Eric Miller Animation: 2016 Year in Review

As this will be my last blog post in 2016 I wanted to do a Year in Review of how this year has been. Many of these things we have gone into greater detail in past posts, so this will just be a quick overview of the year. Overall it has been a great year.  We got to work on some great projects, and I got to attend some really exciting events.  The business was profitable, and we did a lot better then we did last year.  I’m very excited, and looking forward to what we will achieve in 2017.

Events & Projects:

MagicMeeMees:

mmm_1to4
You may have seen the web series we have been working on called MagicMeeMee which is based on the toys by the same name.  Our client, Future of Play, asked us to create this web series to help get people aware of their new toy-line. We started working on the series at the beginning of this year, and ended up working on the episodes most of the year.  We released the first episode on July 11th, and the 4th episode earlier this month.  Currently the four episodes have a 173,173 combined view count on the client’s YouTube pages.  Creating this web series was such a great learning experience, and I felt each episode was better then the last.  I hope we get to work on more of these episodes in the future.  Click here to watch the series.

 

Producer Guild Awards:

pga_awards
On Jan. 23rd of this year I attended my second Producers Guild Awards. I was also able to talk my wife, who was pregnant, into being my date.  I’m not sure how she was able to wear high-heels while pregnant, but she somehow pulled it off.  I think one of the awards should have gone to her for that.  It is always fun to dress up, and go to these awards to mingle with all the talented people in the industry.  It is also fun to see the movie stars who make an appearance.

 

Annie Awards:

annie_awards
In February I attended the Annie awards for the first time, and it was such a fun event.  This event is very different from the Producers Guild Awards, because it is all about animation.  There is an added excitement to these award shows when you actually know the people getting the awards.  I already have my tickets for both of these events for next year, so I will be sure to let you know how it goes.

 

Launched our Online Store:

store
In April I was really excited the company launched its online store.  I don’t expect to make millions off the merchandise, but I wanted to offer company related shirts for anyone who might want them.

 

Logo Updated

logo
We also made an update to our company’s logo this year.  I wanted something which was a cleaner and simpler read, since I felt the more detailed logo did not print well.

 

My Daughter was Born:

ayla
My wife and I were really excited to welcome our daughter Ayla into the world on May 1st.  She has been such a joy, and I love watching both her and her older brother starting to play together. Even when most of the time it is her brother taking toys away from her. She is already crawling, and trying to walk.

 

UT Alumni Magazine & UT Home Page:

utnews
Bink got a lot of love this year from my Alma mater, the University of Toledo.  He ended up making an appearance in the UT Alumni Magazine, UT News, and the University’s Website’s Home page on a few occasions this year.

 

3D World Magazine:

3dworld
Bink also made an appearance in 2 issues of 3D World Magazine.  Once before the release of the teaser short in June, and another after.

 

Bink’s Friends & Family Screening and Wrap Party:

binkparty
How often do you get to create something new and exciting?  I figured we might as well go big with the release of the first episode of Bink, and throw a screening and wrap party to thank all the crew for all their hard work. Even with twisting my ankle really bad hours before people showed up I still had a great time.  As a side note: My ankle is still recovering from this incident.

 

Bink’s Debut:

This might have been one of the biggest things coming out of the company this year.  After working on the short for over a year we finally finished it in time to release it on June 28th. We got a fair amount of attention, and even some clients from the work we did on Bink.  While I consider it a success I still feel there is more to come from Bink.  We are actively working on a longer episode, and hopefully will be releasing it in 2017.

 

University of Toledo – University College: Alumni of the Year:

utalumniyear
I was honored to be selected by my university as the Alumni of the year.  They flew me back to the university in Toledo, Ohio for the Homecoming game, and the award gala where they presented me with the award. It had been a long time since I was in Toledo, so it was really awesome getting to go back and relive some of my college experiences.

 

DreamWorks Animation Presentation:

dwapres
After the release of Bink, DreamWorks Animation invited me to do a presentation for their employees about my company and the projects we have been working on.  It was exciting to get to go back to the DWA campus, and do a talk about what I have been working on.  I also really enjoyed reconnecting with some of my former co-workers.

 

2016 ShowReel:

After we finished all the MagicMeeMee episodes we updated our showreel to showcase all of our new work.  Jared White, who also wrote and directed the MagicMeeMees web series, edited this company showreel together.  You can check it out below.

 

The World Animation & VFX Summit:

wavs
In October I attended the World Animation & VFX Summit, which was my second time attending this event.  I went last year, and got a lot out of it.  This event is geared to producers, and studio heads so all the presentations on very relevant to what I’m doing.  I had a great time at this at this year’s event, and looking forward to going again next year.  I only hope they don’t schedule it on Halloween again.  Check out our blog post about this year’s event.

 

CTNX:

ctnx
In November I attended my 3rd CTNX animation expo which is held each year in Burbank, CA.  This is always a great event, and is much more artist focused then the World Animation & VFX Summit.  I always meet so many great artists and animators as well as learn a lot from the panels and presentations.  Check out our blog post about this year’s CTNX.

 

Honda Project:
The last project we worked on was 2 videos we did for Honda.  One was used at the Los Angeles Auto Show, and the other will be used at CES next month.  Unfortunately we do not have permission to share them online.  If you are going to CES let me know if you see our video.

 

UPDATES:

Blog Post Data:
I actually have two blogs.  This one which I use more as a personal journal of my journey in starting an animation company, and they we also have one for the company. Here is some information on both of them.

blog.milleranimation(this one):
Total 2016 Views: 6,657
Top 2016 Blog Post: Building An Animation Company’s Leadership Team (961 views)
Total Subscribers: 54

milleranimation.com/blog(the company blog):
Total 2016 Views: 5,195
Top 2016 Blog Post: Talent Spotlight: Introducing Violette Sacre (494 views)
Total Subscribers: 42

Website Data:
Total 2016 Views: 32,645
Top 2016 Page: Bink (2,632 views)

Social Media & Marketing:
This year we created a Social Media Marketing Coordinator position, and we have had a few people in this role. They are responsible for daily posts on all our social media accounts, weekly blog posts, quarterly newsletters, and a few other tasks.  This has helped us stay active on all our social media accounts, and create some amazing content for our website.

Facebook:
Network Size: 4,833 Likes
2016 Growth: +407 Likes

Twitter:
Network Size: 1,044 Followers
2016 Growth: +522 Followers

Instagram:
Network Size: 707 Followers
2016 Growth: +466 Followers

YouTube:
Network Size: 287 Subscribers
2016 Growth: +278 Subscribers
Most Popular Video: Bink: New Arrival – Teaser (5,881 views)
Total Channel Views: 10,005

Vimeo:
Network Size: 27 Followers
2016 Growth: +15 Followers
Most Popular Video: Bink – Teaser (514 views)

Google+:
Network Size: 20 Followers
2016 Growth: 4 Followers

Society of Creative Professionals:
While technically the Society of Creative Professionals is not part of the company, and is only hosted by me I still wanted to include it in this update.  We ended up having one mixer each month this year with a range in the number of attendees.  Our biggest mixer this year was our April mixer which was held at the Robin Hood British Pub in Sherman Oaks.  We had over 35 people show up at this event.  If you are interested in coming to our mixers please join the groups Facebook page.

In Conclusion:
Overall I think this was a great year.  I was able to attend a lot of great events, and meet a lot of new people.  These connections will help me to continue to grow the company.  I look forward to the coming years.  I wish all of you a very happy and successful new year!

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

Report Card for 2016’s Resolutions

I started to set Resolutions each year of the goals I want to accomplish within the coming year, and then review how I did at the end of the year.  In January of this year I wrote my resolutions in the post titled “Eric Miller Animation’s New Year’s Resolutions“.  Check them out, or just look below to see how I did.  It seems I need to try harder in 2017 if I want to get a perfect report card

green_checkAnimated Short:
I set the goal to finish the first 30 second episode of Bink this year.  While it took a little longer then I expected we were able to finish it in June of this year.

green_checkNew Clients:
I set the goal to get 3 new clients this year, and while it might be debatable I think we can count 3 new clients.  The debatable part is the one project had both our client and the end client we were dealing with.  So I’m going to count both Alpine, and Honda as clients for the purpose of this goal.  Honda is also a really big client, so it was great getting to work with them on the two projects we did for them this year.  The 3rd, and actually the first client we had this year, was Future of Play.  We did the most work for them by creating 4 episodes of the MagicMeeMees web series.  I’m very happy with the work we did with all three of these clients, and hope to continue to do work for them in 2017.

green_checkLearn Something New:
This goal has been an easy one to check off each year.  I still put it on the list because I feel it is a very important goal to have.  You should never stop learning, and this is a cornerstone to the success of my company.  Of all the things I have learned this year, the one thing which sticks out in my mind now is about how the market of selling your IP works.  This was something I always wanted to learn about, but was always an unknown to me.  It was great to sit down with a couple producers to talk about how it works.  What I learned was an eye opening experience, and it also showed me how much more I have to learn on the topic.

painted-xGrow Social Network:
This goal was to increase all our social media networks by 100%, and while I grew some of them to over 100% I was unable to do it with all of them.  Take a look at the numbers below to see how we did.

This is what the numbers are: Starting point –> 100% increase goal | Current followers = Actual % increase
Facebook: 4,427 –> 8,854 | 4829 = 9% increase
Twitter: 513 –> 1,026 | 1033 = 101% increase
LinkedIn: 146 –> 292 | 233 = 60% increase
Google+: 11 –> 22 | 23 = 109% increase
InstaGram: 235 –> 470 | 697 = 197% increase
YouTube: 5 –> 10 | 282 = 5,540% increase

As you can see the big winner is YouTube with a 5,540% increase, and Facebook having the smallest percent increase.

painted-xProfitable 2016:
The goal was for the business to make enough money I could take a salary for myself, and still have the business be profitable.  I did not achieve this goal, because while the business was profitable it was not profitable enough for me to take a salary.  Technically I could have taken a small salary, and still have the business be profitable, but I decided to keep the money in the business this year.  I’m hoping for a more profitable 2017, so I will be able to both take a salary while still keeping the company profitable.

 

Regardless of not achieving all the goals I set for the business I still feel 2016 was a great year for the company.  While I don’t want to set unrealistic goals I also don’t want to make them so easy I don’t have to push myself.  In next week’s post I will dive a little deeper into the 2016 year, and what we were able to accomplish this year.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

Eric Miller Animation Dec 2016 Company Update

OK, so I know my last post on this blog was the end of September, and I have not been doing a great job at finding the time to write my posts.  This makes me sad, because I was doing so well for such a long time at keeping up with my weekly posting.  I kind of expected as things got busier with the business it would be harder to prioritize the time to write in my blog.  I know, these are all excuses.  I have been working on a new project which has been taking a lot more of my time then I expected.  I thought since I have not posted in a while we are about due for a Company Update post.

Bink:
Progress on Bink has been extremely slow, and we are still working on two different parts.  We are still slowly working on getting the fur to work better in lighting, and currently testing the changes we have made.  We are also working on the story.  Awhile back we changed from the idea of creating multiple 30 second shorts to a longer more thought out short.  I wanted a short with a powerful message, and want to make sure it is great before moving it into production.  We have had a lot of ideas, but we are doing a lot of massaging of those ideas trying to find the best version.  Jared White is doing most of the writing, and Charlie Petrek is helping more as a consultant.  When we can we have our story brainstorming sessions as we move the story along.

MagicMeeMees:
We were commissioned to do 4 episodes, and we have completed the 4th and final episode.  We will be sharing this episode tomorrow on our social media channels, so keep an eye out for it.  We had a lot of fun creating these 2 minute webisodes, and hope the client asks for more.

Honda:
We have actually been doing some work for Honda, and this is the project which has been taking up a lot more of my time then I originally expected.  It started out as 1 small little video, but that video turned into a much bigger deal which required a lot more work. The first video was shown in the Los Angeles Auto Show last month, but we don’t have permission to share it.  They also asked us to do a second video which we are currently working on, and hoping to have it finished by next week.  There was talk of a 3rd video, but I don’t know if this is still happening or not.  I was very excited to get to work with a big client like Honda, and hope we can do more work with them in the future.

Other Projects:
We have had a lot of projects I got to bid on, but for one reason or another we did not win them.  There is a lot of competition out there, so I’m often bidding against several other companies for the same project.  The more projects I bid on the more I learn about what the clients are looking for.  The good news is that I’m now getting more clients with more realistic budgets asking us to bid on their projects.

Social Media & Website:
We have recently seen a big increase with our social media followers, and myself and our Marketing and Social Media Coordinator have been trying many different approaches to build our following.  The last two months we have also seen a significant increase in our organic web traffic to the company website.  I have been seeing a lot of our keywords climbing the ranks.  We are on page 1 of Google search for the keywords “animation studios” which generates about 68.6 clicks per month to our site.  As we continue to move up in the search rankings the traffic to our site will increase. The goal is if someone is looking for animation services we will be on the first page of the search results increasing our chances of getting to bid on the projects.

Society Mixers:
I’m also still hosting our monthly animation & VFX society mixers.  Our next one will be next Tuesday for anyone in the area who might be interested in coming.  We are returning to the same place we went to last December, Tonga Hut.  We will be there from 7pm-10pm, so stop by and say hello.

Industry Events:
I have also been going to different industry events like The Animation & VFX Summit(AVFXS) and the CTN Animation Expo(CTNX).  This was my second year going to the AVFXS, and I feel I get a lot out of it each year.  We posted an article about it on the company blog which you can read here.

This was my 3rd year going to CTNX. It is geared much more to artists and animators then the AVFXS. I really enjoy going to the different panels, and meeting all the artists.  Majority of the people I meet are students, and I always enjoy talking with them to see what they want to do after school.  You can also read more about my time there on our company’s blog CTNX Recap.

Business:
As far as business is going we are doing well.  The company will be profitable this year, and I will be able to take a paycheck.  I have not been taking a paycheck throughout the year, and wait until the end of the year.  If we are at a loss then I don’t take out a paycheck, and if we are profitable then I do take a paycheck.  As business continues to pick up I will be able to take a steady paycheck, but for the first few years in business I will do it this way.  Right now it is all about growing the company.

 

Well, there is a quick update on what I have been doing with the company.  Running your own company is not always as glamorous as you might think, but I really enjoy it.  I hope you enjoy following along on my story in creating my company.

 

If you have not already, please join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  Also, if you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.