Entertainment Lawyer

Experiencing The 43rd Annual Annie Awards for Animation

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Eric Karen going to AnnieThis last Saturday evening my wife and I attended the 43rd Annual Annie Awards which was in Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. I could tell you about who won what awards, but you can find that out in many other places like here.  Instead I want to share my experience of attending to the Annie Award show.

I have never been to the Annie Awards, so I figured I would get general admission tickets to check it out before investing in the VIP tickets another year.  Before I was able to get tickets the attorney for Eric Miller Animation Studios, or as he calls it EMAS, said he had two extra VIP tickets and wanted to know if I wanted them.  Free VIP tickets are always a better option, so I quickly said yes.

We had really great seats on the main floor very close to the stage.  I felt a little special since we were closer then most of the people who were actually winning awards.  I kept seeing myself on the video screen as the winners walked by us on their way to accept their awards.  This was a different experience then at the Producers Guild Awards where we are put in the far back corner.

At the Annie Awards

Overall it was a really nice event.  The Champaign reception before the award show was on a really nice outdoor patio.  The hors d’oeuvres were amazing, and my pregnant wife ate at least 5 sliders among other things.  She said the baby was really hungry, and I would not dare argue with her.

The award show was very interesting and I did not feel like it dragged on like we were warned about.  All the acceptance speeches were kept very brief, and it moved along very nicely.  I think it helped they had the presenters presenting several categories instead of introducing new presenters for each category.  This with the short speeches made it go much quicker then years past.

Eric-Karen-Annie-AwardsWhile the average person probably never heard of the people who won at the Annie Awards like the more celebrity winners of the Producers Guild Awards or Academy Awards, I found the Annie’s to be much more interesting since I actually knew some of the people who were nominated.  Many of them included people I have worked with on different movies during my time at DreamWorks Animation.

There also felt to be more excitement in the air, and the people seemed more down to earth.  I might be bias because I love my industry, and the people who are in it.  There are some really awesome, and amazing people in animation.  If you take one of the most talented people at the Annie’s and walk up to them and say hello, I bet they would actually talk to you.  I don’t feel that is the case with all the other people in other areas of entertainment.  I might be wrong, but at least this is the vibe I get.  Animation has really nice, down to earth, and fun loving people.

After the awards show we then got to go to the VIP Dinner and Party.  This was a great opportunity to congratulate the winners, and eat some delicious food.  My one complaint would be they only had a few tables and seats, so majority of the people were left hunting for a ledge to set their plates down on to quickly eat.  Luckily, my attorney was able to score one of the tables, so he invited us to join them.  We spent most of the after party sitting and talking with him and his wife.  I’m extremely impressed with my wife for being able to make it through the entire evening wearing heals while pregnant.

We had a really great time, and I’m looking forward to going again next year.  I plan to try and attend all the award shows in the future.

 

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.

Is it really almost November?

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Is it really almost November?  This year has been flying by, and will be over before we know it.  I guess that is what happens when you are having fun?  This year has been a very busy year with running the business.  I feel that I’m learning new things everyday, and there is always challenges to overcome.  To me the challenges are part of the appeal of running my own company.  There is no roadmap that will work for every company, and it requires you to constantly readjusting your strategy.  Below is a quick update on some of the things I have been working on lately.

Bink:

It is really great to see everything coming together.  All the models for the first episode are now built, and both Bink and the Hand are in-progress on the rigs. I have started to see very early surfacing work on Bink which is awesome to see.  I would share the renders, but I think it is a little early for that.  We should be able to start animation in November if everything stays on schedule.

The other big thing I have been working on is trying to line up the voice talent.  I’m looking for a female voice for a scientist that makes announcements over a PA system, things like “Ready to initiate testing”.  As well as the voice for Bink, and this has been much more challenging.  I think I have a few options for the female scientist, but nothing for the voice for Bink.  I’m looking for a unique voice that is similar to the way minions, or Stitch talks.  A unique language that you can’t really understand most of the time, but occasionally there are words you do understand.  I recorded my son “talking” to use as an example, since when he talks it is very cute and you can occasionally make out an actual word. If you are anyone you know might be interested please let me know.  Here is the link to the VO project.

LA Society of Creative Professionals:

This last Tuesday we had our 4th monthly society mixer, and it was another great turnout.  So far our attendance for our events have ranged from 10-50 people.  I have been meeting a lot of really great and talented people, and hopefully others are enjoying the events and getting something out of it themselves.  I feel that no matter what you do networking is a key to being successful.  Plus I just love meeting new people, and learning about their unique lives.  I always show up to the mixers early to get things setup, and there is always this fear that no one will show up.  So far that has not happened yet, and hopefully it never does.

Corporation:

This week I have been learning a great deal about authorized and issued shares.  I have been having a highly debated conversation with my CPA and my attorney on how many shares we should issue, and how many we should save.  According to the articles of incorporation for Eric Miller Animation Studios we are authorized to have 100,000 shares.  I learned that it is a good idea to not issue all of them, and save some for later.  For example my attorney suggested only issuing 100 shares to me.  Since there are only 100 shares issued I’m still 100% owner, but it gives me extra to bring on partners, or offer to employees.  The debate has been how many shares to issue, 100, 25,000, or some other number.  It seems my CPA and attorney had different opinions, so we had to work out each of their reasonings for me to make a decision.

Part of that discussion is also how much I should spend on those initial shares.  My attorney explained to me “The greater the capitalization, the stronger EMAS is against an attack that it should be disregarded as an alter ego. Alter ego is a judicial doctrine that says that people should not be able to hide behind a corporate form if the corporation is inadequately capitalized and fails to comply with corporate formalities. If the corporation is found to be your alter ego, then you will be personally liable for its debts. If “the corporate veil is pierced” then a creditor could get a judgment against you individually. This defeats much of the purpose of incorporating.”

So as you see I have some pretty important decisions I’m trying to make.  As I mentioned I’m learning so much each day about a variety of different things I would have never learned about if I did not start my own company.

We are having another baby:

My wife and I made the announcement yesterday on Facebook that we are expecting another baby in May of 2016. We are both very excited for the new family member, but it is also very scary.  It is very challenging to have one child so having another it will be more of a challenge.  Having a house payment, two kids and in the second year of starting my own company is enough to stress anyone out a little.  I’m positive we will find a way to make it all work as we did with our first one.

 

Well, there is a quick run down of some of the things I have going on in my life.  Thank you for reading about my journey in starting my business, and as always leave me comments below.  I love reading about what is on your minds, and your responses to my posts.

 

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 June Update

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I wanted to give everyone a June Update on everything I’m working on with the company.  Although I don’t currently have any client projects I’m working on I’m still pretty busy with many other tasks.  Here are some of the things I’m currently working on.

Animated Short
I mentioned in an earlier post I was working on a CG animated short.  We are making progress with it, but have been taking our time to make sure it looks great.  As I write this we are working on the design of the main character, as well as brainstorming the set location.  To keep costs down it will be in one simple set that we can reuse for the different episodes. Once we finish the character design phase we will start modeling the character, and then rig it for animation.  At the same time we work on the character rig we will also be surfacing it.

Motion Graphics Sizzle Piece
Since we are offering 3 main services, Animation, Visual Effects, and Motion Graphics, I wanted to make sure I had examples of the different styles of work we can do.  The Toys”R”Us commercials are great examples for VFX, and the Animated short will be the example of our animation work.  That leaves me needing something to show off what we can do with motion graphics.  I have been working on putting a sizzle piece together to help show clients what we can do.

I have been talking with some motion graphics artists about a piece that will show off what our crew can do with motion graphics.  We are still early in the discussions, but I’m excited about the direction that it is heading.  I will keep you updated as we move along with it.

Business Plan
I have been trying to find the time to put together a business plan, and I finally got started with it.  It seems silly that simply writing out your plan would have such an impact, but it has already helped me a great deal.  It got me thinking about things I have not thought about yet, and gave me some ideas on how to grow my business. I have not got to the mission statement section yet, but I’m looking forward to working on that.

S-Corp
My company is currently a sole proprietorship, but for some time now I have been looking into changing it into a S-Corp.  There are several reasons I’m planning on doing this, but the two main ones are limited liability, and tax savings.  It will also allow me to raise money by selling shares if I decide to go that route.  I have been talking with my CPA, and next plan to talk to an attorney about it.  As long as everything works out I should be moving forward with this in the next month.

LA Society of Creative Professionals
I mentioned in my last post about forming a society to plan monthly outings, and activities for networking and fun. Well I have setup a Facebook group for it, and plan on working on getting our first outing on the calendar.  If you are in the LA area, and in the animation, visual effects, or motion graphics fields please join the group to find out about our events.  I think this will be a lot of fun, and who knows it might help you find your next project, or new friends.  Visit the Facebook group.

Finding New Clients
Another thing that is a constant for me is looking for new clients.  This is by far the most difficult part of running your own company.  These are skills that you don’t learn while working for a large corporation, and has been a huge learning experience for me.  I have been cold-calling/emailing, but have not had much luck with that.  I have tried getting a commercial rep, but I have not found any that don’t already have a full roster of companies.  I have been doing a lot of networking, but still no leads.  The thing with networking is that you never know when someone in your network might turn into a project.

Although I will continue trying to contact clients directly I also want them to find me.  This is why I have been investing in my own projects like my animated short, and the motion graphic sizzle piece.  It seems to be a much more effective way to gain new clients.

I have also been reaching out to directors, and try and establish a relationship with them.  This way when they are working on a project that needs animation or visual effects they will hopefully reach out to me to help.  Often times directors have a lot of influence over the studios and agencies they are working for in bringing in their own people.

As you can see I have a lot of things on my plate, and a lot of work to get done.  I also always have work to do on my website, but that never really ends.  I hope you are enjoying following along with my progress, and if you ever want to know about anything specific please leave me a comment below.  I will answer to the best of my ability, and if appropriate dedicate a blog post to your question.  As always don’t forget to subscribe to get the blogs delivered directly to your email inbox.  Well, it is time for me to go back to work, so until next time.

 

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.

So much to do, so little time

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The exciting news for this week is that the first 3 Toys”R”Us: C’mon Let’s Play commercials that I’ve been post supervising are now airing on TV, and online. You may have already seen them on TV, or if you are following me on Facebook or Twitter you might have seen them there.  If you have not seen them in either of those two ways I included the videos here(click play all to see all 3 spots).

It was exciting to see the first one on TV, since I was not expecting to see it so soon. They posted them on their Toys”R”Us YouTube channel on Saturday, so I wonder if they will be posting 3 more this weekend. We have been delivering 3 commercials a week to them, so that seems to make sense in my head. It is also really cool that these all came from the fun videos my friend Daniel Hashimoto did of his son, and posted on his YouTube Channel Action Movie Kid. Toys”R”Us loved these videos(like many), so they asked Hashi to direct these 15 commercials for them.  I owe Hashi a big thank you for bringing me on to help out.  It has been a fun experience, and I look forward to seeing how the rest of them turn out.

Eric Miller Animation WebsiteIn addition to working on these commercials I have also been updating my website, since I have not done so in awhile.  I tend to update it, and then a week later decide I hate it, and start all over again.  It is a vicious cycle that never seems to end.  That pattern got interrupted.  I was using DreamWeaver to make my site, but it stopped working when I upgraded my computer awhile back.  I had no way to update my website until recently when I decided I would just use Apple’s iWeb.  I don’t have all the flexibility that I had with DreamWeaver, but at least I can update my site now.  It is still a work-in-progress, but you can check it out here. I always have the most difficulty with the wording I put on each page.  If you have any suggestions to improve what I wrote, and would like to volunteer your words please let me know.

I have also started the search for an attorney to make sure I’m not doing anything illegal, and also help me get some contracts written up for working with clients, and freelancers.  This stuff is so foreign to me, and it is very draining trying to make sense of it.  I guess that is why lawyers cost so much.  I found a guy that has years of experience in animation, and really knows his stuff, but not sure I can afford him.  I guess the big question is can I afford hime, or afford not to have him?  He brought up a lot of interesting points that sent me back to the drawing board on how I’m structuring my company.  It is the little things that you don’t think about that can ruin you if you are not careful.

This week I had several friends reach out to me, and it was great hearing from them.  They also wanted to talk business to see how we could maybe work together, or help each other out (forgive my vagueness, but I’m excluding their names for their privacy).  One of them was an animator that I worked with at DreamWorks Animation on Kung Fu Panda 2, and since then he has left DWA and has been working as a freelance animator.  He is also interested in starting his own animation company, so he wanted to meet up and talk about that.  A good friend of mine that is now back at DWA has a friend that might have a project for me to help him with.  He plans on calling this weekend to discuss the project, and it will also give us a chance to catch up on life.  It will be interesting to hear what his friend is looking for, but it will also be great to catch-up since we have not talked in awhile.  Another friend of mine that I have not had a chance to talk to in awhile called, and wanted to see if I could meet up with her and her business partner to talk about how our two companies could work together.  They run a film/television production company, so there seems to be a lot of potential for us to be able to help each other out.  On top of all that I might also be meeting with an intern that is interested in getting into animation that I agreed to meet with to talk about my experiences.  As you can tell next week appears to be the week of meetings for me.  It should be nice though since besides my wife the only adult interactions I get is over conference calls.

 

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.