 You may have noticed that Motionographer Jobs now charges a small $50 fee to employers looking to post a work opportunity on our job board. While the service will remain free for those searching and applying to job postings, we’ve levied this price in order to accommodate our costs as a not-for-profit, all volunteer organization. Still, our primary goal of matching the industry’s best skills with the best opportunities remains and we thank each of you for your support and continued participation in Motionographer Jobs.
I had the pleasure of attending the 2011 Ottawa International Animation Festival this year. For me, Ottawa is one of the most refreshing events of the year. It helps you refocus by getting you away physically from your daily routine, showcasing unexpected and inspiring films with fantastic screening conditions, and creating a great environment to meet other animators and talk about the industry.
We’re kicking off our 2011 Ottawa remembrances with the student film selections. In the competition were many student shorts previously featured on Motionographer, including One Minute Puberty by Alexander Gellner and Stay Home by Caleb Wood. Two standouts I hadn’t seen before were OAIF award winners I’m Fine Thanks by Eamonn O’Neill (trailer above) and The Renter by Jason Carpenter. Read on for a full write-up of the 2011 OAIF Student Films. We’ve come to know NYC-based PandaPanther for their playful, character-driven work. Since 2006, Jonathan Garin and Naomi Nishimura have directed casts of colorful creatures on battlefields, dance floors and ethereal dreamscapes. Their latest effort, a game promo for Activision’s Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (see above), continues their tradition of fashioning fantastical flights of fancy that brim with delightful details. But instead of going behind the scenes for that production, we wanted to go behind the scenes of their personal lives. Jonathan and Naomi aren’t just business partners, they’re parents. They’ve created a lifestyle that attempts to integrate raising a kid with growing a studio. Jonathan was kind enough to pull back the curtain, so to speak, and get real about work/life. How did you and Naomi meet? We had mutual friends and officially met when we worked together as freelancers back in 2003. We hit it off during the Pictoplasma festival in Berlin in 2004. Been together ever since.
How did the decision to start PandaPanther come about, and how was it when you were just starting out? Can you share a few key moments in those early years? Initially, we just needed a name or identity we could use when we worked on projects together, as we were starting out with personal projects. We wanted to be able to get totally immersed in an identity bigger than just a literal name or place, so PandaPanther came about because it represented both of us together in a different dimension. A big moment was leaving freelance and deciding not to take any more bookings. Around that time Naomi and I were at the bank setting up an account for PandaPanther when her phone rang. It was a producer inquiring about her availability, but she turned it down and when asked why, she told them she actually had started a new company and was no longer taking freelance bookings. Read on →
“Yes, I know I’m supposed to be bathing him tonight, but … Yeah, I know I didn’t bathe him last night either, but tonight we’ve got a hell of a lot to get through, client changes and … What time? I really have no idea, you know I can never tell until we … Dinner? No don’t worry about dinner, we’ll call out for take-away from here … Yes, I miss you too … He’s asking for me? Tell him I love him and I’ll definitely bathe him tomorrow night, I promise … .” Anything in the above bit of fictional dialogue sound familiar? Yes, it does for me too. You see, we are creative people us motion folk and perfecting a design, a texture, a storyboard, a render or whatever it may be takes time. And despite working like demons all day to be “out the door”-bang on leaving time, fate and clients all too often conspire to derail our best intentions. Now, when we just have ourselves and perhaps a willing “other half” (who has decided to throw their lot in with us) to consider, late nights at work are bad enough. Bags under the eyes and cold shoulders in bed are no fun. But throw kids into the mix and it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. Concerns and neuroses multiply and multiply again: My folks were around for my bedtime, and so should I! If I don’t see her all week, will she still know me? Is my patchy bedtime attendance causing her long-term psychological damage?! But all the while, perfection is drumming its fingers on the desk and we can’t let something half-assed go out the door. And there you have it, the classic creative parent’s tug-of-war: Do I rush this thing and leave on time to see my kid or do I do myself justice as an artist and give this the extra four hours it needs? Do I leave my design baby screaming in the cot whilst I rush home to bathe and put to bed the human one? Well here at the Motionographer Work / Life Think Tank (disclaimer: “Think Tank” may in reality refer to a couple of casual email threads), we have decided to throw this open to you, the readers. Why struggle on your own when you can take solace in the fact that many others are having the very same problems? To this end, we’ve created a questionnaire to see how work life after kids is shaping up for you. And those of you without nippers, we want to know how you think becoming parents will change your working lives. When the results are in we’ll pump out a couple of fancy looking diagrams which will show us what you the Motionographer readers think about work/life with kids. 
Photo by adesigna
The headline for this post probably strikes most of you as a joke — at least those of you working in motion design in the US, and especially those of you working in LA or NYC. But it’s no joke to J.D. Meier, a Principal Project Manager at Microsoft for over 10 years, who uses the 40 hour work week as his barometer for project management success. As he says on his blog: In my experience, a 40 hour work week is a benchmark of the most effective teams. They have work-life balance. They have buffer to respond to opportunity and to deal with crunches.
Meier has overseen projects large and small, with budgets ranging from zero to over a million dollars. A self-avowed workaholic accustomed to slaving over 100 hours a week — and enjoying it — he finally came to realize that such an approach was not only unsustainable for himself, it was also unsustainable for Microsoft. Inviting inefficiency to teaWithout the constraint of a 40 hour work week, all sorts of inefficiencies become the norm. It’s as though they’re being invited to tea — and to supper and a late-night snack. Read on → 
This November, Pictoplasma returns to New York City, bringing a colorful parade of speakers, characters, films and art along with it. Focusing on the art and craft of character design, this year’s lineup of speakers spans the globe, including Geneviève Gauckler (FR), Allyson Mellberg Taylor (USA), BeatBots (JP/USA) and Jon Burgerman (UK). They cover a wide range of media and disciplines, such as illustration, graphic design, game design, fashion, art and robotics. In addition to the conference, there will be four days of events, screenings, installation and other madcap fun across the city. Get the full details on the Pictoplasma site and register early. Oh, and if you’re reading this, then we want to thank you by giving away one free pass via a random drawing. Leave your name and an e-mail address in the comments below before 12 pm EST Thursday, Oct. 6. One entry per person, please. We’ll announce the winner later this week. See you there! UPDATE: Comments are now closed. We’ll announce the winner soon! UPDATE #2: We have a winner! Congratulations to Waleed Zaiter and thanks to all who participated. Stay tuned to our Twitter and Facebook pages for more opportunities! 
Carol Browne
Our recent interview with Ash Thorp sparked an intense discussion here and elsewhere on the web that went well beyond Ash’s personal take on work/life. We thought it’d be a good idea to share some of those comments here. But first…Ash’s interview was just that: one person’s voice. We plan on sharing the perspectives of other successful professionals, many of whom have radically different approaches to the work/life issue. We’re also organizing a poll to get your voice in the mix. The Bigger PictureNo matter with whom you identify in the comments that follow, there is a profound frustration mounting in the field of motion design. It can no longer be ignored or accepted as “just the way things are.” It needs to be brought into the open and discussed in as much detail as possible. In many ways, this frustration is not new. Visual effects professionals, for example, have been grappling with labor issues for some time now. The Visual Effects Society is striving to define and solve pressing issues, most of which have grown out of the film industry. A Pimply-faced TeenagerMotion design sits at an awkward intersection of animation, graphic design and visual effects, drawing on the histories and business models of each of those disciplines. As a definable “industry,” motion design is young. Dedicated motion studios and practitioners didn’t arise in large numbers until the early 2000s. Before then, the field was dominated by post houses who sometimes had a few “motion guys” on staff. (This model still persists, but it’s much less prevalent. There are also many more “motion ladies” these days.) Motion design has its own set of problems, its own unique challenges — not the least of which are defining itself and delineating its boundaries. It’s a lot like your typical pimply faced teenager dealing with the angst of transitioning from childhood to adulthood. During this time, every decision has formative potential, shaping the future of the field in ways that won’t be obvious for years to come. The CommentsWhat follows is a sample of comments from Motionographer’s interview with Ash Thorp. We’ve tried to present the full spectrum of perspectives. rtwerk said: Cathartic to read his thoughts on balancing life and work. I’m just now making my own transition, adjusting priorities for our newborn daughter. Right on the money.
leonza said: Long hours are unfortunately a part of our industry, but voices acknowledging this will hopefully shed some new light on how we can balance our personal life and work life. I’d like to think one day my daughter will understand why dad has to pull 12- to 14-hour days. This art form is an amazing thing, but at what cost one will never know.
Federale said: It seems a bit extreme and not something to be celebrated without some healthy questioning. In an industry where personal recognition and career come first, before health and family, it’s a bit scary that no one stops to think … what does this kind of thing reveal about the industry? I keep running into companies that are willing to work their artists to the ground, driving salaries down and pushing for longer days, all because of a career-first kind of mentality.
Read on → 
Back in June 2004, Reason Magazine printed a custom cover for every issue of their magazine (circulation: 40,000). Each subscriber received a magazine with a satellite photo of their neighborhood on the cover, and their home circled in red. An uncomfortable surprise to find in your mailbox, for sure. More recently, Chris Milk and Google created the interactive musical experience The Wilderness Downtown for Arcade Fire, which utilized HTML5 and Google Maps to put your house directly into the music video.  
Hybrid production company B-Reel, who also worked on The Wilderness Downtown, just finished Chaos in Your Town for State Farm Insurance. The experience uses the same “enter your address” starting point to create a customized version of The Mill’s “State of Chaos” campaign. We’ll see if giant robots shooting lasers at your house proves as successful as their last viral hit — OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” music video. The New York Times article on the Reason Magazine stunt ends with the quote, “What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?” Seven years later, we have RSS readers that bring us only the news we want and iPad apps like FlipBoard and Zite. Not so far off. For custom content, the inevitable next step is not having to type in your address at all. The applications would just read your computer’s IP address or your mobile device’s GPS location and auto-populate their content with the pertinent data. How hard would it be to have your cable box “know” where it is, and have the commercial streaming to your television integrate your Google Map imagery? We’re curious to hear your thoughts on how successful this technology is as a marketing tool. How about as a storytelling tool? Will it become another expected facet of production (in the same way we’re often asked to produce complementary TV commercials, internet banners and print ads)? Does anyone find it disconcerting to have their data used to market to them? 
A few days ago, we shared the portfolio of designer/illustrator Ash Thorp. Ash recently finished a year-long tour of duty at Prologue, where he crafted much of the stunning work featured on his site. In our email conversations, Ash mentioned that while working at Prologue, he commuted daily from San Diego—a round trip of several hours, depending on California’s legendary traffic. This left little time for his wife and child at home, but Ash justified the schedule by thinking of it as his “year of complete potential.” That phrase struck me. Did the year deliver? If so, now what? How do you shift down from high gear? I turned these questions to Ash, and he shared his perspective on things. I think a lot of you will relate to much of what he says, regardless of the marital status and number of dependents you claim on your tax forms. Balance — it’s so damn tricky. Especially for a person like me who is always driven and excited to push myself into change and unfamiliar territory just for the growth and the lesson. That’s living life to me.
Read on → We posted a preview of Newton back in May. The time has arrived — you can head over to Motion Boutique and try or buy the new stand alone app. I haven’t been this excited since Particular 2.0 and seeing the potential that plug-in had to offer! |
Stash
