Disney Junior

That’s A Wrap! April Update

Leave a reply

You might have noticed that I’m a little late on my blog post for this week.  While I normally try and post every Monday sometimes that is not always possible. This week was an eventful week, and it left me with no time to write a post until now.

On Monday I spent most of the day with a bookkeeper going over my company’s Quickbooks database.  I wanted to make sure the books were in order, and check that I was doing everything correctly.  This is one of those little things that in the back of your mind you worry about wondering if you are doing something wrong that will destroy the company.  Luckily besides a few minor things everything was in great shape, and I got to let go of the stress of worrying about it.

Tuesday I finally got to meet an ex-coworker face-to-face.  I know that sounds odd that I had a coworker that I never met in person, but that is the truth.  We both worked at DreamWorks Animation, and met while we were working on Monsters vs Aliens.  I was at the Glendale campus, and she worked at the Northern PDI campus in the bay area.  We have kept in touch, and a few years ago she moved down here to SoCal.  She is currently working at Disney Junior, and we finally got the chance to meet for lunch.

After our lunch I spent the rest of the day working on my presentation that I will give to Disney Junior at the end of May.

On Wednesday I had a great phone conversation with Everett Downing, the director/creator of The Book of Mojo.  He is currently working on getting his animated short funded on Indiegogo.  It sounds like a really fun project, and we hope to meet and discuss how we might be able to work together on his project.  He already has a talented group of artists that are already on board to help with the project who are working at studios like Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, Paramount, and others.

The campaign still has a way to go to reach its goal, and time is running out.  Check it out, and if you are interested in contributing feel free to donate. The Book of Mojo

That brings us to Thursday, which is when I finally have a chance to catch up with my blog.  Once I finish this I have to go over my schedule for the next few weeks.  I have a list of people I need to meet with, but I’m running out of time in the week to have meetings.  I have been trying to keep my lunch meetings to no more then one a week, but lately I have been doing 2 or 3 a week.  On the days I have lunch meetings I don’t get as much work done, so I try and not over schedule them.

Tonight I’m going to the ASIFA general membership meeting.  I have been a member of ASIFA since 2007, and this will be the first time I have made on of the meetings.  I normally only go to the free movie screenings that they have.

ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film D’ Animation) was founded in 1957 in France, and chartered under UNESCO in 1960 as a membership organization devoted to the encouragement and dissemination of film animation as an art and communication form.

I thought that it would be a great opportunity to meet the other members, and do some networking.

Last week I met with the founders of Boom Box Post.  I have been looking for different companies to collaborate with on projects to help with the things I don’t know much about.  Boom Box Post is a boutique post-production sound studio, and is co-owned by two really great people, Kate Finan and Jeff Shiffman.  It is scary the similarities we have in our situation.  We each have moved out to California around 10 years ago, and I started my company in July, and they started in August.  They are working with some really great clients, and I look forward to working together on some future projects.

Hopefully this momentum continues.

 

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.

It Seems Opportunity Knocks all at Once

Leave a reply

Wow, last week was a crazy one!  As I mentioned in my post last week I have been busy working on ways to find more clients and to build my business.  I put a decent amount of effort into networking, blogging, and generally trying to get the business name out there.  Sometimes I wonder if all the effort is just a waste of my time and resources.

Last week I had an opportunity pop up that I was excited about.  How the rest of the week went I was not prepared for.  One opportunity after another started to come in, and I found myself slammed trying to keep up with everything.  I was also in shock that everything was happening at once.

It all started with me getting a meeting setup with Disney Junior to discuss ways my company might be able to help them on future projects.  As far as I know there is no specific project, but instead to get on their list of vendors.  I thought it would be a great way to open up opportunities for my company, and a chance to add a great client.

Then a guy that is working for a team of scientist who are working to solve the energy crisis with clean solar, water, and air energy contacted me.  They are looking to make a 3-5 minute CG animated short talking about what they want to do.  It would be a really fun project.

Then I was contacted by another animation company that was started by someone that I admired, and they wanted to talk about a project they are working on with a very tight schedule that they might need some help on.  It would be a blast to get to team up with them to work together on this project.

Any of these things alone would have made it an eventful week, but there is still more.  A mentor of mine who has been running her own animation company with her partner asked if I could help out on a project that they can’t take on at the moment.  They have been swamped with these other two very large projects, and just don’t have the bandwidth to take on anything else right now.

I also had a very interesting guy contact me, and wants to meet up.  He has been in the industry for years, and I’m very interested in meeting him.  Chuck Jones was his mentor, and he has had a very impressive career so far.

So as you can see it was a pretty eventful week.  All the other projects I was working on internally I had to put on hold while I put bids together, and other tasks to get me prepared.

youtubespacelaThe other thing I was excited for last week was finally getting to check out YouTube Space LA.  What is it you ask?  Well, it is a free production facility for anyone that has 10,000 or more YouTube subscribers on one of their channels.  This gives you access to their 7 sound stages and state-of-the-art equipment to help you make your video content.

I always thought this was pretty awesome for them to provide all this.  The reason I was invited was because there was a YouTube and Producers Guild mixer.  The facility was amazing, and everything seemed so modern.  They had a huge video wall that would display anything with the hashtag #youtubespacela.

I still have a while until my YouTube channel hits 10,000 subscribers, but I’m getting close with my 2 subscribers.  Only 9,998 subscribers to go!  I also have not been doing much with my channel, but it is something I’m interested in doing more with in the future.

They have these spaces in Los Angeles(obviously), New York, London, Tokyo, and Sao Paulo.  Below is a YouTube video that gives a nice tour of the Los Angeles space.

Well, I have a lot of work to get done, so I’m going to wrap this up.  Last week was a great week, and even if nothing comes out of these different opportunities it still shows that my efforts have not been wasted.  I have not even been in business for a year, and people are already thinking of my company, and reaching out to us.  That to me is success in and of itself.

 

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.