Posted on Motionographer

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.

Posted on Motionographer

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.

Five minutes later my phone rang, and it happened to be the same producer, and I told him the same story. He then called me back shortly after and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have started a company with Naomi?” And the greatest thing was, they turned out to be PandaPanther’s first client.

Another key moment was being “officially open for business.” It was the first time we had to answer the phone, and I remember hearing “Hello, PandaPanther” out loud. It sounded funny — Naomi and I both looked at each other, and wondered if this was really OK.

Over time we’ve been reassured that the name is cool; sometimes you need to hear it to believe it.

What defines you as a creative duo?

We are defined predominantly by our childhood experiences and dreams, mixing up our favorite things into something fun and exciting for people to chew on. We are always looking for new portals into the many worlds around us — inside bushes, under rocks, in the trees — so that we can tell a stories about it when we get back.

How do you find the balance between working together and functioning as a couple?

Sometimes balance is not possible, because work can drive us to the brinks of insanity. There are plenty of working couples out there that know exactly what it’s like. Having a baby, however, changes things a bit to the point where we’re focusing now on how to function as parents, too.

When we’re not at work, we try to not make a habit of talking about it if it’s not necessary, so we can separate from it a bit. Work has a way of creeping up in almost any situation or conversation. For example, a romantic candlelit dinner could be quickly squandered with a text message about a client posting.

That could mean sometimes having to change plans, or show up at work with our baby on a weekend instead of at the park with friends, but we make the best of it and try not to get stressed out. Our daughter really loves playing at the office anyway, so it’s easy to forget about the stress when she’s enjoying herself so much.

Having a baby has also brought more structure to our life. We have more clear divisions between personal life and work, keeping most of the baby crying and chaos away from the office, and in turn keeping most of the work-related chaos away from home and the baby. That all helps us function better as a couple.

Have your professional goals changed after your daughter was born?

Professional goals are pretty much the same as always — we want to keep doing good work and have our sights set on bigger long-form projects to inject a good amount of fun and magic into the world. In fact we landed a big campaign for ATT the week our daughter was born, so conference calls with clients were happening in hospital hallways. It’s been exciting times.

Many people say having a child radically changes your entire outlook on life. I’m curious if this happened to you both, especially in the creative sense, as so many of us are defined largely by our work in this field.

Well, it does change things radically, and where that starts is with sleep.

We are all creatures of sleep and form habits based on patterns. What a baby does is throw you into a spin cycle, where things become exciting, overwhelming, exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time. It’s kind of like being at a party that never ends. Basically, you just can’t be as lazy as you used to be. It doesn’t mean you have to stop being or doing what defines you, you just need to be smarter about how you spend your time.

It also means that all those toys we’ve been collecting will soon belong to somebody else!

How do you balance parenting with work demands?

A huge part of balancing things was moving our office closer to home to cut our commute time out of the equation. We wanted to be sure we could spend time with our daughter and see her more often, and it’s been working out really well.

We recently finished a huge job. Since Naomi and I have different strengths, there are different times when we are more or less needed to keep the production moving right. In this case, I was more heavily involved up front in the animation phase of the project, and I had to put in some hard efforts at the beginning, whereas Naomi helped to finish the project to every final detail. So in the closing weeks of the job, Naomi would stay at work consecutively late for a few weeks, while I took on other duties at home with our daughter.

At one point, we were working on finalizing an element, which happened to be spit flying off a character’s tongue. Who would think we’d be fine tuning CG spit at 4 am on a Friday night? So on that night, Naomi came home at 3 am to wake me up so that I could go back to PP to work with the team.

I stayed until 7 am, when I decided to go back home and grab our daughter, who likes to get up around that time. I brought her back to the office and let Naomi sleep until 10 am. Then she returned to finish up. I went back home with the baby and let our nanny take over, then caught up on sleep, returning to PP at 3 pm, and the CG spit was looking amazing!

We take turns filling in where one is needed, while the other makes up for it. It’s teamwork at home and the office.

Are you still able to find time for personal projects?

Yes absolutely, although we have to make time rather than find it. It usually has to be exchanged for something important like sleeping or acting like a normal social human being.

Thank you very much for your time!

Credits

Client: Activision, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure

Spots Title: Menace
Airdate: October 2011

SKYLANDERS “MENACE” CREW LIST 

Producers:
Amy Fahl
Angela Foster (director’s cut)

Directors:
Jonathan Garin, Naomi Nishimura

Technical Direction:
Adam Burke
Stereo Supervise
Navid Bagherzadeh

Design:
Diana Park
Ivy Tai

Storyboard:
Fred Fassberger
Paul Boanno
David Reuss

Editing:
Maria Diakova
Alan Ortiz 

Set Building & Art Department:
Junko Shimizu
Janet Kim
Shinya Nakamura
Kazushige Yoshitake

Matte Painting:
Tim Matney
Andrew Leung
Nick Giassullo

Modeling/Photogrammetry:
Sam Dewitt
Eric Xu
Jeeah Huh
Ari Hwang
Herculano Fernandes
Cristina Aponte

Rigging:
Jason Bikofsky
Amy Hay
Zhenting Zhou

Previs:
Richard Cayton
Adam Burke

Character Animation:
Han Hu (lead)
Guy Bar’ely (lead)
Henning Koczy
Sam Crees
Jordan Blit
Doug Litos
Danny Speck
Jeff Kim
Jared Eng

Junior Animators:
Doug Rappin
Chris Devito
Darren Chang
Chang Pei Wu

3D Effects Animators:
Reggie Fourmyle
Rich Magan 

Lighting & Texturing:
Dave White (lead)
Ari Hwang
Herculano Fernandes
Laura Sayan Gabai
Lucy Choi
Christina Ku
Jeeah Huh
Carl Fong
Cristina Aponte (intern) 

Compositing:
Matt St. Leger (lead)
Gerald Mark Soto
Chris Gereg
Adam Yost
Navid Bagherzadeh
Gabriel Regentin
Bryan Cobonpue
Sohee Sohn

Yingshu Lai (intern)

Production Coordinators:
Lauren Simpson
Jazeel Gayle

Production Office Manager:
Erica Armstrong

Systems Rendering TD:
Craig Zimmerman

Agency: 72andSunny
Creative Director(s): Jason Norcross, Bryan Rowles
Group Brand Director: Alex Schneider
Designer: Jake Kahana
Copywriter(s): Tim Wolfe, Mike Van Linda
Brand Manager(s): Ellie Schmidt, Mandy Hein
Agency Producer: Danielle Tarris
Assistant Producer: Becca Purice

Production Co.: Caviar
Director: Jorma Taccone
EP: Michael Sagol 

VFX: MPC
EP: Asher Edwards
Lead Colorist: Mark Gethin
Lead Artist: Ben Davidson

Posted on Motionographer

“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.

Posted on Motionographer

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 tea

Without 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.

The primary problem, as Meier describes it, is the tendency to “throw hours” at projects. When the sky is the limit, why not schedule another meeting? Why not ask everyone to stay late? Why not hire more freelancers and expect them to work weekends, too?

According to Meier, some of the issues that arise from the 60-80 hour work week mentality include:

• Nothing is a priority because everything is a priority.
• Working faster and harder to make up for bad planning
• Lots of meetings because there’s more time to throw at them
• Lack of priorities because there is no forcing function like time
• Lack of focus because of a lack of priorities and throwing time at problems
• Bad estimation because it’s spread out over too much work or too much time or is too ambitious
• Bad resource planning because of bad estimates and lack of clarity or feedback loops on results
  [For the full list, see Meier's post.]

In business terms, this spells doom. Every bullet point above saps profit from the budget. It’s no wonder that so many motion studios complain of razor thin profit margins. They’re probably the same studios ordering pizza every night for their dedicated staff.

The return on reduction

When limiting yourself (and your team) to a 40 hour work week, you earn the following:

• Increased focus
• Increased job satisfaction
• Improved physical and mental health
• More accurate estimates, due to a clearer understanding of accurate throughput and capacity
• More focused communication, both internally and externally
• Better control over profit margins

Putting a 40 hour cap on the week means there can be no waste. It means working smarter. It means zeroing in on the 20% of output that constitutes 80% of a project’s value. It means testing and refining ideas instead of dumping an army of employees on the first sketch.

Efficiency is your friend

One key note that needs to be underlined: Implementing a 40 hour work week mentality isn’t easy. You must commit to it with monastic focus and understand that reducing hours means drastically improving efficiency.

There’s that “E” word again: Efficiency. For many creatives, it’s a four letter word, banned from their vocabularies. Efficiency is for factories and robots, not artists.

But it’s efficiency that allows you to focus your entire self on a project. It’s efficiency that makes flow possible, that magical headspace when creativity and effort are aligned and productivity explodes.

It’s efficiency, in short, that makes work fun.

“Yeah, but that’s Microsoft. We’re different.”

That’s right. Creative services studios are even more sensitive to inefficiencies than most other industries.

At the heart of every studio — and every talented individual — is the creative spirit. It is a fragile and temperamental thing. It’s also the most valuable asset any studio can hope to claim. The “normal” demands of a 60-80 hour mentality threaten to tear that precious spirit to shreds.

And if you talk to anyone who’s burned out in this field (you don’t have to look far), you’ll find the creative spirit is not a thing easily repaired. Motion design infamously “eats the young” because the young burn out and never return, looking for careers that protect their talents instead of exploiting them to exhaustion.

Guilty as charged

I want to take a moment to confess that I’ve leaned on the 60-80 hour mentality as both an individual and as a manager. I’ve often responded to big challenges with bigger time sheets, believing it was the only way.

Like Meier, I like work. I do it a lot, and I’ve never burned out. And like so many Americans, I’ve prided myself on the number of hours I’ve logged while simultaneously playing the martyr.

As I head into my mid-30s and start to make plans for a family, I realize this must stop. It’s not only unhealthy for me, it’s unhealthy for those with whom I work.

And it’s bad business, plain and simple.

The “That’s Impossible” response

Maybe you’re a producer or creative director reading this, shaking your head and thinking, “40 hours!? That’s impossible.”

And now for a trip down memory lane, back to my post as Executive Creative Director at a fledgling studio in Austin. During initial client meetings or at the end of a pitch, I knew damn well when I was getting our studio into hot water. I knew when the budget was too low, the timeline too short and the expectations too high.

Of course, we’d always agree to do the work anyway. We’d tell ourselves, “We need this. Without this, we won’t be able to pay everyone’s salaries. Without this, our portfolio will stagnate. Without this, our competition will slaughter us.”

Some of those fears were well-founded. Some weren’t. The point is that we created a scenario in which the only solution was to say “yes” and commit ourselves to the consequences. The result was often a skinny profit margin, which of course only perpetuated the cycle. The whole thing started to feel like a long, magnificent death spiral.

Moving past impossible

Thankfully, we broke the cycle. We realized that we needed to ruthlessly focus on our core strengths. That meant turning down work. It meant dropping a couple offerings from our website, no matter how cool or promising they sounded. It also meant potentially trimming staff (which thankfully never happened).

On the flip side, we could sleep at night. We resumed normal lives. Sure, we pulled occasional all-nighters, but they weren’t vital to the success of the business. We did them because they were fun, and they were always optional.

The “You Can’t Schedule Creativity” response

Another rebuttal to the 40 hour approach goes as follows: Creativity is a fickle friend. You can’t schedule bursts of inspiration. You can’t put genius on the clock. So how in the world can you expect great work to get done within a tidy, 40-hour box?

This entire line of thinking — this myth that creativity requires a muse, and that this muse cannot keep appointments — is a natural byproduct of believing that one must work late nights and weekends in order for things to get done. It’s what happens when you become accustomed to working without time constraints.

Ever notice how inspiration strikes three hours before a deadline? Ever entered the “zone” with just an hour left and been amazed at how much you were able to accomplish?

Time, in limited quantities, is an incredible motivator. While you can’t schedule a great idea, you can benefit immensely from adding structure to your week. Try it.

Worms, be fruitful and multiply!

Obviously, this is a huge can of worms I’m opening here. A fully fleshed out proposal for applying Meier’s approach to creative services would take much more thought and testing than this meager blog post. And it’s not entirely up to the studios to “fix” a system that clearly needs some retooling. Everyone from the client down to the individual freelancer must play a part in reform.

I’m simply trying to challenge the notion that things are the way they are because that’s the way they have to be.

I’ve accepted that for a long time, but now I’m looking for alternatives. I’m looking for different perspectives. And so a software project manager’s ideas seem like as good a starting point as any.

Tell it like it is

How many hours do you work? What do you see as the challenges of a 40 hour mentality? Do you think you could, in theory at least, make a 40 hour work week a reality for yourself or your organization?

Devil’s advocates are welcome. Comment away!

For those who are interested, Meier uses the Agile system of project management. It’s specifically tailored to software development, but it’s worth checking out. The idea of iterative development, which Agile promotes, maps well to motion design, up to a point.

Posted on Motionographer

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!

Posted on Motionographer

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 Picture

No 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 Teenager

Motion 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 Comments

What 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.

On the topic of safety and health, Brand Dougherty-Johnson chimed in:

In many industries there are rules regarding turnaround time — the time between shifts so that a worker isn’t dangerously tired and overworked. In fact just this week the VES proposed an industry bill of rights which addresses this issue: http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/visual-effects-industry-bill-of-rights

.
Andrew Hoeveler said:

I hope that your story will begin the big thrust that is needed to bring the working conditions of our industry to the spotlight. We have no union rights as so many other workers in the entertainment industry do. We also have very little central communication within our industry aside from this blog.

I recently moved away from over a decade of freelancing as an animator/designer in Los Angeles to a full-time position as creative director at a company that TRULY appreciates me in the smog-free and slower-paced Seattle area. Sure, I am not regularly working on as high-profile work as the fashion-chasing companies I used to work for in LA, but I am loving LIFE!

ndboy said:

First off, Ash’s work is outstanding. But I’m troubled by people referring to this article being about “balancing work/life.” Because this is a clear example of work/life IMBALANCE.

It is entirely true that it’s hard to gain career traction & leverage in this industry without working your ass off for long hours, but we need to be honest with ourselves that it’s an essentially fucked up system that preys upon young childless and spouseless people, to the benefit of the studios (and their principals who usually make a very overly healthy income). Exploiting recent grads is crappy enough, but the worst part of it is how it marginalizes those same people once they do get married and/or have kids and, like any half-admirable human being, want to eat dinner with their family.

In response, Yusef Cole said:

This is truth. Though let’s not forget that it’s also the fault of clients & agencies shrinking project budgets and thus timelines. Not to mention the rat race of pitching endlessly for cheaper and cheaper spots. The system as it stands right now is not in great shape. And less freelancers for more hours is just a symptom.

Posted on Motionographer

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?

Posted on Motionographer

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.

It would be easy if I was single — in fact it would be crazy easy, if I was only caring for myself and only concerned with my own wants and needs. Having a family is pretty easy; having a family and actually caring and loving your family is a completely different dynamic.

I try my best to be the best at everything I do in life, as there are no other options in my mind. That mentality is great at times, but it often leaves me drained and unbalanced in a very bad way. I have friends who have lost years of their children’s growth due to the pull of work, and that frightens me.

Kids need their parents at an early age, it helps develop how they think and work. It’s a great responsibility to raise a solid human being and that just breaks down to time. Almost everything in life can be remedied with time, and a good family needs lots of it.

Tell us more about your “year of complete potential.”

My year of complete potential was my way of looking at the pain and suffering I put my family through as a way of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It was a way of knowing that this sacrifice was going to yield great results.

It was my choice to work for Prologue and commute 7 to 8 hours a day and work 10 to 11 hours at the studio. Weekends were my only time to sleep and spend time with my family. It was my choice to believe in my abilities and know that a greater good would come of all the sacrifice. I always remind myself that with greater sacrifice comes greater reward.

I kept my heart as pure as I could and my intent on my work. I took on every job I could get my hands on to the point where people would shoo me away and tell me to slow down. I was on a mission.

Last year has set contrast for the rest of my life. I know now what I am made of and how far I can push myself. I could probably go further, but it would break my family and behind every great man is his family. I can’t break that bond.

So was it worth it?

Last year really did deliver. I choose to be positive — with the commute, the distance, the stress. I take on every job and challenge with a smile and did my best wholeheartedly. I think it showed.

I made amazing friendships with the people I worked along side at the studio. I’m so thankful for those who opened their hearts and homes to me on days I couldn’t get back home. You know who you are.

So what’s next?

The future to me is to be able to work with people I care about or want to help grow. I want to help clients or others with projects I feel strongly about or have a passion to work with. And I want to do this all while spending as much time as possible with my wife and 6 year-old daughter. It is a constant balancing act, and the key is an equal amount of all the ingredients.

Due to the fact that our career paths are so organic and subjective, time means nothing really and due dates mean nothing as there is no time on creativity. The time it takes to either make a million dollar idea or a million dollar wasted idea is really unknown.

Trying to control that factor will make one crazy; the best thing to do is to keep an open communication with those you love and make sure they are aware of what it is that life is demanding of you and to make sure they acknowledge that and support it, so that you can focus on the task at hand.

Was it hard leaving Prologue?

It was a bit of a shock to leave Prologue. I had a week or two where I was in real rare form, depressed, exhausted, not wanting to do anything but sleep and complain about things. I think that was a sign that my body and mind had had enough. I was getting concerned that it was getting worse.

Then, I just took control of my emotions and reminded myself of the amazing life and world I live in and to be thankful for everything around me, especially the people. Working those very long days at Prologue and commuting so far really changed a part of my personality, I feel, for the better and the worse.

Any last words for our readers?

With every sacrifice comes a great reward. I try to view my life with a positive perspective, to keep all my pieces together and in a row.

Life is what you make it and happiness is a choice. If you have a dream, no matter how big, obtain it and enjoy every second of it.

I also want to give a shout out to my amazing wife,  my daughter,  family and friends who I adore and who have been there supporting me through everything.

Posted on Motionographer

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!

Posted on Motionographer