Today LooseKeys turns two. It feels like just a couple weeks ago that I left Daily Planet ltd. and ventured out on my own to build this business. There hasn’t been a single day that I’ve looked back and second guessed my decision. 

It’s been an amazing journey with over 70 videos in our portfolio, some awesome clients and support of so many friends and family.  

If one year ago I had felt like I learned a lot, this year proved that I had no idea what I was doing because I was presented with a number of new challenges that I had to overcome. The biggest hurdle was in management of a team. This past year the team grew and Jake Williams came onboard full-time. One step closer to world domination… The team has been building steam and hopefully I’ll be able to add another person to it in the near future.

After two years, I think we’re doing something right over here. I’m slowly making sure that LooseKeys is more than just an animated explainer business. We’re storytellers, artists and with each video we do we’re able to show why clients pick us over the other guy. 

Thank you everyone for the support!

2013 has been a good year so far for us at LooseKeys and it just got even better, we won three Silver Communicator Awards. 

The first one was for “The Smarter Wallet from Lemon” for online video animation. Mike and I had a blast working with Lemon on these videos and it’s awesome to see one of them winning another award. Next up was the “Viadeo Company Pages” video in “Branded Content - Business to Business” category. That video was really LooseKeys first exploration into live action video, so it’s awesome that it won a Telly and now a Communicator Award. Finally, our Boxee TV video won in the “Branded Content - Business to Consumer” category. 

All three of these videos span multiple styles, which really shows off what this talented team can produce!

Our Meet Boxee TV spot for Walmart won a 2013 Bronze Award Telly Award for Use of Animation in the Film / Video Non-Broadcast Productions category.

The other day I got an email from another company that wanted me to contract LooseKeys work out to them. A bit of a strange request because why would I want to unload work that LooseKeys can do… It’s always a little flattering to get  emails from other explainer video and production companies because it means that someone is noticing what you’re up to. I took a look at their portfolio and found something very, very, very similar to the Lemon video that I had created. The colors were similar and two of the characters were basically the same; tossing a tie onto someone doesn’t make it different. Over the years I’ve grown accustom to seeing Groupon video clones either in the script, illustration or the animation.

This one was a surprise, since it was the first time I’ve seen the Lemon video copied. My email response to them was pretty simple; I told them that they must have really liked the Lemon video that I did and left it at that. I figured that would be the last I hear from them. But no, they responded and said that they had never seen the Lemon video and that it was just a coincidence. Son, Please! 

What to do here… spend hours arguing with them. Taking screens and placing them side by side to prove that they basically stole the work? In the end, I decided to take the high road on this one and not push it or take it much further than that.  In this case I wasn’t threatened by them trying to take work from me or LooseKeys  If a client wants to work with someone who steals other peoples work, then that’s not a client I want.  

I did share the video with a few friends and colleagues, just so they’d be sure to watch out for their own stuff. It seems like this has been happening more and more lately; other companies or people ripping off videos that me or people I know have created. There will always be imitators out there but those guys don’t last; just be sure to rise above them. The authentic ones will always stand out above the rest.