I have been a bad blogger!

I have not been a very good blogger lately, and try and post every Friday.  I missed last Friday, and this post won’t really count as an actual post.  Things have been crazy busy, and this weekend I will be at the CTN Animation Expo.

Wikipedia says:

“CTN Animation Expo is an annual three day animation convention that focuses on putting “the talent” center stage. It is held at the Marriott Convention Center in Burbank, California during what is officially proclaimed by the City of Burbank to be “Animation Week” for this event.”

With me being out for the next 3 days I’m afraid I’m going to miss a post this week as well other then this quick update.   I actually should be leaving now for the conference, but waiting to get on a conference call.  The Toys”R”Us project is getting very close to the end, and after that I will have much more time to write my blog posts.

Follow my Twitter account for updates these next 3 days for CTN tweets.

 

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.

An Animation Company that can always Improve!

This week we are still moving at full speed on our current projects.  Toys”R”Us posted the first commercial of their Holiday Campaign on their YouTube channel that we have been working on.  We work on all the individual shots, so it is nice to see them all edited together with final SFX.  I included it on this post so you can watch it here.

I enjoy meeting with other professionals in the industry, and I always feel like I walk away from those meetings knowing so much more then before.  I learn so much from talking to these people, but at the same time it can also stress me out.  Learn about things that I feel I should have known, but didn’t always makes me worry about all the other things I might not know about.  This week I had one of those experiences after meeting with a very knowledgeable proffesional.  I left the conversation thinking about all the things I need to do to make my company better.  These things include, but are not limited to legal protection, advertising, and security of our data.  I think we are doing a pretty good job with all of these, but I also see ways we could make it better.  This is something I really want to look into, so the company can be the best that it can be.

This also got me thinking about the company and its culture.  At first I was thinking strictly about finding work, and doing the best job that we can, but I feel there is so much more then that.  For example, what do our clients think of working with us, and how do the artists feel about working with us?  I want people to enjoy working for the company, and truly want to be a part of what I’m trying to build.  I don’t want to be looked at as simply a place to get a paycheck from.  I want the company to be known for doing great work, but I also want a culture that is something to be proud of.  So these are some of the things that I will be spending more time brainstorming.  Please let me know in the comments of what you think makes a company a great place to work, or a company you want to do business with.

FullSizeRenderOn Wednesday, I went to an event for any who has earned the BSA rank of Eagle Scout in the Los Angeles area.  It was nice to get to talk with other Eagle Scouts about their scouting memories, and meet some really amazing people.  Scouting has always been such a great part of my childhood, and I hope that my son will get to have similar experiences in scouting.  At the event we had former Boy Scout, actor, and environmental activist Ed Begley, Jr. as our guest speaker.  I got a chance to talk with him, and he is a very interesting man that makes you really think about ways that you can be more environmentally minded.  This guy has a 10,000 gallon grey water tank under his house, and wind turbines on his roof for electricity.  I met a lot of other people that are in the entertainment industry, and had a conversation with a producer that has an animation project that he wanted to talk to me about.  He has a fun exciting project, and I look forward to our continued conversations.

Yesterday I went back to DreamWorks to visit some of my friends.  It was great getting to see everyone and getting caught up with how everyone is doing.  DreamWorks is such a great company, and there are some crazy talented and amazing people that work there.  I’m still very happy with my decision to leave, and go off on my own. Maybe one day DreamWorks will ask my company to do some work for them.  Wink-wink nudge-nudge for any DreamWorks executives reading this blog.

 

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.

Shooting Week Done, Now We Add The Magic

The week of shooting is now over, and I think it went really well besides my feet being a little sore from standing all day.  We shot Monday thru Friday, and the hours were roughly 7am to 7pm each day.  So that is a lot more standing then I’m used to, since lately I have spent a lot of time on my butt in my office chair.  My office now looks like a toy store from the toys we brought back to use for the VFX work, and I have a lot of paperwork to sort through.

Although it was very tiring, being on set was a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal more about the live action side of things.  It was also a very productive week, and from what was shot they will be able to make somewhere around 40 different commercials using different combinations of the vignettes we will be making.  We are now waiting for edit to finish the first few vignettes for us to get started on with the VFX work.  Hopefully we will have something as early as the end of day Monday to jump on.

We have some pretty intense deadlines this time around, and I have been working all weekend trying to rough out a schedule.  There will be a lot of moving pieces, and they all have to fall into place to make sure we deliver everything on time.

I’m excited to see how this round of commercials go, and I expect they will turn out even better then the last round.

In addition to shooting all week I was also able to make it to the Producers Guild networking event that was on Thursday evening.  With being tired from the week, and between babysitter drama, and having to wake up early the next morning for the final day of shoot I did not stay very long.  It was still nice to get out for a little, and meet some new people.

This week will start our post work, that we are expecting to last until December.  I’m excited to get a start on everything, and still a little stressed from the tight deadlines.  I just want to do the best job we can, so everyone is happy, and proud of the 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.

Parent’s Visit

My parents were in town this week, so I did not have time to write a full blog post, so this will be quick update.

The Toys”R”Us project we have been working on has finally come to an end(for the most part).  Not all 15 commercials are posted yet, but if you missed any of them you can watch them all here.

This project started the week after I left DreamWorks Animation in July, and went on for about 2 1/2 months.  It could not have come at a more perfect time for me, and gave me a great head start for the company.  It was a great experience, and had a lot of fun working on them.

I’m very excited to announce that I have already started another project this week, and will go until the middle of December.  It will be commercials for the company’s holiday campaign.  Hopefully this will be another fun project, and it should keep me busy for the rest of this year.  I’m always looking for additional projects to take on, so please let me know if you have anything for me.

It was great having my parents out here this week, and getting a break from the routine of everything.  The timing worked out well since the Toys”R”Us project was pretty much finished.  We were able to go to the beach, the Autry National Center, and just hangout.  My son Kelton also really enjoyed his time with his grandparents.

Next week everything goes back to normal.  Except we will be starting a search for a nanny.  When I first left DreamWorks I thought I could watch Kelton, and running the business at the same time.  That was when I thought it would take me some time before I had a project, and it would be a slower start.  With this new project picking up I’m going to need help, since this last project proved to be difficult to work, start the business, and watch Kelton at the same time.  We will be looking for help during the times I have active projects, so if you know a good nanny please send their info our way.

 

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.

So much to do, so little time

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.

The First Week

toysrus-todayWhen I thought about how my first week after leaving my job at DreamWorks would go I envisioned a much less active week. I figured it would mostly be me trying to get some of the basics in place so that I could eventually start finding clients. In reality it has been a pretty active week, and that gives me a lot of hope for the future. I was hired on as the Post Supervisor for a series of Toys R Us commercials my good friend Hashi is co-producing/Directing and doing his After Effects magic on. They are in the fashion of his Action Movie Kid videos that he has been doing with his son. If you have not seen them yet you should check them out. It will be exciting to get to work with Hashi, and see him take his craft to the next level. There are 3 shooting days at the end of next week, and then I will mostly be working from home making sure we get all After Effects work done on time and delivered to the client.

On this last Sunday I posted on Facebook about me leaving my job at DreamWorks, and my plans to start my own animation company. I was hoping for a big response, but did not expect the response I got. My friends and family have been so supportive, and gave me a lot of words of encouragement. As of the writing of this post my company Facebook page has 423 Likes, and in the first 24 hours my blog received over 900 views from all over the world. Which includes 756 from the US, 46 from France, 16 from Canada, 11 from Italy, 10 from Malaysia, 8 from Brazil, and it goes on and on. A total of 24 different countries that have visited my blog. This chart below shows you the numbers for the whole week, and I’m shocked how it spread to so many different countries.
By country

I had a good number of artists that reached out to me to let me know they would love to work with me, so I have a rapidly growing list of freelancers that I can call when I have projects. This also generated a few clients asking for my help on projects. Most of them were asking for help to make their animation projects for much less then what is possible. Although one project I was able to find an artists that agreed to the budget being offered. They are working on the final draft of the script, and then after that we should be able to get started on it. I will keep the details of the project private out of respect for the clients privacy, but once finished I will be glad to share it with all of you.

On Wednesday I went to a Producers Guild event, and was able to meet a lot of really great people. I love that when I go to these events I’m almost always the only person in animation. This works in my favor since if I can be known as the animation guy anytime they need animation they will hopefully think of me. I can offer them help on their projects with animation, but also graphics, titles, special effects, and many other CG visuals that they may want.

This morning I have a conference call with Hashi and the team working on the Toys R Us commercials. It will be exciting to see how this process works, and meet some of the other people that are onboard the project. Next week on the shooting days will be a new experience for me, since I have never been on location for a live action shoot (besides my own college films). It has been a great first week on my own, and I hope the momentum of this week can continue on into the future.

 

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.