Entrepreneur

The Challenges In Starting An Animation Company

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In my blog posts I often give updates on what my company is working on, and things I’m doing to try and grow it.  It might seem like starting an animation company is easy, so I wanted to share with you the challenges I face.

Building a Brand:
You might ask why building a brand is important, but as a service company it is very important.  Making animation is extremely expensive, and for my clients is a huge investment.  They want to make sure they can trust the company they are investing in to create their commercial, web series, or other animated video.  This has been a huge challenge for me, because I don’t have much of a reputation yet.  I have talked to a lot of other owners of animation or VFX companies, and many of them said it took awhile(around 10 years) before they started getting steady work.  I’m sure some of this had to do with them figuring out their business and target market, but they tell me a huge part was simply building their brand’s reputation. Sure they might have had enough smaller projects to keep the lights on, but it took awhile until the bigger opportunities started to reveal themselves.

Competition:
As you might have guessed there is a lot of competition in this space.  I’m competing against well established companies who are in a much better position to win jobs.  They already have their feet firmly through the doors of the bigger clients.

The other competition is from companies outside the US.  First, there is Canada with their amazing tax credits, and then you have areas like India, Korea, China, and South America to name a few with much less expensive labor costs.  The talent there is also getting better and better all the time.  I often get emails from foreign companies offering their animation and VFX services if I want to outsource any of my work to them.  I always ask them for what their rates are to see how they compare to US rates.  If I tried to match their rates with US workers I would not only not be able to pay the artists what they are asking for, but also not be making any kind of a profit.

Rendering:
This might seem odd to anyone who is not in animation, but this is a big hurdle for me.  For those of you who don’t know what rendering is it is the process of the computer figuring out what each pixel will look like to create an image based on the settings you put into the software.  It calculates the models, where the camera is, what kind of lens, how many lights, where they are coming from, their color, intensity, how they interact with the different materials on the objects in frame, and many other things.  For a more detailed explanation go here.

This requires very powerful processors to figure all of this out.  I remember when I was in college, and working on my animation project ChessMate(see image below).  I would work on the project late at night, and before I left I would setup 5 or more computers to work on rendering my project.  I would leave signs begging people not to touch the computers.  After rendering all night I would come back in the morning to check on them.   I did this every night for months until I finally finished.  It would take over 16 hours to render one 2 second shot, and often there would be errors requiring me to start the whole process over again.  Computers are now faster, but the graphics are much more intense.  We also now render in HD at resolutions of 1920 x 1080 if not much higher, and ChessMate was only 728 x 414.

ChessMate Scene 1

 

I’m getting a little off topic, but my point is it takes a lot of computer power and/or time to render animation. So far what I have been doing is having the lighting artist handle the rendering.  This should work for small projects, but as I get more clients I will need to figure out other options.

There are online render services, but they can get very expensive.  The other challenging part is you don’t know how long something will take to render until you can do test renders.  This makes it extremely difficult to bid out a project for a client when there is a big unknown of how much your render costs are going to be.  One frame might take a few hours to render, or it might take a few weeks to render.  Your 5 minute animation will have 9,000 frames, so you can see how those costs could add up very quickly.

If you want to try and control those costs a bit more then you are going to have to build your own render farm.  Now you are buying thousands of dollars worth of hardware which will be outdated, lets be honest, as soon as you buy it.  Not to mention you are going to have to have enough space to keep all this hardware. Have you seen pictures of Pixar’s render farm?  Here is an image I found online.

Data Storage and Transferring:
Now you know all about the rendering challenges, so what will you do with all these images these computers are creating?  One of the 3 second shots for the client project I’m working on is 12GB, and this could have been a lot larger.  Not to mention all the files needed to create these projects.  Anything from photoshop documents, Maya files, Final Cut files, and all the other files needed to make these projects before we even start rendering.

With a remote team I also have to have a way to transfer these files between the different people on the team.  I have been using Dropbox, but I’m quickly outgrowing this.  I had to get a Dropbox Pro which gives me 1TB(1,000 GB) of storage, but found each member of the team who is synced to the project folder also has to have this much storage space.  I need to find a better option, but regardless of what option I go with it is going to be another costly expense.

Staff vs Freelance:
Currently I’m the only full time staff at the company, and everyone else is freelance who is hired based on the work we have.  This works well to keep costs down, but it makes it difficult to build a company.  It is challenging to line up project schedules with freelancers.  You might have a great artist for a project, but you might have to find someone else for your next project because the last one is unavailable.

Freelancers also provide their own workstations and software which can be a good thing, but can also cause issues.  For example one of your artists might be using Maya 2014, and another is using Maya 2016.  Now you have the issue where they can’t open each others files.  Software version incompatibility has been a huge challenge for me. On the Toys’R’Us project we had to have extra versions of After Effects to open and save the files in order for another artist to be able to open the file on a different version of the same software.

Physical Studio Location:
Having an actual studio location would help in many respects.  For starters it would speed up the production of our projects.  Being able to lean over to the person sitting next to you and ask a question or get approval is much more efficient then sending an email, and waiting for a response.  It would also solve some of the other issues I mentioned above.  We could control the workstations, and make sure they are all using the same versions of the software.  There would be less data transferring, and we could actually store the data on our own servers instead of online storage options. This would all be great, but it would be an additional overhead cost.  I would need to make sure the business was bringing in enough projects, and enough income to cover the monthly office expense. Add to this having to buy all the workstations and software licenses, and you can see how quickly it would all add up.

The Unknown:
It is easy to plan for the challenges you are aware of, but what really scares me are the things I’m not aware of.  Running your own company you have to wear many hats, but in no way am I an expert in all these different areas.  I try and reach out to others for help when I can, but you know some things will slip through the cracks.  Anyone of these unknowns could be what brings down the company.

 

As you can see there is plenty to keep me awake at night, and you might think I’m crazy for taking on all these challenges.  Well, I might agree with you, but I also see a lot of opportunities in these challenges.  I have to be creative, and look for other ways to overcome the challenges.  I’m glad it is not easy, because otherwise everyone would be starting their own animation company.  The challenges take out all the people who are not really passionate about this industry.  I only hope the challenges do not also take me out.

 

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.

Our February 2016 Animation Company Update

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It is time for our February 2016 Animation Company Update! It has been a busy month, and I feel like I’m juggling as much as I can to keep the company moving forward.  I don’t want to bore you with every detail, so below you will find updates on the bigger projects and activities I have been working on.

Bink:
The major activity with Bink the last couple weeks is we have been doing a lot of work with the music and sound effects.  On Monday I received the final music underscore from our composer, Carl Johnson.  He did an amazing job of creating different themes, and music for such a short animation.  This episode is only 30 seconds, so introducing the different characters has to happen very quickly.  I’m excited to see how it will work with the other sound effects.

The sound effects are being done by our good friends over at Boom Box Post, and I had a spotting session with the Co-founder Jeff Shiffman last week.  This gave us a chance to look at the short, and talk about what I expect to hear at different parts.  He ask a lot of really great questions, and brought up things I did not even think about before.  This is the awesome part about working with different talented people, they each bring something unique to the project which adds unique layers to the project making it that much better.  I can’t wait to see what he does with the SFX when we meet for final remix on Monday. As a side note, we made it onto their website with their other amazing clients! 😀

I have also started to reach out to the press about writing articles on Bink.  I have heard back from 2 different industry magazines who are interested in doing write-ups about the short.  One actually wants to do a few articles about different aspects of the production process.  I think getting these articles will help in getting the word out to as many people as possible.

We are working on problem solving a few more things in regards to Bink’s fur, but otherwise we are ready to start lighting and rendering the shots.  We are in the final stretch, and I’m very excited about getting to share this short animation and all the hard work of everyone involved.

Project-MMM:
Our client project we are working on is also going really well.  All the models are built and surfaced, and all the characters are rigged.  We are currently finishing up rough layout where we are taking all the assets and composing the different shots with virtual cameras.  This is all done on the computer using software called Maya.  We plan to start animation tomorrow, and hope to have it done in a few weeks.  The quality of this short is more in line with a web-series while with Bink we are aiming more towards feature quality.  This is why we are able to move much quicker on this project then with Bink.  Once we finish the first episode of Project-MMM we plan to move on to the 2nd episode.  I’m hoping we can streamline the process and deliver each subsequent episode quicker then the previous.

LA Society of Creative Professionals:
Last night we had our 8th Society Mixer, and we had a great turn out.  I’m still having a lot of fun with putting these mixers on, and I have met a lot of really amazing people.  I know several people who came to the mixers which through the people they met there lead to them getting jobs, and I have even hired a few people from the mixers.  Last night I witnessed something I would have never imagined I would see.  Someone who has never come to one of the mixers might have got themselves an interview, because someone at the mixer was saying how this person was looking for a job and how amazing this person is to an executive who has been looking to hire someone with skills this mystery person has.  I see this as a sign the mixers are making a real difference in the creative community when people who have not even come to any of the events are benefiting.

Feb_2016_mixer

Marketing & Social Media:
Our Social Media Marketing Coordinator, Brittany Potter has been doing a great job with all of our social media accounts and marketing efforts.  If you follow the company on our different social media sites you may have seen some of her posts.  We have also been doing Talent Spotlights where every other week we highlight one of the extremely talented people we get to work with.  If you want to check them out as well as the other blog posts you can find them on the company’s blog here.

We are preparing for the launch of the first episode of Bink, and as mentioned above the first part involves reaching out to the press.  Once we have the first episode of Bink it will help in our marketing efforts because we can actually show potential clients the quality of work we can do.  I have been holding back a lot of my sales and marketing efforts waiting for the completion of the short.  In July the first episode of Project-MMM will be out, and this will give us another style of animation to showcase on our portfolio.

While the language on my website has been about how we offer animation, VFX, and motion graphics I plan to change it to be more specific.  My focus is high quality 3D animation, so I want my website and marketing to reflect this.  We will still offer those other services to our clients, but it will not be a major part of our brand.  Focusing on our specialty will help us find the clients we can help the most.

Oscar Week: Animated Features:
This evening I’m attending an event to celebrate the nominees for Best Animated Feature Film.  They will be showing clips of each animated movie followed by an onstage discussion with each group of nominated filmmakers. This year’s films are, Anomalies, Boy and the World, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie, and When Marnie Was There. For more information and trailers, visit: http://oscar.go.com/nominees/animated-feature-film.  I have never been to this event before, so I’m excited to check it out.  I will be sure to share how it goes in next week’s blog post.
This about covers all the major things I have been working on.  I hope you enjoyed reading about all I have going on with the company.  Please feel free to leave a comment below if you ever have any topics you are interested in hearing about.

 

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.

Award Shows and Shareholder Meetings: The Joys of Animation

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On Saturday, January 23rd my wife and I attended the Producers Guild Awards show.  We had a really great time, and I’m glad she was able to come with me this year.  The award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Picture went to Inside Out producer Jonas Rivera.  The other nominees included; Anomalisa Producers: Rosa Tran, Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman, The Good Dinosaur Producer: Denise Ream, Minions Producers: Chris Meledandri, Janet Healy, and The Peanuts Movie Producers: Craig Schulz, Michael J. Travers.

Eric and Steve MartinoI had a chance before the award show started to talk with Steve Martino the director of The Peanuts Movie.  I have seen him at several other events I have attended in the past, but never had a chance to talk with him.  I found out he is also a fellow Ohioan.  He was born in Dayton, Ohio and went to school at Ohio State University.  He also directed Horton Hears a Who! and Ice Age: Continental Drift which I’m sure you have all heard of. He is a really nice guy, and we had a nice little chat.

Last week we made a lot of progress with both Bink and Project-MMM.  I’m very excited to see them coming together.  I started to work on getting post sound effects, and music underscore started for Bink. With Project-MMM we have all the character models done, and storyboard animatics which I will be presenting to the client either today or tomorrow.  If approved we will be ready to start on animation.

According to my corporation’s By-laws my annual shareholder and director meeting has to fall on Jan 30th each year.  If the date falls on a weekend or holiday it is to be scheduled the next business day.  Well, that happens to be today! Being the founder, Sole Director, President, Secretary, and Treasurer of the corporation it makes for a very “interesting” meeting of talking to myself. The meeting minutes are even stranger to read.  You might ask why I would even have these meetings?  Well, if the IRS ever does an audit they often ask for the minutes to see if the corporation is actually being run like a corporation instead of Sole Proprietorship.  If they can show the company is not being run correctly then the status as an S-corp can have effects on taxes.  I don’t completely understand the details, but what I do know is I have to have these meetings at least once a year.

EMAS Shareholder Meeting

This weekend my wife and I are going to another award show, but this time it is specific to animation.  The Annie Awards is put on by ASIFA which I’m a member of.  This will be my first year going to this award show, so I’m really excited to see what it is about.  Maybe one year I can be a nominee instead of just an attendee.

Well, it is time for me to get back to work.

 

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.

 

My Sales Hat: Read what I learned about Animation Sales

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I often talk about how you wear multiple hats when starting a company.  Well, today I wanted to talk about a hat I have been wearing a lot lately, and this is my Sales Hat.

Have you ever thought you knew a decent amount about a topic only to have an eye opening experience which completely blows your mind?  I kind of had this happen to me recently when it came to sales.  I have always thought I was pretty good with sales, and had a good understanding of it.  Even when I worked at Apple selling computers I was always one of the top in sales at the store.  It was often me and Max who would always be competing for the #1 sales person spot.

When I started my own company I saw sales as the task I did when someone called me about a project.  I relied very heavily on my marketing to bring those potential clients to me.  Unfortunately my marketing only consisted of my website, so I did not receive many calls.  Thinking about it I’m actually surprised I got as many calls as I did.  Many of them were people who wanted a 30 minute Pixar quality animated video, and their budget was $1,000.  While I got to meet and talk to a lot of really interesting people it was from a business point of view, a waste of time.

I kept focusing on my marketing thinking the sales part was not the problem.  The truth was both were not working as well as they could have been, but it took me awhile to figure this out(I’m still figuring it out).  I also had potential clients interested in my animation services emailing me, but after I responded I would forget about them until they emailed me back.  This worked fine as long as they responded, but when they did not I lost track of them.

By now any experienced sales person reading this could see many things wrong with my sales process.  I also realize there was something not working right, and I set out to find a better way.  I started searching for a way to keep track of these potential clients, and actually had a hard time finding anything.  I obviously had been searching with the wrong keywords, since I was not finding anything.  One day I stumbled across three letters which lead to my mind blowing experience, CRM.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and is a term which refers to practices, strategies, and technologies companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data.  This is what I was looking for, and it turns out I was not the first person to think of it.  Actually as it appeared I might have been the very last person to think about it.  CRM is nothing unique, and has been around for a while.  I felt a little silly because I have not heard of it earlier.  There are also many online software tools to help companies with their CRM.

I started playing around with 2 of them to see how they might be able to help me.  The ones I have been looking at are Salesforce and Zoho, and this is where the lights really turned on for me.  They setup the whole sales process as a pipeline with different steps along the way.  This pipeline concept is something I’m very familiar with, because 3D animation is all about the pipeline.  You have different tasks which need to be done, and having a pipeline helps you keep it organized and flowing in the right direction.  I never thought to look at sales in this way, and I’m surprised it did not occur to me earlier.  I’m still learning about sales strategy, but let me share with you what I have learned so far.

What is a lead?  I normally called a lead a potential clients which is about as far as I went with any type of structure.  In a CRM they look at Leads as the first step in the pipeline.  Leads can be people who contact you directly through your website,  referred to you, brought in by marketing, or were on a client list you purchased.  There is a whole process which you take the leads through which includes stages like discovery, nurturing, and converting.  You start off by trying to find out as much as you can about the lead and qualifying if they are a good lead or not.  Then you make first contact to find out about what their needs are, and how your services can help them.

Once you know what they are looking for you start to build a relationship with them.  I read a study which says on average it takes 7 times of reaching out to a client before making a deal.  Most people reach out to a potential customer 2-3 times before giving up.  My thought is 7 times would be annoying, but I heard this multiple times.  So when I hear it a 7th time I guess I will have to believe it.  The idea is people are more likely to do business with someone they are familiar with.  You want to build trust with your clients, so they are willing to take a chance with you.

After nurturing the relationship you continually move closer to close the deal, and turning this lead into a client.  In these programs they have leads, clients, accounts, competitors, and a much more organized way of looking at your client data. I found this all to be extremely interesting.  While I don’t plan to turn my company into a sales powerhouse, since I feel the whole process could easily start to feel robotic.  There is still a lot which I can take away from this.  I think a sign of a good sales person is someone who has a good structure, strategy, and process, but at the same time can be very personable and natural.  I would not want my clients to feel like they are just another number in the pipe.

Learning about this pointed out I not only need a better system closing deals with potential clients, but also I could do a better job at generating leads.  I can take a more proactive approach then sitting back waiting for people to visit my website and call me.  I have looked into brining on sales reps, but I have heard from other animation studios who have had mixed experiences.  It seems like the general consensus is doing it yourself is always best, but if you have to bring someone in then commission-only is the way to go.  Otherwise you risk spending money with little or no results, and the sales reps are more motivated when they only earning money if they are making sales.

I realize I still have a lot to learn about sales, but the more I wear this hat the better it fits.  I would love to hear from all of you about your sales secrets, and let me know if you have anything to add to what I mentioned.

 

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.

Eric Miller Animation’s New Year’s Resolutions

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Happy New Year! 2016 will be our second full year in business, and I wanted to share my New Year’s resolutions for the company.   I recently posted how we did with the goals I set at the beginning of last year, and I’m hoping we can accomplish more of our goals this time.  Last year I was a little zealous in what I thought we could accomplish in our first full year of business, so this year I wanted to set more realistic goals.

Animated Short:
We are getting really close to finishing our first 30 second episode for Bink, and I would love to be able to make at least 2 more this year.  So my goal is to have 3 episodes of Bink online by the end of this year.

New Clients:
Last year I had the goal of 3 new clients with large projects, but I realized the difficulties in attracting clients if I did not have an animation portfolio to show.  I ended up shifting my efforts away from finding clients to creating our own animated short which we could use to show potential clients the quality of work we can produce.  With us finishing the first episode of Bink early this year I hope it will help in brining in more clients.  I will also be increasing my marketing efforts, so with the combination of the two I feel we will be in much better shape to find more clients.  So the goal this year is again to get 3 new projects this year.  While it be nice if they are large accounts I will take any profitable projects.

Learn Something New:
This is a pretty easy goal to accomplish, since I feel I’m learning something every day.  The reason I put it down is because I feel it is extremely important to always be learning, and growing.

Grow Social Network:
There are two parts to this goal which are both important for my hybrid company.  The company is hybrid because it is both an animation studio, and an animation service company.  The goal is we do service work to bring in money, so we have the money to create our own projects.  The way I want to use social media is in two ways.  First to build our fan base, so when we post our own content it can reach more people. Second is to use social media to connect with potential clients by reaching out to them by commenting, liking, and sharing their posts.  Basically anything to get them to notice us, and build a relationship with them.  Social media is a great way for clients to learn about your brand, and be more open to work with you.  I will be hiring a Social Media Marketing coordinator this month, and hopefully they can help me accomplish this goal.  My goal is to increase our network by 100% on all our social media networks.

Increasing each network by 100% will be as follows.
Facebook: 4,427 –> 8,854
Twitter: 513 –> 1,026
LinkedIn: 146 –> 292
Google+: 11 –> 22
InstaGram: 235 –> 470
YouTube: 5 –> 10

Profitable 2016:
I always expect the first few years to be a loss.  I started the company in July of 2014, and surprised myself when the first 6 months were profitable.  Then last year I ended up spending more money then I brought in, but we were only slightly in the red.  If you look at the entire life of the business we are still profitable even with the loss last year.  I also have not been taking a salary myself, and have been keeping the money in the business.  This year my goal is to make enough where I can actually take a salary(even a small salary), and still have the business be profitable. I do enjoy growing the business, but making some money would be nice especially with our growing family.

 

I will keep my the list of my main goals pretty short.  I will always be setting other goals throughout the year, but these are the big ones I’m hoping to accomplish.

 

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.

2015 Year-End Review: Animation Studio

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As this will be my last post this year I thought I should do a 2015 Year-End Review of how the year went.  This year was the first full year in business, since 2014 I was only in business for half the year.  I would like to take a look at where I was at this time last year, and compare it to where I’m at now to see what I have accomplished.

Business:
At this time last year the business was still setup as a Sole Proprietorship, but as of July 24 my business is now an S-Corp.  This was a big change for me, and the business.  It has been a slow process transitioning everything over, especially all of the accounting and bank accounts, but now the company is setup and ready to go.

Financially speaking 2015 was a loss simply because we did not work on enough client projects to counter what I’m paying to have the animated short produced.  I expected this year to be a loss financially since I wanted to work on building our portfolio, and spent less time marketing and looking for service work.  The company still has money in the bank from last year, so the business is still in good shape and I’m not worried yet.  Next year my focus will be on finding more client projects to work on.  It is a balance between working on our own IP, and doing service work to bring in money.  I will also be looking into how we can make money off our own projects we are working on.

Bink – Animated Short:
Although the short is the main reason we are in the red for this year I’m really excited we are working on it.  I have learned a great deal from the process, and what we have learned will only my make company stronger.  Plus when we finish we will have a really awesome animation to show off for the hard work, and financial investment.

Networking:
This was a big year for networking for me, and I have made a lot of new connections with people in my industry.  I have attended several industry conferences, and Producer Guild events.  I still have stacks of business cards sitting on my desk I’m hoping to reach out to.  If only I had more time in the day to get things done.

I have also been reaching out to other animation studio founders, and comparing notes.  It is really great to hear about what others in a similar position as me are doing, and what advice they might have.  While we may be considered competitors I have found we are all willing to help each other out.

Social Media:
The company had a lot of growth this year in our social media, and while I might not have all the numbers for how much growth I know it was a decent amount.  I will be putting a lot of information down here partly so I have someplace to look to each year for comparison.  Not all the social networks have tools for seeing what your numbers where a year ago.

Facebook is by far my largest network, and also the network I put the most effort into.  I will bring on someone to help with social media and marketing for next year, so hopefully I will see growth in all areas in 2016.  At the beginning of the year I had 1,659 Likes, and currently we have 4,425 Likes.

In July of this year I started a company Instagram account, and we now have 235 Followers.

I can’t tell how many Followers I had at the beginning of the year, but I think it was around 200.  We currently have 522 Followers, and hoping to double this number in 2016.

While I have not been doing anything with YouTube other then posting my Demo Reels I hope to see my 5 Subscribers I currently have grow significantly in 2016 as I begin to post Bink animated webisodes.

In 2015 on Vimeo I had 1,439 plays, 1,725 Loads, and 3 likes, and currently have only 4 followers.  Similar to YouTube I have not been posting much on here, but will be when we finish with Bink.

Marketing:
This year we had a marketing consultant do some market research and develop a marketing strategy for the company.  I’m now in the process of interviewing applicants for a part-time Social Media Marketing Coordinator position.  They will help in implementing the marketing strategy, and hopefully bring in more client projects.  At the beginning of this year we had no solid marketing plan, so I feel this is a big step forward.

Society:
This year I started the Society of Creative Professionals(Temp Name), and so far it has been going great.  We have had a monthly mixer since July, and I have met a lot of really great people.  I have a lot of big plans for the society, and hope to accomplish many of these goals in 2016.

Personal:
At the beginning of last year my wife and I had an almost 1 year old son, and were trying to do our best to keep on top of our personal lives.  This year I feel like we did not do the best job of keeping in touch with all of our friends, and wish we could have seen them more.  It is challenging with the little one, and with both of us working full time.  This year we also announced we were expecting a baby girl in May of 2016.  I’m sure this will make having a social life even more challenging, but we are very excited to be growing our family.

Our growing family will not only make our personal life more challenging, but will also impact the business.  I will be getting less sleep again(after we finally got our son to sleep through the night), and it will add more financial pressure to succeed.  I would imagine starting a business with less responsibilities would be less stressful, but I feel my responsibilities motivate me to succeed.

Conclusion:
I feel 2015 was a year of learning and growing.  While I don’t have a lot of work or profit to show the success we had I still feel it was a very successful first full year.  I have set things up for a very positive 2016, and can’t wait to see how the year goes.

Have a great New Year everyone, and I hope 2016 will be the best year of your life so far.

 

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.

Report Card for This Year’s Resolutions

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The report card for this Year’s Resolutions which I set at the beginning of the year in the post “New Year’s Resolutions for an Animation Studio” is not the best report card I have received.  While some of my priorities have changed I thought it would still be fun to look at the goals I was aiming to reach for this year as we come to the year’s end.  While I didn’t achieve as many goals as I hoped I still feel this year has been a huge success.  Just don’t show this to my parents since I might get grounded. LOL

eTMkRaAAcWork-Life Balance:
At the beginning of last year I was coming off of a busy project with Toys’R’Us, and my work-life was very much out of balance.  I feel I have done a much better good job at keeping a work-life balance this year.  If at all possible I try and only work during “working hours” on weekdays.  Yes, I might be checking and responding to work emails on my phone during my personal time I try and keep it to a minimum.  I also multi-task at night when watching TV by reading business related articles, but this is something I enjoy doing.  I guess when your “work” is also something you enjoy it is very difficult to separate them.  I could always continue to improve on this, but there is always room for improvement with everything you do.

x_mark_red_circle3 new Major Clients:
When it comes to clients this year was not as good of a year as I hoped it would be.  I set the goal for 3 new major clients, and now I realize how ambitious this goal was.  While it’s always good to set your goals high it is not a good strategy to set them so hight you will have no chance of reaching them. This one was nearly impossible for a new animation studio.  It would have been really nice though!  While I have had a lot of clients contact me the majority of them didn’t have the budgets required for me to take on the projects.  It is a very challenging and competitive time, and I’m competing against studios who have been around much longer and are more established in the industry.

x_mark_red_circleGrow Team:
I had the goal to grow my team this year, but I’m still a company of one.  The company is setup in the virtual studio model, and I’m working exclusively with freelancers.  This is mostly due to the fact I did not have the income to bring on anyone full time.  The one major change to my company’s structure was changing it from a sole proprietorship to an S-Corp.  So in away the company did grow, but not in the way I was thinking when I set my goals.  Adding others to the team is still one of my top goals, but finding out how to make that work is not easy.  At this point having an assistant would be amazing to help me get through my daily tasks, so I can focus on the more important parts of the business.  A smarter choice might be to bring on a partner who’s skills are complimentary to mine.

eTMkRaAAcDevelop my own IP:
This goal was more of a “It would be nice”, but I did not imagine I would actually be able to do it.  Not only did I develop our own IP(Intellectual Property), but we are actually making it.  In May of this year we started developing our own animated short which is currently called “Bink”, and we are planning on finishing production early in 2016.  Any of you who regularly read my blog knows it has been the main project I have been working on this year.  It came out of the need to show clients the quality of CG animation we can do, and since we currently had no fully animated content on our company’s demo reel I needed to find a way.  I knew in order to get respectable clients I would need to have something to show, and this is why creating our own shorts moved up in priority.  I’m very excited about our progress on the short, and looking forward to being able to share the first episode with everyone.

eTMkRaAAcContinue to learn:
This was an easy one for me.  I have learned so much from running a business and producing an animated short.  With the business, I have tried and failed on many things, but also have had a lot of success.  I have learned a great deal from both.  I’m learning more about marketing, corporations, taxes, financing, networking, and many more.  With the short I knew a great deal from working at DreamWorks about a very specific part of the production process, but I’m learning things I had no idea about.  I thought I knew a lot about an animation pipeline, but my understanding was only so deep.  The technical challenges to make sure assets and shots work with downstream departments is a huge eye opener.  I know I will never know everything, but I have been lucky enough to work with an extremely talented and intelligent group of people who have been a huge help.  This is only one part of what I learned during this process of producing the short.

x_mark_red_circle10,000 Facebook Likes:
Yes, another very ambitious goal I had, but did not achieve.  The week I wrote the goal I had gained over 512 likes in 1 week, and thought if I kept even half this momentum I would easily make it to 10,000.  Well there was a lot of weeks I did not gain any new likes, and none of the other weeks were even close to 500 likes.  At the beginning of this year I had 1,450 likes, and I’m currently at 4,417.  While this is still an almost 3,000 gain it is nowhere near my 10,000 goal.  The larger my social network the easier it will be to get our shorts out to more people.  The other point I should mention is it is not all about numbers, but the quality of those likes.  We want to get our content out to people who really want to follow our story, or potential clients who might send work our way.  So while I want to reach as many people as I can I also want to target my likes to be from the right people.

x_mark_red_circleDo Good:
While I like to think I did some good I feel I did not do enough, and this is why I’m considering this a miss.  While it is easy for me to use the excuse of how busy I was it is a pretty weak excuse.  I hope next year I can find ways to give back to my community, or other people in need.

x_mark_red_circleGovernment contract work:
Last year I was looking into doing government contract work.  I was going to classes about how to get government contracted projects and not only learned it is very difficult, but currently impossible for me.  They required your business to be around for at least 5 years.  This ruled me out instantly, so I put it on the back burner for a few years until I’m a more established business.

eTMkRaAAcWikipedia Approval:
This was added partially as a joke, but also out of a desire to get my business into the “history books”.  I kept trying to add Eric Miller Animation Studios to Wikipedia, but they would instantly take it down with the reason “no sign of real notability”.  It became a goal to get a Wikipedia page for my business to stay, and not be removed.  In February I was able to get an Eric Miller Animation Studios Wikipedia article up on the site.  While this was mostly a person mission of mine it turned out to be great for business. I have been receiving a good amount of traffic to my company’s website from my Wikipedia page.

While I did not achieve as many of my goals as I hoped I did make a lot of progress this year.  I hope 2016 will be our best year yet, and each year after will be better then the last.

 

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 November 2015 Update

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It’s time for my November 2015 Update to let all of you know everything we are working on.  I’m really good at keeping myself overworked, and extremely busy.  No matter how productive I am each day I never get to a point where I feel I’m caught up.  You may have noticed from my failure to post to this blog each week that I have not been able to keep up with everything.  While continuing to write weekly posts is very important to me sometimes I’m just not able to find the time in my schedule.  So while I might not post every week please don’t give up on me and this blog.

Business:
Recently I have hired a marketing consultant to do some research, and strategizing for my business’ marketing plan.  There are two areas we are working on with this plan.  One is branding and marking the company as a whole, and the other is planning the release of the animated short we are working on.  I feel these are both things which will help grow my business, and hopefully get us more client projects.

I have also been doing a lot of research on foreign animation service companies.  One of my biggest challenges is the cost to do animation in the US is much higher then it is in other countries with cheaper labor or tax credits.  My plan is to find out how much these other companies are charging for each service, and then finding ways to lower my costs to compete with them.  I know I will not be able to get costs as low as them, but if I can get close I feel I will be able to win clients through other things we can offer.  For example being local makes it a lot easier for clients, so being in Los Angeles gives us a huge advantage.  Having amazing quality that is better then our competitors.  I hope to show this level of quality with our animated short.  Customer service, I want to make working with us as easy and comfortable as possible for our clients.  I want them to be so happy they not only return to  work with us again, but also tell other people about us.  Hopefully these other benefits will be enough to get the clients to pay a little more  in order to work with us over our remote competitors.

Short:
The short always tends to take the majority of my time each week.  So far we have had 14 people working on the short, so we have had a decent size crew.  We started working on it in May of this year, and plan to be working on the first 30-second episode until early next year.  While it is taking a long time to complete I’m very excited with how things are progressing.

All the assets for the first episode are modeled and currently being worked on in surfacing.  We have also finished character rigging, and we have started working on camera and rough animation.

Here are some rough poses done by our animator Jacob Gardner to test the rig, and get something more appealing then a t-pose for surfacing to work with.  It really gives you a sense of Bink’s personality, and where we can take it.

Bink Poses

As we continue to move forward on the short I will send more updates.

CTNX:
This weekend I will be attending The Creative Talent Network Expo in Burbank for the second time.  I went last year and had such a great time I wanted to go again.  You can read about my adventures last year at CTNX here… “An Amazing Experience at CTN Animation Expo” .

The first year I went to see what it was all about, so this year I’m hoping to take full advantage of what the expo has to offer.  It is a great place for networking with artists, animators, and anyone involved in animation.  I plan to attend some really great panels, and also hoping to learn some new things.  Next year I’m considering getting a booth for my company, and maybe even participate in the job fair to find talented artists to work with.

Facebook Network:
My Facebook network is continuing to grow, and we now have over 4,000 Facebook likes on our company page.  The larger our network the better chance we have of getting the short to be seen my the right people.  If you have not liked our page you can do so with the link below.  Also I always appreciate when you share my blog posts, or other social media sites with your own network.

Eric Miller Animation Studios

 

Paris Attacks:
I wanted to end by briefly commenting on the terrorist attacks in Paris, and other places.  It is disheartening people resort to violence towards innocent people to make their statements.  My thoughts are with all of you who have lost loved ones, or have been effected by all this violence.  The animation industry has a very large and talented French community, and I hope you and your families also stay safe.

 

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.

The World Animation and VFX Summit

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Last week I attended The World Animation and VFX Summit which was held at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey.  While it was my first time attending it was actually the 4th year the summit has been held.

I have been to a few different conferences now, and I found this one to be very interesting.  The reason I found it to be interesting was because its attendees were mostly producers, executives, and/or founders of animation companies, so all the discussions were geared towards topics I was interested in.  Most events I find are either for artists in animation, or producers in live action films, but not producers for animation.

This was a 3 day event, but I only attended the first two days.  The 3rd day was only classes, and I choose to start small this year to see if it was worth it.  It was a much smaller conference then I have attended and you did not have to choose which panel to attend since only one was going on at a time.  This was great, since you never felt like you were missing something, and you got to know the other attendees a lot better.

They had some really great panels through each day such as “The New Reality of… New Virtual Reality Revolution”, Animated Movie Spotlight: The Peanuts Movie”, “The Business of Show Business”, “Understanding the New Hybrid Studio Model”, “Understanding the Evolving Ecosystem of Global Feature Co-Productions”, “Building Your Company and Your Brand”, “Charting the Future of the Small Screen”, and others.

For breakfast and lunch each day you could sign up to eat with one of the panelists which was a great chance to talk and ask them questions you might not have asked in front of the group.

At the end of each day they had a cocktail party which gave us all another chance to meet and network with each other. I was surprised by how many people there were from all over the world.  I met people from Russia, South Africa, China, Malaysia, and all over South America to name a few.  Many of them looking for co-productions deals with US production companies.

AwardsOn Monday after the cocktail party they had the Awards Gala where they gave out 4 awards.  They were The Trailblazer of the Year Award, The Lifetime Achievement Award, The Creative Visionary Award, and Breakout Studio Award.

The Master of the Ceremonies was Candi Milo who did the voices for Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory, Sweetie Bird from Tiny Toon Adventures, and many other characters over the years.

It was entertaining to see Danny Jacobs (voice of King Julian) present the award for Trailblazer of the Year to Head of Television for DreamWorks Animation Margie Cohn.  I recorded a quick clip of it which I included below.

The Creative Visionary award went to Charles Schulz who created the comix strip Peanuts. The award was presented to Schulz’s daughter Jill Schulz by the director of The Peanuts Movie.  While at the cocktail party before the awards I was talking to Charles Schulz granddaughter.   I was a little shocked when she mentioned who she was, and I did not know what to say.  I responded something stupid along the lines of “I’m sure you liked your grandfather”.

Besides that moment of awkwardness it was a really great event, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend.  I hope to attend again next year. To read more about the Awards Gala check out the Animation Magazine article.

 

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.