationships that go on for years. [00:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. [00:34:11] Speaker C: Austin. I'm sure that you've had clients mean you've been around for a while and with that kind of knowledge that your dad passed on, I'm sure you've had clients for years and years and years that always come back. [00:34:25] Speaker A: I've had clients from DK that stuck with me through when I was a kiddo. They're still around. And then from day one, starting the studio, they're still clients, like, pretty tight with a bunch of people in Detroit. And then it's so interesting because I would say it's very organic, but it should be because ideally, like, there's no business like repeat business. And everybody's careers are fluid. It's very rare that somebody stays in one place their whole career. So you meet one person, you're on for a job in two years. A couple of people go off to new places, and then when they're in their new place, they're like, hey, I got this thing. I'm at a new gig. And so essentially, if you just stick with it and maintain those relationships, your network grows as their careers expand and grow. [00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say that that's been my experience, too, because, Aaron, you're running certainly a lot larger than the one man shop that I do and that Carlo does a lot of, although I know you build bigger teams, but, yeah, I'll work with a client for years and years and years, and then they leave and they go to a different brand, and now I'm working with that other branD. Yeah, exactly. And it is that. I guess I used to talk a lot about it as just reputation, like building that reputation as a professional. And I tell this to my students. All right, so came up in New York in the 2000s, moved down to Savannah, Georgia in 2010. Lived in Savannah for ten years. Now I'm out in Washington State. I get emails still from, I guess I was on some producers freelance roster list. I get emails that are like, hey, you available to come in next week in a New York office, right? Where I'm just like, I'm a decade and a half out of. And it's. But that's just like, hey, I did a good job. I did the best I could and treated people well and attentive to detail, responded promptly, and that carries over time. [00:36:52] Speaker A: So people pay for the process. I always say people pay for the process, not just the product. At the end of the day, if it was a nightmare dealing with you, no matter how amazing the work is, there are other people that do amazing work. They're going to give it a try with them. So it's communication, it's warmth, it's excitement and energy for what they're working on. You don't have to be a cheerleader, but it's also like creative problem solving, like rolling with the punches and just knowing you're not done until the client runs out of time and money and so keeping pace with them. And there's so many layers of clients. Typically, even if it's a small group that you're dealing with, there's still lots of people that need to feel satisfied by the process. So you have to roll with the punches a little bit and say, okay, well, so much for that type pace that was going to win all the awards. Well, you just got to be like, that's what I mean by keeping the energy up. Like, okay, well, maybe there's another one that is better. And I just fell in love with this one and just kind of moved through it and accept it. Even if it's not like, in the end, exactly your taste, but it's exactly the client's taste, then it's a win. It's still a win. [00:38:18] Speaker C: Yes, I think so. At least I agree on my end, too. And that has to be, like a personal thing because some people say, no, the win is the actual creative that I don't want to compromise on. Right. [00:38:42] Speaker A: That's art. Like, when you have a brief and a client, success is different. Sometimes it's selling sneakers or somebody keeping their job or. You know what I mean? There's layers of it. [00:38:58] Speaker C: Yeah. And also you start with a brief. You start with a logo or a color palette. It's not your project, it's somebody else's project. And you just make the best decisions. [00:39:14] Speaker A: You can along the way and really try to guide them into making the best decision. [00:39:22] Speaker C: For me, what has worked is always having my more like a fine art practice, very separate at the same time to my client work and making that time to work on both, even though sometimes it's hard to balance with life and work and money and also eat myself creatively. I think that by having that, I can go back to doing client work in a healthier, happier. [00:40:01] Speaker B: Right. You could detach easier. [00:40:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I find joy in diversity because if I'm on an entertainment project that's highly creative, but it's a little bit stressful. My cup gets filled from that. But then it's also nice to then shift into a kinetic diape job that's got to be done really quickly. But it's good money, and the clients are going to be really happy when we knock it out of the park for them. But it's very regimented and the standards are set, and we kind of know what it's going to be. We're just going to have to keep up with script changes and then moving to something that's, like, a little bit slower paced and then maybe moving into a conference title where we could do whatever we want. I feel like my joy comes from getting burned out on one thing and then shifting into another thing. Sometimes feel refreshed. Different things. Yeah. [00:40:55] Speaker C: I just came back from Peru, and I was there for an art fair. I was talking, and now I came back after four days. I came back to New York, and I have client work, and I was, I don't want to talk art. Know, give me a brief. I am a happy man. I don't want to talk conceptual thinking. Let's just do something here. [00:41:22] Speaker B: Let's solve a problem. [00:41:25] Speaker C: Feels great. It feels great. It feels balanced in a way. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:30] Speaker C: And likewise, when I go from a heavy client project that is demanding into just taking a couple of weeks to just do my own thing or thinking about what artwork I'm producing, then it just feels like I'm ready for it. [00:41:49] Speaker B: I get that. Yeah. It's a recharge of the battery or the spirit. And it was one of those things I think early on realized. I'm like, if I try to get everything I need as a creative person out of commercial art, well, that's going to be pain. There's a pain point for me, and that if I had this, whether it was the sketchbook practice or just my own making artwork that I didn't have to get revisions on. [00:42:17] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Although Austin always sends his art to me and I have true feedback. [00:42:29] Speaker B: But you know what? But it's encouraging. A lot of the times it is like, getting a little positive reinforcement. I think it definitely helps me feel like, okay, I'm going in the right direction. I'm going to keep pushing this. [00:42:43] Speaker C: Every time somebody sends me stuff, I'm like, you want my personal opinion or my professional opinion? Because my personal is like, dude, keep going. It's great. My professional, I'm like, this might cost you money. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Yeah, serious. [00:42:58] Speaker C: Here are all my thoughts. [00:43:01] Speaker A: Interesting collective work in terms of the. [00:43:05] Speaker B: Way you're working now, I know that you said you're doing some more collective type work. [00:43:10] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. [00:43:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:12] Speaker C: We kind of, like, jumped off from when I started eyeball, and that kind of led me into, that has organically grown throughout the years. I left eyeball maybe in 2007 or eight, and I started doing, and that has grown, but very organically. So in a way, I do have a company. Like, technically I do have a company, but I just sometimes build teams to solve client work. Sometimes I just do it on my own. Sometimes I freelance. And then during the pandemic, actually, I had a lot of work that I was doing for Microsoft, and I had a couple of other clients that needed work, and I had some freelancers that had been helping me for years. And so I offered those freelancers to my clients. And I feel like my company is more like a collective company. And in a way, I'm embracing the fact that how it has grown organically, I definitely did not want to have a typical thing, and so I have to be okay. Even though sometimes I try to control it, I'm like, no, I can't control it because I don't know exactly what I want when it comes to that. In a way, like, I'm a rep help that this company sometimes helps the group of people legally. Like, everything goes through the shop. So it's easier to work, it's easier to go get right to the work, it's easier for contracts, it's easier for payments. My accountant handles all that stuff. So it becomes like this. It's a different solution than when you think of a studio. And if, let's say I need to work, I can also freelance. I'm not bound by having a typical structure, pros and cons. [00:45:23] Speaker A: What I love about that is there's just different ways to do things. I think so many of us kind of have this idea that I do this, then I do this, then I do this, then I do this, and then if I want to expand, I start a studio, and then that gets bigger and bigger until eventually explodes in my space kind of thing. But it's nice to see that it doesn't have to be that structure, that it can be organic based on the job and the paradigm. And I think as you kind of get out of that art director role into that creative director role, you're really a talent manager. And so it's nice to kind of start seeing it manifest in different ways for different people. And you've made the most of it. [00:46:12] Speaker C: Yeah. When it started to happen and really started to pick up during the pandemic, I feel like I was so overwhelmed with things and work and life and that it was more like I was just, like, floating and letting the current take me wherever. And I knew it was going to be okay. I knew I was going to work. And I just, in a way, kind of wanted to see where does this take me without me fighting it, without me trying to tire myself out, to try to shape something that I don't know exactly what I'm shaping. And it's more like, this is what I do. This is how I can offer my clients a solution, and if they want to take it, great. If not, that's also okay. There's plenty of people out there that do what we do. So I think that we can all cater the solution that works for us for different times also of our lives and in our careers. What works for me right now might not work for me in ten years or definitely could not work for me ten years ago. I definitely didn't know what I was doing then. So that's where I'm at career wise. But, yes, one of the things that, for me, I think it's interesting, and I try to take all these things with a sense of adventure. Is that 44 now? I didn't, definitely didn't try to build a company. And in a way, although I have one, I don't have a typical one. But it's just now that I'm at this point of my career, I started to think, where do I go? What are the next 20 years? 10, 15, 20 years are like career wise for me. And I think that that's what I'm trying to figure out. And I don't think that in the past, I really have thought so thoroughly about my next steps as I am lately. And I think it's also because of my age. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like, I'm going through that, too. And I know, Austin, we are. We're in our mid 40s, so, like, I'm going to be 45 this year. You just kind of start thinking about, like, okay, we know where it started. I think for all of us, we started at the beginning of this desktop revolution for animation. I feel like the middle has been many middles for me, even though there hasn't been a lot of jumping around. But now, to your point, I want to think about where is it going with intentionality, so that trajectory. Yeah. [00:49:06] Speaker C: Regardless, I think that if you take it with a sense of adventure and being very honest about what works for you, not what works for other people. Right. I think that we'll all find our next little nook. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, if you think about how fast everything is moving, technology wise, and we. [00:49:30] Speaker C: Don'T have to get into all the AI stuff, you might be an AI, right? In this interview. [00:49:36] Speaker A: Yeah, you might not be. But when you think of how fast things are moving and just what we learned through the pandemic about just working like, remote and all of that, I just think it's so naive to think, even if we do have intentionality with what we do, that there isn't room for growth and learning and pivoting even within that. You have to kind of make a plan. But then you also have to know that there are going to be all these other forces that mean you're going to have to be really nimble and open minded. So I think that's where the adventurousness probably comes in, where it's just like accepting that you're on a river and there's going to be times where it's like rocky and crazy and you're trying to navigate and stay up and then times where you can kind of enjoy the view. [00:50:29] Speaker C: I'm looking forward to it. I don't know what it is, but for now, just keep doing what I'm doing while thinking about what to do next. I think it's a first good step and things will unfold, and I feel like they always do. [00:50:44] Speaker B: I was going to say that's something. I mean, this is a sentiment that I've discussed with my students, I guess, over the last bunch of years now. But this idea that how I choose to spend my time is like how I actually am spending my life's time, right? If that makes sense. Right? Yeah. There are things that it has probably been in the last five plus years that I'm like, there are things that I'm capable of and that I can accomplish. But is it how I actually want to spend my time? Right. You know what I mean? And being really conscious of, like, okay, if I invest time in this, this is what's going to happen. This is where we're going to put it. And that there are other things that would be cool to do. But you know what? I don't have the energy to go that way. [00:51:32] Speaker C: Yeah. So how do you spend your time, Austin? What is that? What is that right now that you're like, I'm going to spend time with. [00:51:44] Speaker B: You know, I sent Aaron a photO, right, yesterday. So I have this break between classes. I actually have, like, a three hour break between classes. My campus, my building is adjacent to an arboretum, which I guess means, like, a tree place, right? [00:52:04] Speaker C: Well, know what? An arboretum. [00:52:08] Speaker B: Hike. And it's steep. I'll tell you what, the mountains on this side of the country are a lot steeper than the East Coast. Yeah. Going up. I don't know. It's probably a quarter, half a mile hike up, and you get up to this watchtower. It's like four story up, Wooden structure where you could see the entire bay. Right. The Puget Sound Bay and the island. And it's like, on a clear day, I can see the mountains in Canada. It's crazy. It's an epic view. And so I sent Aaron this picture, and I think he replied something, know, not a bad life or something like that, right. Where it's just like. Because I literally was looking at a snowcap mountain yesterday, and I got a picture of it. I kind of kick myself and be like. Because I've managed to curate this life where I love teaching, right? So it's like this passion where I get to work with students, and I love making things and commercial art and my own artwork, right? So I have this life where I get to really I could teach, and I do commercial art, and I have this art practice, and I've gotten to write a couple of textbooks and have time. I feel really grateful that I have a lot of different interests all around creativity and education, but I get to do all these things and I really enjoy them, which is really cool in terms of the next, like, yeah, where do I want to keep spending that time? And I guess it's really in these places. And that's one of the things that's nice about the change I made to the university I'm at now is that the teaching schedules just, it gives me more time to actually do creative artwork. Whereas for a really long time, it was teaching and it was commercial art. [00:54:00] Speaker C: And it was family. [00:54:00] Speaker B: And now I'm like, it's teaching, it's commercial as family. And I have this other space where I actually get to make things and experiment. And I'm going down to Florida in. [00:54:09] Speaker C: A couple of weeks. [00:54:10] Speaker B: Actually, two weeks from today, I'm doing a projection mapping. I'm an artist in residence digital graffiti festival, where it's all projection mapping. And I made a four minute piece. I got one of my alums who's become a friend, Peter Clark. I don't know if you know Peter's work. He does really cool stuff, but he does music too, so he did the score for it. So I realized after over 20 years as a commercial artist, I have this opportunity where I'm doing a robust project that's not a brief, driven project. It was like me getting, and I'm so all kinetic type and abstract typography and collage. I guess that's for my time. It's making and thinking about making stuff and teaching and thinking about teaching. That's where a lot of my time goes. And a little bit of hiking now. [00:55:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I look forward to seeing some of those pictures. I think that whenever work is done in the screen that we make it in and then it gets pushed out to bigger projections or even like, installations. They kind of take out another. There's another layer of something that starts to appear. [00:55:27] Speaker B: Well, yeah. [00:55:28] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:55:30] Speaker B: Well, I'm doing like a building. I was given, basically assigned a building that I'm mapping to, right. And some of the work is these microscope photography that I do of book covers, and then I make weird edits out of. So it's like I've microscoped this tiny thing and it's going to be gigantic on a bill. Even that, I think, is interesting. This is a good segue into talking about art, balancing the art and design, because I know for I've observed you and creating, in addition to your commercial artwork, motion art, since those mid 2000 days. I remember even that first visit to my class at SBA, you showing pieces that were basically not commercial. It was like you using your tools as a motion designer to make artwork. And I remember then, and while I was teaching at SCAD, you'd post stuff. And I remember, like the keys piece, and there'd be your signature on the lower corner, like a painting. But it was a moving art piece. And this idea was like, oh, yeah, you can sign your work, even if. [00:56:40] Speaker C: It'S a motion art piece, personal work with artistic intention. I've always had that drive to make work. It's kind of a curse sometimes, I think, but it's really what feeds me. I think that I have all these projects that I do using the same tools that we use for our client work. I love the digital medium and I really like technology, so I always try to use those things in order to make work out there. I think that there's something really interesting, like whenever you talk, you start to dig into technology and art to make certain paints, paint colors. At one point in history was very hard and you needed knowledge and you needed money. And I think that for me, everything clicks when it comes to knowledge of technology and using computers to make work. So that always pushes me to do work, at least starting from using computers. And then lately what I do is I push it into other mediums, like taking them out physically, but again, trying to always use the process of this collaboration with a machine and then the craft that we as people do. So I can give you a really good example about that. I created this piece that makes, it's written in JavaScript, that creates N. Well, I made shapes that then get combined by code, generative piece. So every output, every time you run the code, it's different. So it gives you a certain amount of this randomness and unexpected ways to mix these shapes. And then what I did was I took selections of these pieces and how these shapes were mixed, and then I pushed them to get 3D printed and then finished like car pieces. I mean, they're like perfect, super glossy, shiny, and they're big. They're big. Like, I have one, my studio here, they're big pieces, so they have a presence in the room. Yeah. And I think that that's so always interesting to me to see pieces like that and kind of how we start and the way that we look at work on our phones most of the time or on a screen, it's just so small. And then it's so hard to have presence in the room with digital work. And so I tried to bring some of these same ideas and concepts into more of a physical sense to see how that same idea and how that concept can have different layers and communicate differently once it's created in a physical way. [01:00:02] Speaker A: You work in analog and digital. Let's talk about that. [01:00:05] Speaker B: Having the analog training and then the digital training, because I've always been super comfortable, like, oh yeah, my scanner, I love my scanner. I have a scanner. It's my oldest tech. It's probably 20 plus years old now. And the reason I like this scanner still is that when I do scanography right which is where I'll print something and then I'll run it through the scanner and move it while it's scanning. Because it's so old, it scans really slowly. So I can really control my scanography and the pace because I'll do a lot of iteration because I'll go over to the campus and they get these new scanners, and it'll just be like, I'll try to demo it for students. And I got to crank it up to, I don't know, the highest DPI I can get just to get it to go at a pace. But anyway, this idea of digitizing analogs and then working with it and combining analog and digital media. But then you said something that made me think about almost like, originating in the digital but then going analog. So instead of analog to digital, digital to analog. [01:01:14] Speaker C: That's my process. That's interesting process that I like because I think that I feel comfortable with that process. I mean, even back when we met and I went to SBA, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, if this was another thing, but I believe I had just shown these small screens that I had framed. [01:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah, you had a piece called. It was something like. I like that. You like triangles. I remember that name because it was such a. [01:01:50] Speaker C: Yeah, it was just like one triangle, three triangles, four triangles, or something simple. I like that. [01:02:02] Speaker A: Really funny. [01:02:04] Speaker C: I have it somewhere. But, yeah, I used to frame back then, perhaps it was crude, but I was always having fun. And I would take these DVD players and I would break them. So then they would. [01:02:15] Speaker B: That's what I would. Right. Because, like iPads, I don't even think existed. [01:02:20] Speaker A: IPads. IPhones didn't exist then. [01:02:26] Speaker B: I think an iPhone might have just come out. I think we were an iPhone. [01:02:30] Speaker C: I would go to Best Buy, and I would get a DVD player, like a portable DVD player, and then I would break it, basically. So the screen would be facing fully on one side. And then I would go to a framer and say, make me a frame that hides all this stuff so I can just put a DVD on the back and I could just play whatever. Right? So then that was my first. There were obvious problems. Sometimes they would overheat, it would shut down. But I think I showed a couple of those pieces, and then I brought them to the class. And I always try to do things like that, that kind of start from digital, but then kind of get pushed out. [01:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:21] Speaker C: Lately I have this strong drive of doing more of those. I'm looking into flexible screens right now. I'm looking into different things that I really definitely want to do. More. 3D printed sculptures that feel like rocks. [01:03:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:44] Speaker C: Because that comes with my visual language. I'm from Peru. [01:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:52] Speaker C: And so it's embedded in Peru. All this Inca walls with beautifully shaped stone and, like, the craftsmanship of textiles. [01:04:08] Speaker A: I was going to say. [01:04:11] Speaker C: Last, I. [01:04:12] Speaker A: Love alpaca from Peru. It's beautiful. Sorry. I'm a fiber artist. That's my thing on the side is you were like, Peru. I'm like. [01:04:26] Speaker B: Field trip. [01:04:27] Speaker C: Yeah, let's go. I love it there. But that, to me, is like, okay, how do I mix that language but making my own in a way, because I left when I was a kid, so it would be unauthentic to me to do things like, if I grew up there. There's a lot there that I don't know. So I almost, like, work from memory, and I try to recreate things digitally that then I push out as physical things. So then it becomes a little bit more of my own voice and my unique voice. [01:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah. So I heard somebody say once, I don't remember who, but it's not what it was, it's what you remember it being. If we're talking about your childhood experiences and what you were surrounded by, or just a font from the. Then you go look at the font and you're like, that's not right. Because it's like your memory of it is distorted. And so it's not what it was, it's what you remember it being. And that goes through your journey is kind of inserted into what that even means. Or does it does sound like you're playing around in your artwork with this, your artwork versus your commercial work. This idea that Austin and I are playing with, which is archival versus disposable to a certain extent, even though we create this amazing commercial work that goes out into the world, it goes out and it's, like, getting replaced, but it's after it's out, it's made to be consumed and discarded. That's the point. The offer is changing, the product is changing. Everything's happening. So it's nice to kind of take what you know and that you enjoy about your craft and all the things and have it kind of manifested it in something that's more archival that can stand the test of time. [01:06:30] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah, sure. And it becomes a little bit more obvious whenever we think of other crafts. [01:06:39] Speaker A: Oh, totally. [01:06:40] Speaker C: For example, if you're a carpenter, you can make chairs, or you can also use the same tools and make wooden sculpture, for example. So whenever you think of other crafts, it becomes so obvious. So why couldn't we do that with our craft? Now that's if you want to. Because making art is really hard. Yeah, well, making art is really hard, at least for me. [01:07:13] Speaker B: You also talk about it as like a dialogue or conversation, which made me think too, about my limited forays, even in with some of the AI stuff, like mid journey. Right. To me. But there is an interesting thing where it's this idea of, okay, I give it a prompt and then it makes something, and I like making textures or just seeing how far I can push it, what kind of interesting texture I can kick out of it, or something abstract out of it based out of the prompts. But then to me, it's like I prompted it. It's generated something, which then prompts me. I like taking that, and then I'll print it, and then maybe I'll cut it or tear it up and I'll scan it, and then I'll reassemble it in after effects, but in C space with like, layer. So it's this dialogue I feel like I'm having. I think it's kind of fun. [01:08:07] Speaker C: I think it's super fun. And also important too, if somebody wants to create work like that. I think it's also important to do it and not just talk about it. I think that it's so crucial to go through the process, because those ideas that you have in mind, once you start making them, sometimes they work out differently, or sometimes you realize that you have to bring somebody that's an expert in something else, right? Or sometimes you have to go with the flow, or sometimes they just turn out exactly like you thought they would. But I think, like, going through the process, you actually learn what works for you if it's actually good. All those doubts and all those ideas that you had starting become a lot more concrete by going through the process. And then you can bring that to the next project, right? It doesn't end. [01:09:07] Speaker A: So have you found that people have called you for commercial work based on your personal artwork? [01:09:13] Speaker C: All the time. [01:09:14] Speaker A: So that's great. And that to me is like, because that's with intention, putting stuff out there that represents you, and then people then seeing themselves in it and asking for it to manifest. So it's great that you can work on both sides of that. I think that's super. [01:09:33] Speaker C: In fact, I started doing work for Microsoft because of that great keys piece, because they wanted something, someone. They wanted someone that could help them make UI move in an elegant way. And I was like, I can do that. [01:10:00] Speaker B: Know, that's a piece of great cues that I show to my students when I teach an intro to motion class. And like class one, we start with our, okay, position, all the basic transformations and I keep it real simple. And actually, I think my interactions with you kind of actually brought me back to starting just with shapes, shape, layers, right? We move them around and like brief. Number one is, I actually call it emotion graphics like E motion. And their brief is like three five second animations using just solids. But each animation has got to be a different emotion. And can you move? And it's just practicing that. But then class two, I'm like, okay, audio, right? We introduced, how do we get audio and this metaphor of synesthesia and the sensory impressions. And then I show them gray keys as their inspiration. Right. How just moving simple shapes around, but timing it. With music, you can create an experience and it's really cool to see because I'll look at their expressions, right. I'll play the piece and the lights go down and the music goes up and they're captivated and they're just inspired where it's just shapes with sound and the way it moves and it's, it's a less of an overtly, it's not a commercial art experience, it's, it's visual music. [01:11:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that's very flattering. That's very flattering to hear. [01:11:37] Speaker A: And it's great that clients want that aspirational quality to see themselves in it because that's how their work gets pushed too. At the end of the day, it's by saying, I want people to feel like that when they see my thing or touch my thing or. [01:11:57] Speaker C: Came. That actually led me, like I mentioned, to working with Microsoft. And that then turned into a couple of years of, for lack of a better word, visual R and D. Visual R and D in terms of motion, in terms of 3D, in terms of the materiality of digital products about. Because at that point I was helping them. I was only one piece of a very talented team where we were trying to figure out what is the next generation of Microsoft products going to be like and feel like, and that sensory experience that we have with our everyday digital practice that we use on our phones or for productivity or for communication with our families, what is that going to be like? And since then, I've been also lucky to do the same thing for meta Facebook in particular about what are the next things going to be. I usually say that I do a lot of visual R, D and it's weird because if you're not ready for the process of that. It can be a little bit frustrating or confusing because whenever you do work like that, failing is just as important as getting something right. It's just more helping them, helping them figure out what path the brand needs to take. And there's a lot of experimentation, a lot of restarting work. I tend to like that, but I can definitely tell you it's not for everybody. I've seen a lot of people get frustrated by it. [01:13:58] Speaker A: What is your advice to people around doing work that is essentially a whole process? It will influence the outcome, but it's all about experimenting in process. [01:14:12] Speaker B: It's like implicit rather than explicit. [01:14:16] Speaker C: Absolutely. I think that I always try to be very honest with people that are going to be working, let's say with me on projects like that, I always say one, most likely none of this, you'll be able to show you can do like a case study and show it to potential clients in private, but it's just such sensitive work that goes on for sometimes a year or two years. [01:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:14:42] Speaker C: And then two, it's like, don't think that there's a deliverable in mind. The process is the job going through the process. And then also I try to make sure that they understand that we're going to fail a lot and that's okay. I'm not going to lose our jobs here. Maybe, yeah. Until now, failing is also a bit. And also I try to make them feel like, I try to get everyone in my team at least to understand that this job is just really important to do. For brands like this, for brands that are so big, helping them figure out what is the next step towards a path is crucial for them to take that leap forward. And it can't just be, I think something's cool. It has to be kind of tested, intentionally tested internally. And then going back to what we were saying, bringing those clients as you almost being part of the team and really listening to them and bringing them into the procesS. So whenever they sell it to their bosses, they are emotionally connected to this work that we've been doing. [01:16:06] Speaker B: It's like being in a visual influencer. [01:16:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Without any credit or the followers. Right. [01:16:14] Speaker A: It's hard doing work. I mean, like our studio, we do some highly visible work that we can show, but we can't show process on. And I know that grinds people's gears, that we can't show work that didn't get selected or some aspects of the process that we can't share people. I think we're in a culture of, like, I share everything. So it's hard for people to understand that they created this thing and they cannot present it to the world. Well, one, somebody commissioned it, so somebody else owns it. I think that idea that somebody else owns something that they created can be a challenging one to wrap their head around, you know what I mean? But then you could almost see them suffer through it, and it's really hard. So if that's on a small piece of a bigger project that ultimately we can show, we just have to be very careful about what we kind of present around it. When our studio moves into super secret mode for tech clients, everything is dark. You know what I mean? You certainly can't put it on your website, you can't share it on social and say, look at this thing I did. There's nothing. It's just like, that's hard for people. Especially it's not so much for older people our age, because we understand what we got out of it. [01:17:45] Speaker B: We're just like, am I getting paid? [01:17:48] Speaker C: Okay, cool. [01:17:51] Speaker A: How were the working conditions? All that? [01:17:53] Speaker B: Right. [01:17:54] Speaker A: But it is very hard for, I would say, like the younger generation to understand just the ethos of that. Like, what do you mean I can't show this thing that I made? [01:18:07] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. [01:18:08] Speaker A: And especially for a long time. It's one thing if it's like, I feel like if I'm in the month zone maybe a little longer, I'm okay. But once I get to that two month territory with people, it almost feels like there's a clock ticking. So I think about doing a project like you're doing for years, and that's challenging because thAt's all in the vault forever. [01:18:34] Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard. Some days it's hard to have motivation because in a way you sometimes feel like, oh gosh, I'm doing the same thing again. [01:18:47] Speaker A: There is that in that exploration kind of circle of life. Here I am back at the beginning. [01:18:56] Speaker C: Yes. But there's something about that process that I really enjoy, and I think it's, at least personally, it's because I'm not really afraid to fail. I feel like I tend to put a lot of value in failing, at least for me. It's my personal view on how I work. [01:19:22] Speaker A: That's great. [01:19:23] Speaker C: Of course, with client work, that is pretty figured out. Listen, I don't need to experiment there. You need some 3D Renders of your product. I don't need to experiment. Where is the product? Show me pictures, show me the texture. We can do a nice lighting, but whenever it's projects like that, or even in my own way of working with clients, in my own, quote unquote, building a business that is unusual to build. I'm not afraid to try things that don't work. I'm not afraid to say I want to change directions. This is not working for me. I want to do something different, or I want to work in a different way. So I think that that allows me to be okay at jobs of visual R and D, because I feel like I get into my studio and I put on, like, a lab coat. I don't know what I'm doing, and. [01:20:26] Speaker A: I don't know exactly where we're going. [01:20:28] Speaker C: But I know where we're trying to get. [01:20:31] Speaker A: I love that. How do you balance career and family time, family life? [01:20:36] Speaker B: Family time, basically career and family. And I know it seems like healthy boundaries. [01:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Or thoughts? A little. [01:20:49] Speaker C: Well, I attempt to. I aim to have a healthy boundary of my family life and work life. I'm sure that we all struggle with the same things. It's never perfect, but I try to keep the same schedule daily. I am pretty strict about my schedule. Like, I start my days pretty early, and I finish always at the same time. One of them was my oldest daughter. Her mom and I were not together, but we raised her together, so we co parented. And I think that also forced me to have a very set schedule. There was no excuse. I could not say, oh, I need to work 30 more minutes. I had to be home. The nanny had to go home at a certain time. So I always kept the same schedule. And since then, I think that's what works for me, to have a very consistent schedule that I can count on. So I can kind of organize everything around that and then that I can also, in a way, hyper focus on things. If I am at work, I'm only working, and then when I'm at home, I'm making breakfast or, I don't know, changing diapers, cleaning up, listening to how their days were. [01:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, the pandemic really messed with me because it really combined things in a way that there was no physical delineation between anything. Like, people were walking, like the kid and the husband are coming in. And I didn't mind the mixing of it all, but I felt like I was always doing everything all at once, you know what I mean? And it was so overwhelming, so overwhelming. And when it was time to talk about coming back to the studio, I just couldn't understand or wrap my head around why people wouldn't want to come back. And then people don't like a commute, but I love a commute because I listen to a book or a podcast. For me, that's like me, time space between when I'm focusing on, when I'm not reading emails, when I get to just be alone with myself before I transition to this other space. I, of course, understand the complexities of everybody's lives are different, but I completely connect to what you're saying, because I, too, am very regimented, and I'm a morning person. [01:23:37] Speaker C: Yeah. And a lot of parents that I know can still work from home. Now, with little kids, that's great. But me, it's like my brain doesn't work that way. I can't focus. I feel like I need silence to focus. I just want to work until a certain time, basically. So if I get thrown off too much, I'm not productive, and things still need to get done right. And so I feel frustrated at the end, and then I keep thinking about that, and I'm not a good parent. Everything gets thrown ofF. And listen, I'm not saying that there are some days or some weeks where things happen in life, that things fall apart for lack of a better expression. But for the most part, I try to be strict with myself of keeping the same schedule, to be as productive as I can with everything. [01:24:37] Speaker A: Do you find joy in workshops? [01:24:40] Speaker B: When I went down to SCAD my first year, I guess this was 20, 10, 20, 10, 20 11 teaching at SCAD, and I was tasked with putting together a roster of speakers for. We used to have this thing called the Inspire conference or the Inspire speaker series. So I tapped a whole bunch of people I knew to come down, and both of you were on that first trip. So it was. It was mostly like, a crew of New York and Chicago, but I met Aaron in New York. [01:25:11] Speaker A: We were New York, though, kind. [01:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And so you guys came down, I don't know if you guys remember. It was the big theater that SCAD owns. I think it was theater. Yeah. Historic theater. And you guys spoke big enough to. [01:25:27] Speaker C: Make you feel a little bit right. [01:25:33] Speaker B: That was cool. Kind of a full circle. We got to hanging out on the. And then I think it was maybe the next was. It was early in my tenure there where I had Carlo, I had you come down to do. I think we transitioned inspire from being a conference to being, like, a workshop. And you came down, and it was around Halloween. That's it. And that was the first one of those workshops that I put together. And you came down, and you made a bunch of style frames, right? That were like Halloween ish. Yeah. [01:26:14] Speaker C: And then we animated them. [01:26:16] Speaker A: That's it. [01:26:16] Speaker C: Yeah. We put the student thing, like, in teams. I really love workshops like that with schools. Yeah, I really love workshops. It's just a part of the process of trying to come up with a solution together, going through it, learning from each other. Oh, I don't have an idea. You have too many ideas. Let me help you out. I love that collaborative process because a lot of the times, it's what we have to do professionally. Sometimes things come up and you have to fix them right away. [01:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:58] Speaker C: Right. SO then I kind of like that. I always like the process of workshops. [01:27:05] Speaker B: It's like a little alchemy, a little pressure cooker. Well, and then I ran those for a lot of years, and Erin came and did her version of that, and I'm still doing them out here now at my new university or at university. And it's so it's kind of. There's, I don't know, just a lot of touch points. [01:27:28] Speaker C: I would love to know if the students get as much from those. [01:27:33] Speaker A: I think they do. I think they get a lot from them because there's so, I think, little exposure to them, to how things really operate and how quickly things move in the world that they're put in it. And I feel like the stakes are really high for them. They want to get a cool piece out of it. They want to get some information. They want to meet somebody cool. You know what I mean? So I do think that they get all those little tastes out of it. [01:28:04] Speaker B: Well, I was going to say what's kind of cool? And I see it, too. It's something I can't do in just the pure classroom environment. Right. It's like bringing in an external professional, and we create this simulation of a studio. Maybe that's not the right way to put it, but we create this environment that, in the best times, it creates the creative spirit of a studio without the client and without the stakes and without some of the tougher stuff. And you get into some of the really just the qualities of, like, oh, this is what collaborating is like. This is what it's like when it's not just, hey, I'm giving you a homework assignment, and then they turn. [01:28:52] Speaker A: I always want to do those, like, the Russos have this 48 hours film festival thing where they put out the prompt, and then you have 48 hours to submit your film. And I always want to do those because I miss that. Friends, the creative spirit. [01:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:13] Speaker A: Singularly focus, the yes anding of the team and building from there. I think those are sometimes they could be utter failures, but going through the process is ultimately a bigger success and experience. Yeah. [01:29:29] Speaker B: And then I was going to say the other side, too. HavIng done these for a lot of years now is. I see, yeah. The students, they get a lot out of it. Even when they have a rough time. There's, like, things we can unpack and they don't communicate well. And I'm like, well, this is why a producer is important. But then to see the professionals, it's nice to see what the professionals get. [01:29:51] Speaker C: Out of it, too. [01:29:53] Speaker B: It's like a fountain of youth. They get exposed to the excitement and the pleasant naivety of the students. Right. Who are like, they're just hungry and they're excited to make things and to learn. Usually when somebody agrees to do it, they're open to that. And I get to see them get filled up in a way that is rewarding, too. [01:30:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:30:23] Speaker A: I always say one of the reasons that we even have junior talent in our studio, usually they're fucking stuff up more that they're like, sometimes they knock it out of the park, but they're a lot of work to get molded and up to speed and all the things. But what I love about it is, one, it's an opportunity for us to mentor, which is always great because in teaching, you learn. But it's also so invigorating to see your industry through their eyes, to see the opportunities through their eyes. They see like, oh, my God, I'm working on Guardians of the Galaxy. For us. We're like, oh, my God, we got another one. We're just, like, excited about it because of the creative opportunity, but we also know what it's going to be. It's going to be hard work until the very end because they better be because it's high stakes. But it's so interesting. You just see it through their eyes and they are just like, pinch me, I just got a ticket. [01:31:31] Speaker C: Yes. They don't realize the amount of labor yet that things take. And then sometimes me, at least, I'm like, oh, God, that's going to be so much work. [01:31:45] Speaker A: It's going to be worth it. But you just also know, yeah, it's. [01:31:49] Speaker C: Going to be painful. You got to kind of just like yourself going in there. [01:31:58] Speaker A: But you need both sides of that. You need the experience that knows how to do it, that knows how to prepare for it so that you can brace for the work and you can prepare for it. But you also need that unbridled enthusiasm that's like, I'm going to see my name in the credits of a big Marvel movie. [01:32:14] Speaker C: Yeah. And perhaps having those workshops, it kind of takes some of that pressure off of the amount of labor, and you're purely on, everyone is on the same level of pure creativity. We have two days to do something, and at least for me, it's just not. No pressure at all. I just want to have fun. And I think that is what resonates for me the most in workshops like that. I've even covered for a friend that had to travel for work, and he needed somebody to cover two days at SVA to teach some stuff in after effects. And I was like, what do you mean? Do you need to tell me what to teach them? And I don't remember what it was. It was just like the type tool, the animation tool in after effects. And I was like, that's it. Two days of that. Count me in, full type animations. It's going to be great. And it was fun. It was fun to do that. But, yeah, I love that aspect of education. And lately I'm thinking I'm not doing anything about it, but it's a thought that now exists in my brain that didn't before, which is, should I pass this on? How do I pass this on? Who do I pass this on to? Right. And for me, this is like a very rough shaped thought, is that I sometimes think that in a way, bringing it back to where I'm from, to Peru, or in a way, underprivileged communities, to even, not even my thought is not even educate them in terms of technical. In a technical aspect. But more the first step, which is this is a career option. [01:34:16] Speaker A: Yes. [01:34:16] Speaker B: Just awareness. [01:34:17] Speaker A: Awareness, yeah. [01:34:21] Speaker C: And I think that awareness bringing to thinking back of my family and the lack of, and I see sometimes in all of Latin America, but I see it more in Peru because I still have a connection there and the lack of opportunities. And in a way, what we do, you can really work from anywhere. [01:34:48] Speaker A: Anywhere. True. [01:34:49] Speaker C: You can really work from anywhere. And you just need the opportunities or the knowledge or also somebody to Train you to work in the way that we work. Right. [01:35:04] Speaker A: How do you feel about going remote? [01:35:06] Speaker C: Right. [01:35:07] Speaker B: And I know you went remote mid two thousand s. I went remote mid two thousand s. And I feel like in a lot, we were kind of pioneering that. I know, Aaron, you started your shop, but like late 2000s, we're sending, I mean, I'm sending FedEx DVDs. If it didn't fit on a DVD, I'm sending a hard drive I had an FTP site and it was like I could put work in progress. But even an H two six four was like pretty new. There was no Vimeo, there was none of that. We transfer, no Google Drive, Dropbox, drop, none of it. Right. And of course one of the pandemic sort of, I feel like caught the rest of the world up to like, yeah, I remember somebody emailing me at the start of the pandemic being like, are you set up to work remotely? I was like, man, let me tell you. [01:36:03] Speaker C: Yeah, same on my end. Yeah. But I remember starting to work with Dropbox so long ago. [01:36:12] Speaker B: You must have a lot. Do you have a ton of space? Because every time you invited somebody, they would give you like two free gigs or something. [01:36:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I started inviting everybody. Right now I pay. I don't even know. This is a crucial thing for me because of course, also as a business owner, as a professional, you also want some kind of backup situation. And Dropbox helps me with that. The fact that I have everything, I don't work outside my folder that gets synced. [01:36:53] Speaker B: Right. [01:36:54] Speaker C: So I have access to all my files all the time. [01:37:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:02] Speaker C: Because the last thing I want is like a drive to burn or something to happen with the power and then my computer and something's wrong with my drive and then where are my files? [01:37:11] Speaker A: Experience. I mean, once we started working on high security stuff, things got real here because it's not just having your server and your backup, it's. [01:37:27] Speaker B: Firewall. [01:37:29] Speaker A: Firewall requirements are just like so nuts. You're just like, what, how much for something like a router? Well, it's not just a router. Yeah, it's gnarly. But you think about that stuff because you also want it on hand if somebody needs Something, but you also don't necessarily need it on hand. Again, it changes so much so quickly. So going from physical drives to double duplicates to a second server where that automatically backs up every day to like, oh, we can back that up to the cloud. And some of it you can't do to the cloud so that you got to do local. But then let's say you're running like four editorial jobs and two IMAX CPU jobs. All of a sudden your server that. [01:38:29] Speaker C: Was like, I need a new server. [01:38:33] Speaker A: You're like, you need more drives, by the way. You need that on your backup too. It's just like, yeah. [01:38:48] Speaker C: That'S why live action stuff was never for me. [01:38:53] Speaker B: Complicated phantom, like 3000 frames per second. [01:38:59] Speaker A: Oh my God, we just shot Citadel and we shot an array with like almost 80 cameras. It was like 77. That was zero. I was born, so I can remember 77 cameras, and they were all shooting live action at 120 frames per second at 4K. I'm not like, it just hurts to think about when I was starting to think about it, I was just like, my surfer is not. I go, how am I even going to take that footage with me? So I was like, can we shoot still? No. [01:39:38] Speaker C: The answer was no, just a still that we cut out. [01:39:42] Speaker B: We kind of like, make space. It kid stays in the picture. [01:39:51] Speaker C: For Web anyway. [01:39:54] Speaker B: Maybe along and let us know how you're doing on time, because. Are you okay for. [01:40:00] Speaker C: I'm good on time. Yeah. [01:40:01] Speaker B: Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, you talked about this idea of passing it on, something we've thought about, and that's something that Erin and I, we've been kicking around. This bigger idea of motion design is graphic design. Right. We think that any modern graphic design education should have motion as one of the pillars the same way like you teach type and layout. Just curious if you have any thoughts on that idea. [01:40:35] Speaker C: Oh, I mean, it's obvious that I agree with you both on that. [01:40:41] Speaker B: All right. [01:40:43] Speaker C: There's no doubt that whenever you design for motion, you should have those fundamental pillars setting you up or setting up a team, most likely for success, for a dynamic movement or ideas about where to go. And in fact, it helps to also animate, because then you can kind of set up those designs with that also in mind. So they both are really strongly connected. I sometimes wish that I would have taken more design classes in school because that would have given me a lot more foundation in terms of that. And that sometimes I still do struggle with things like fonts, for example. I have no idea, you know, how there's people that are like, wow, that's that font. I'm not that person. So having that fundamental education of design, regardless if it's for animation or for static, I think it's important. And even in my work, for example, a lot of the things that I get hired for are for motion direction, for UI, for mean. This is the print of today. We all look at our phones. We all digest content. Somebody has to think about how that content will populate, for example, or how comments come in or how. What is that? Those micro interactions that make the user experience more pleasant or hook you. And having a designer design it with the overarching idea that this is going to be animated and knowing ideas about how this can get animated, I think it can make products a lot stronger. [01:42:50] Speaker A: Totally. I mean, just going to the airport or walking around, there's no more normal billboards anymore. [01:42:59] Speaker C: I just did a whole out of. [01:43:00] Speaker B: Home campaign for airport. 50 different sizes. [01:43:07] Speaker C: City buses here in New York, sometimes their side billboard is a giant massive screen. So everything has the possibility at least. [01:43:18] Speaker A: Of movement, winding up, moving. Yeah. [01:43:22] Speaker C: So even if it's the type that comes in. Right. If everything is moving, how can you grab everybody's attention more? What is that? And I think that not only comes with animation, but also with good design fundamentals. [01:43:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it would be like animation when you make a font selection that says something about the brand, but additionally how it slides in and the personality and the cadence it has also says something about a brand. Does it bounce in? Oh, I'm a friendly brand. Does it flick and stick well? [01:43:59] Speaker B: Right. [01:44:01] Speaker A: Those things say different things about a brand and that motion personality is really important to think about as a part of that kind of process. [01:44:11] Speaker B: I was going to say just the fact that major brands now include, when they do their brand guidelines, now that they include motion. Right? Like there's the type, there's the color, the fact that the brands are including it in their toolkits. Yeah. Like graphic design education. [01:44:31] Speaker C: I'm surprised that schools haven't caught on yet and they should in a way require at least, what would you call it, like a motion graphics class or something? [01:44:44] Speaker B: Motion one motion. [01:44:45] Speaker C: Right. Because in the pure animation department, I'm sure that that curriculum and what they show you is very different. [01:44:54] Speaker A: Totally, right? Yes. [01:44:56] Speaker C: You're like stop motion. [01:44:59] Speaker B: I mean it relates, but it's different. Right? I mean you can talk about easing and you can talk about twelve principles animation, and you can talk about how it applies to UI, but it's a very different workflow. [01:45:12] Speaker A: I'll break it down for you real simple here. If I'm going to school to be a graphic designer and I want to learn how to animate, if I go to, let's say, the film school, there's a chance I could learn 3D character animation, there's a chance I could learn cell animation, there's a chance I can learn stop motion animation, all very cool animations, but not motion design, right? Then if I want to, let's say, learn compositing or how to put imagery and type and all that together, I can go to the visual effects department where now all of a sudden I'm learning how to shoot on a volume and comp that in and do all this other shit, when really I just need to know how to posterize some footage and do a cool mat around some type, make it look kinetic and trippy. It's a totally different skill set. And the professors from those different departments are going to be thinking in a completely different way in terms of storytelling and final outcome than a design professor. It's a totally different thing. Same thing for new media. If somebody is teaching a class in new media, they're thinking about video art. Yeah. Or even animation for generative art. Yeah. It's just different. You know what I mean? It's a different thing than if a graphic design professor that's a traditional typographer. I think it's communication integrated into those classes. I think if you're studying typography, first eight weeks, you're same old, same old. And then you're moving into the last two weeks of just at least discussing type and motion, looking at examples of it, doing some storyboard frames on how you might think it can work, and go. And then, of course, in the history classes of design, you're then talking about motion as a part of the historical context. So that when somebody says Terry Gilliam, and there you're like, 45 year old, 50 year old creative director, you know what the fuck they're talking about. [01:47:25] Speaker C: In a way, it's teaching the idea of a timeline. Right. Regardless of what department you want to end up. But if you're specifically just pure design, let's say pure graphic design, then introducing them that this also can live in a timeline. And how does that change? Perhaps go back to step one. But teaching them that timeline, which is a weird thing, but it's like, if you're not familiar with it, it can take a bit to really dig. [01:48:05] Speaker B: I mean, that's literally like day one, lecture one. It's like, I do spatial framework. Temporal framework. And then when we talk spatial framework, it's like it's a composition or an image frame. Temporal framework. It's a timeline. I'm like, this is what you interface with, and it's broken into units of time, even in the simplest form. It's like it starts and there's a middle and there's an end, but it is. It's the interface between the designer and time. [01:48:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Cool. [01:48:36] Speaker A: Holy canoli. [01:48:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. [01:48:39] Speaker A: All right. Is there anything. [01:48:46] Speaker C: I don't know, but I want to thank you guys for having me, and this was a really pleasant experience to having this conversation with two real pros. [01:48:58] Speaker B: Thank you. I guess that it's pretty neat because it kind of became clear for me that I'm like, oh, Yeah, I met you guys both right around the same time and stayed in touch, and that you've both really influenced me in my career and my thinking and my teaching to kind of get everybody together in one space. [01:49:23] Speaker C: You have it out for a bit. Likewise for me, just to. I know that. [01:49:28] Speaker A: Thank you for your. [01:49:29] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you, guys. [01:49:32] Speaker A: Super cool. [01:49:33] Speaker C: Thank you guys so much. [01:49:34] Speaker A: All right, we got to close it.