There are times when it’s freeing to just animate, when you don’t have to think about the design or style and just execute the vision. You’d think that someone providing you with the artwork to animate seems great and that it would save a lot of time. That was my initial thought with one of the latest projects I’ve been working on. 

I was given a handful of characters that had been modified a bit but they are mainly just stock artwork that the client has been using in all their marketing. Nothing wrong with that, especially when you can find something that works for your brand. The characters have a really neat look and it’s different then the style I’m often doing. 

Going into the storyboards and animation I thought I’d be moving a lot quicker on this video but it’s been a bit of a headache. The main reason is it’s not built how I would typically design characters to be animated. So working with the files has taken a lot of time to set up and then adjust. I guess it’s selfish of me to think everything needs to be set up how I would work, but I will say I don’t think any time was saved here. This experience has made me recognize the importance of making sure that I spend the time to clean up my own files when building my artwork. 

Although time was saved by not having to develop characters, it took longer to figure out the artwork and make it work for animation… which it was never built for. 

It was nice to work with a different style of artwork but at the same time there is something lost for me in this video. I like how it’s turning out but it doesn’t feel like a LooseKeys video to me. There is more of an ownership when I’m able to create and build everything, or at least work with someone else to build it from scratch. I know that not all jobs can be done that way and that’s fine but I now know that artwork provided by the client does not necessarily mean a faster moving or a smoother moving project.

Finding the right people to hire or even just work with is hard. How do you know if they will be right or even able to do the job. I’m sure people who do a lot of hiring have developed a better instict for this but for me I’m pretty new to that area. You just sort of hope who you picked is awesome.

Recently I was watching Adventure Time and the Business Time episode came on. First off, Adventure Time is awesome and if you’re not watching this show you need to be. With that said, this might be a bit of a spoiler for this episode so be warned. In the Business Time episode, Finn and Jake find and hire some business dudes to help them out so they can just focus on the fun stuff. Which seems about right and not a bad reason to hire someone. Letting someone else take care of the work you don’t like so you can do the work you do like.

The trouble is that in this episode the business dudes end up going mad crazy, which isn’t likely to happen with whoever you hire but they could just end up sucking. When that happens, you may end up doing a bunch of extra work trying to fix what they messed up or didn’t get done.

If you do find the right person or people for your team, they can add a ton of value. Don’t just randomly pick some people that need a job because they seem like they know what they are doing. It’s never fun having to do a job over because the person you hired couldn’t deliver what you wanted.

I’m sure we’ve all sent a rough cut to a client before and the feedback we’ve received hasn’t been the best. “What is this?” or “This isn’t What We Expected,” are never words you want to hear. At LooseKeys  our clients are often people who run businesses or startups and not people necessarily familiar with all that goes into the creation of a video. 

 People who work in video or film, tend to toss around phrases that aren’t always widely known outside of our industry; terms like rough cut, styleframes, and codecs. People outside our circle might not be familiar with them. I know I’m not familiar with banker terms like M&A, LBO and below the bar. 

As creative people, we tend to get upset when others, especially clients don’t understand our vision or process. You have to take the time to educate and inform them on what they are seeing, otherwise you’re going to work yourself up and out of frustration end up freaking out on the client. 

So what’s a rough cut?

A rough cut is one of the first steps in putting together a video, this is the first phase where the project starts to resemble a real video and not just a bunch of random pieces. Typically rough cuts will still undergo many changes before the final. If you’re working with video, assembling a rough cut is a time consuming process; you have to go through all the footage trying to figure out what is the best and in what general sequence it should all go in. You typically go through many versions of rough cuts before you get to the fine cut and are near completing the video. A rough cut is really just the first step in the editorial process, there are many more changes that can and will be made.

Since most of the videos at LooseKeys are animated, our rough cuts are typically very advanced animatics. All the movements of the characters might not be in place but the pieces are there to make sure the scenes are working and flowing together. 

No matter what you show the client, make sure you’re happy with it and assume that they are looking at this video like it is the final. If there are changes that need to be made let your client know. Give them a list of things you’ll be fixing or doing. It helps to signal to them that this isn’t the final cut and you’re still working on it.  If you get bad feedback on a rough cut, remember to breathe and take a moment and try to understand that sometimes it will take a while before the client understands that this is a process. 

You can label yourself any way you want, whether it’s self-employed, a freelancer, an entrepreneur or a business owner. You’re making an independent living by yourself and from the business you’re building. I was a freelancer for awhile as I was getting LooseKeys rolling. I knew when I left Daily Planet ltd. that I didn’t want to just be a freelancer; I had already done that for a few years and knew the challenges I was going to run into.

One challenge you face as a freelancer is that you’re going to reach a point where you can’t earn any more income. You can always be working harder but there are only so many hours in the day and your rate can only be so high. Instead, I wanted to build something and to work at starting a business that one day could run itself.

Over the last couple years at LooseKeys  things have been going well and I’m very happy with the people I’m working with, the work we’re doing and the direction we’re headed.

Maybe one day you’ll decide that you too want to go beyond freelancing at a new company every week and decide to go out on your own and start a business. There are many challenges you’ll confront when making that move. 

The difficulty I faced was in that transition from a single freelancer to a business or a brand I was selling to clients. As a freelancer you may be lucky and have a dedicated number of clients who continue to call on you because they are happy with your work. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to explain to clients that it’s not just me doing the work, that I run a business now. These previous clients who have hired you for freelance in the past know you and trust you. So they contact you for a freelance job but you have to let them know that you would be taking the job on with your team. It took at least a year to shake that freelancer idea from my past clients; you have to educate and promote your business. Work on it everyday. 

Most of the questions I got were “Now you’re working with other people?” “Can your old clients trust these people?” “Can they do the same work that they see in your portfolio?” 

Speaking of a portfolio; when you do transition to running your own business, you have to build your new businesses portfolio from scratch. More than likely you can’t show any work you did at your previous employment because that’s not your new businesses work, that’s work you did at another company. Depending on where the work was done, you might be a able to work out a deal but usually company X isn’t going to like to see that your new company is saying they did that work. It’s a Catch-22; you can’t get clients without a portfolio and you can’t build a portfolio if you don’t have any clients. 

I’m sure the same thing happened when you first entered the working world. What did you do to build your name and promote yourself before? You sold your skills and created your own projects. You have to do the same for this new business with your team of people. You need to be getting these jobs and then have your team work on them. Sell, then delegate the work that comes in. Jump in when you can but you’re not a freelancer anymore, you have people working for you who want to do the work. Give them work to do. If you love doing the work too, then hire someone to sell. You have to be delegating the work in order to grow and build a business. 

These are different challenges than being a freelancer but nothing that’s too complicated to overcome. It takes time and I still get emails and calls asking me to freelance on jobs. I make it clear that me and my team at LooseKeys can do this yes, but it’s a team, it’s a WE not an I anymore.

If you’re interested or thinking about making the move from the freelancing life then start by getting a few bigger projects and out-sourcing some of work. See how you like managing a project rather than just being the one doing the entire project. 

Test new ideas, try new marketing campaigns or even attempt something crazy. If it doesn’t work out, oh well at least you tried. Maybe you spent a few thousand dollars to build a mobile app and it turned out to be a flop, that’s nothing really… at least you had the opportunity to be wrong. Plus, I’m sure you learned something and now the next time you try to build something you have experience to do it differently. 

I’m always trying to learn new tools and skills; sometimes getting value out of them and some even improve how I work. These new skills can sometimes make jobs easier, but even if they don’t work they give me the chance to look at what I’m doing in a different way. Many of the worlds best inventions and discoveries started out as a mistake. You often have to fail in order to find the right answer. At least people took the chance at something, even with the possibility of failure. Its important to try new things, you never know what can happen. Success or failure, its all part of the surprise that keeps work and life interesting.

Don’t be afraid of being wrong and one of the potentials of being wrong is that it really might end up being right. 

With every project I work on I try to make sure there is something that is reel worthy but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Maybe the client killed that one awesome piece or perhaps the subject matter of the video just wasn’t something I was that into. No matter how much I want to show every project I work on there are a few that I tend to just sweep under the rug. I’m not ashamed of them but they perhaps just weren’t my best work or not the work I want to be doing. We all have a few of those jobs from time to time and it’s alright, they all can’t be winners. Don’t feel like you need to be showing off everything you’re working on just to show something. A bad or sub-par piece of work is going to hurt your portfolio and brand more than posting nothing.  

Are you excited to wake up in the morning? Happy to take on the day? Thrilled to see what might happen? Or dread waking up and just want to pull the covers back over your head?

I’ll often stay up late working on different projects or reading articles. There is just so much I want to accomplish everyday and going to sleep just isn’t one of those tasks on the to-do list. 

The same holds true for the morning, well, sometimes it’s a little hard to get moving in the morning especially depending on how late I stayed up the night before. I’m really just not an early riser, no matter how much I try. Even if I’m not jumping out of bed at 6:00 AM, when I do get up I’m ready to take on the challenges of the day. It’s that motivation to get going on the days task that gets me out of bed.

When you can find that thing that’s going to get you bouncing out of bed in the morning and head to work, you’re in a great place.

So you lost a project to a competitor? Why? What made the potential client pick them over you? Was it just price, time it took you to answer emails, or does your competitor offer something you don’t?

I’ve missed out on a few projects but I typically know why and most of the time I’m alright with that but sometimes it really baffles me and I have to stop and think about what made that client pick the other guy for the job.

The best way to think about this is to take the time and write down the services you offer and then write down what the competitor offers. A venn diagram works out nicely for this. It will help so you can clearly see the differences and the overlaps as well. By breaking down what you and the competitors are doing you can see what your strengths are and learn what you could improve or focus on so the next time you’ll win the job over them.

It may be crystal clear to you how your company is different, but I’ve learned that you need to spell it out. When you’re able to highlight your strengths, it’s going to help you stand out and this new client is going to see your value.

When you have a good understanding of what you offer that’s unique to your competitors you then have some key talking points that you can focus on to help new customers understand your value which will help them make a better decision.

If you were advising a friend, in what situations would you recommend your competitor over you? Is this an area you should improve on so you’re not missing out on that work? Maybe it’s not the work you want to focus on and that’s fine. But when you understand where you overlap with your competitors and how you differ it will help you answer why a new client should choose your service over the others.

There are times when I’m sitting at the computer at 10:00 PM or even 2:00 AM and I wonder what it’s like to have a job where you don’t or can’t take it home with you. The kind of job where you punch out at 5 or 6 o’clock, leave and not let work consume your time at home. The work is done and if not, it will be there tomorrow. 

My friends and family all have different kinds of jobs and some of those jobs are ones that when they walk in the front door, work is the last thing on their mind. When I think about some of those people I know that their job is just that, it’s a job. Its a task that they do and if something better were to come along or if they won the lottery, they would be done. 

Work is the second thing on my mind all day everyday, right behind my family. Even if I did win the lottery, which I won’t because I don’t play but if I did.. I think I’d still be doing something along the lines of what I’m doing now. Maybe a little different and with less stress, of course. When it comes down to it, I like what I do for a living. I’d say that’s pretty lucky and if you feel the same way, kudos to you. Finding something that you’d still enjoy doing even if you didn’t need the income is worth some of the stress and late nights, at least it is to me. 

I sometimes get asked to provide artwork or concepts for a project before a business decides if they’d like to hire me. A lot of post-companies do pitch work to win jobs with bigger clients. The agencies and clients want to see if you have what it takes to do the work. 

However, when a client asks me to do this I have to say no and I send them to the LooseKeys website or send them a few links to videos we’ve done in the past. I wish I had a ton of time and resources to devote to proving to every client before they hire LooseKeys that we’re the best. Truthfully, I don’t have the time to research and develop concepts for free. The creative process takes time; you have to think, research, try things and toss out ideas. It’s tough to do this when there is really no promise of the project. The client or agency has to like your work to get the job; if you win then you win big but the losers lose big, they are out their time and drained of creativity. 

Some post houses and studios are able to justify this time by charging more across the board for their projects. Why should all other clients get hit with a higher price tag so post houses can spend time pitching work? I try to keep prices low and competitive since we’re often working with startups and small businesses who already have a tight budget. 

My portfolio and LooseKeys portfolio shows a wide range of work and I know that sometimes it’s hard to see your brand in place of one of those other videos. With the years of experience me and my team bring to each and every project, there is a good chance that we’ll be able to handle whatever challenges that a client might have. If you looked at our portfolio and really didn’t like what you saw and don’t think we can do what you need, that’s too bad. That’s not often the case though. We’re here to help you grow your brand and if you don’t think we are the right fit then good luck to you and we hope the video you ultimately have produced meets your needs. 

I try to take advantage of every day I have available to get work done. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m terrible at taking time off and relaxing. I’m always working on new projects and ideas. Heck, I even squeezed in a little work in during the honeymoon. Why not take advantage of the time when it’s available. That’s why I love Sundays and use them to take care of a lot of clean up and planning of what needs to get done. If I’m lucky, I’m not trying to finish up a job for Monday which seems to happen at least one Sunday a month. The rest of the Sunday I’m usually making a plan for the week. Sundays are quiet and relaxing. Most people are using the weekend to get away from their work. But when so much of my work is done in front of the computer it’s easy to sit on the couch and watch a movie and passively update the calendar, base camp and invoices. These actively don’t take a lot of focus but they take awhile and will always take time away from what you love doing, whether it’s animating, writing or filming. 

There seems to be a good amount of disdain for clients within the creative field.  For some reason the designers, writers, developers and any other content creator often see it as a battle of us versus them. Them being the client, the one asking for the work to be done, the one paying the creatives when the work is done. It’s pretty messed up that the enemy is the one helping us pay our bills and support our families. Yet almost everyone says that they wish they could just create, design, or code without the client butting in; clients should just let them do their thing and then pay them for it. 

Content creators and creatives like myself often feel as though a client should trust us because we know exactly what they need and what they want. Some people think the client should just be thankful I took on their project and that I let them give me their money. If you’re thinking this way, soon you’ll be the one at the bottom begging the clients for work just to get a little bit of money for dinner. 

Come on now, we’re all on the same level here. The client knows their business inside and out and has an idea of what could potentially work to get more people interested in their product and service. They typically only know a little about how to execute that vision and that’s where they need help. The creative knows or should know how to execute it in a interesting and effective manner but knows nothing or not much about the clients business. If these two parties work well together and lean on each others strong suits then they can make something great.

Sure there are some clients out there who are less than ideal and they really don’t know what they want or how to communicate what they need. That’s where I believe the idea of “the client is the enemy” and “we are gods gift to them” came from. Don’t let those few bad clients turn you off; most clients have an idea of what they want and what they would be happy with. It’s our job to try and execute this and lean them towards the right direction.

It’s not a battlefield, think of it as a house you’re building together.

I want two things. A project I’m happy with and the client is happy with and second to get paid. At times, the getting paid for the work I do and time involved might even be a little more important then creative fulfillment and clients happiness. Of course, its difficult to get one without the other.

I know a lot of people who are surprised that LinkedIn hasn’t vanished into social media history with Friendster and MySpace. I tell them that once you’ve begun to use LinkedIn for what it was intended for “a networking tool that helps you discover inside connections to recommended job candidates, industry experts and business partners…” you begin to see why it’s still here and what makes it so valuable. If you’re not already on LinkedIn, you definitely need to be, even if you already have a job you are happy with and plenty of clients knocking on your door. Sign up! It doesn’t take long to set up a profile; you never know what the future could hold or what opportunity you have been missing out on. No matter how the economy or your career is doing, having a strong network is a good form of job security. Don’t wait until times are tough to start networking, you’ll just be playing catch up. With LinkedIn and other forms of social media it’s not always who you know but also who knows of you. Building a large and effective network never hurt anyone. Having an up to date resume available online for anyone interested is highly valuable. Everyone wants to know who it is that they are doing business with and this provides an easy way for people to check you out.  LinkedIn is in my opinion the best option for a resume, you are able to list your job history, educational background and get recommendations from past and current employers and co-workers.  Since LinkedIn is a business relationship tool it makes it a perfect place for job searching. Just like any other tool, it is only valuable to you if you use it and know how to use the tool properly.

When signing up for LinkedIn, there are a few setting that you want to make sure that you have right before adding all those great connections. Be sure to sign up with an email address that you own. Use a personal email address, not a company one. In the event that you lose your job, your employer technically owns your account and you may lose access to it. It is all right to list your employer’s email; in fact you should add it there. Just don’t list it as your primary email, make it a secondary email so that you can change it if needed. Next be sure to select your vanity URL. If it is available, using your first and last name or your website name; I have my vanity URL set to digitalhitchhiker. Once you are all signed up you need to make sure that your profile is complete, accurate and professional. As I mentioned in my previous post; with your Facebook profile, your profile photo is the first thing people see when they come to your page. No matter how much I enjoy the photo of myself eating that giant sandwich from Big-Ass Sandwiches you wont find it as my LinkedIn profile photo. Next make sure you put your full work history but you are not limited to that one of two-page rule they preach in College. Be as complete, truthful and professional as possible with your knowledge, skills, and achievements without going overboard. You want to impress the person reading without turning them off and make sure you come up on as many search results as possible. Again just like I mentioned on the “Leveraging Facebook To Find Work” blog entry, do not lie. The information is out there and you will be exposed.

Having your resume looking great is killer but one of my favorite features on LinkedIn is the ability to get and give recommendations that show up right on your profile. This makes it easy to establish yourself as an individual who is competent and trustworthy. Nothing beats a rock star recommendation from a boss or past client highlighting your strengths and showing they valued working with you. How do you go about recommendations? The simplest way is to ask. Those past and current connection if they enjoyed working with you and value your experience are more then happy to sing your praise. Another way is to provide recommendations for others because once they post your recommendation on there profile page, LinkedIn has a call to action for them to return the favor and you’ll find that most people will. You want to have a good group of connections on LinkedIn of past and current employers and co-workers to get these recommendations from. Don’t be afraid to connect with the boss of your last job as long as you left on good terms. Or if you are a current intern at a company connect with the staff in the office, they are more likely to accept you on LinkedIn than on Facebook. I accept whenever an intern at Daily Planet ltd. asks, I like to see where they go once they leave and if they were a good worker I’m more then happy to help them find work in the future.

A new feature that was added recently is great if you are a designer and have a behance.net profile. Behance and LinkedIn teamed up to showcase your portfolio right on your profile. Many of you already know I love the behance network and have been using it for over two years. It’s a valuable tool to showcase you work and shouldn’t be skipped if you are a design, editor, motion artist or animator.

Linkedin doesn’t end at your profile and the connection, the creators and developers have build a lot of useful tools onto the site as well. One of those is LinkedIn Answers, which is an easy feature to forget about on the site. Answers allow users to enter questions that they want answered and other users answer these questions. Just like on Facebook and Twitter it is important to engage with other users and the Answers section of LinkedIn is perfect for that. It will allow you to connect with new people by presenting yourself as knowledgeable within your field. Another feature that’s just as important as LinkedIn Answers, is the Groups. The Groups are simliar to the ones on Facebook and they allow to you interact with people with similar interests and quickly discover the most popular discussions in your professional groups. Having an active part in discussions in your groups help showcase your knowledge and allows you to interact with possible future connections. Anyway you can show you are knowledgeable in your area is a plus. If you have a wordpress blog that relates to your industry be sure to install the wordpress application that imports the feed into LinkedIn. One of your connections may notice something that catches their eye and head over to your site to find out more about you and your work.

Since the point of this post is to use LinkedIn to find work, I can’t forget about the portion of the website called Jobs. Keeping with the LinkedIn spirit, you are able to see any relation that you may already have to the jobs posted. If one of your 3rd Degree contacts post a job, you will know exactly who you need to talk to in order to get your foot in the door. This can be a huge advantage when compared to just blindly sending emails out with your profile or resume.

Finally a simple thing, but don’t forget to just search. Hopefully hiring managers are searching the site and coming across your killer profile but you can also find out who is hiring. The best case is getting to someone in the HR department or a new client via a connection you have, but if that isn’t possible you can still use LinkedIn to find someone inside the company to pass your resume or profile on. Nothing beats having you name mentioned from someone already on the inside. Also if you search and realize you have a connection that has worked at this company or with this client before, ask them for the inside scoop. They could have the key you’re looking for to land that killer job.

If you haven’t noticed a trend already, the key to using social media to get work is to be professional, engage with your network and community and use the tools that have been given to you.

If you’re a freelancer you should have a portfolio website and if you don’t for whatever reason you should be making that one of your most important projects to get done. You should have a place to show off how great you are. Over the weekend I came across a couple blogs that talked about some great steps for creating a better portfolio. I figured I would link them on here and just spread the word about making a better portfolio.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/26/10-steps-to-the-perfect-portfolio-website/

http://www.youthedesigner.com/2009/02/13/7-tips-for-improving-graphic-design-portfolios/

A couple of my favorite tips from these two posts are, keep the portfolio up to date and to use social networking websites. I try and make sure this website is updated at least once a month with new work and I always post a news update when this happens. I hope to update that more often soon, ideas are in the works. As for social networks they only help promote yourself more and allow you to meet interesting folks who do what you do. So those are just a couple of my favorite tips but they are all excellent steps that should be taken when building your portfolio. I for one know I need to think about these as well. One of the tips that I feel like I need take to heart is making the contact information easy to find. I have links at the bottom of my page to see all the social networks I am apart of, but a button to get to my contact information is below that. Personally I think I may have to re-work my navigation area and include a button. As both of these sites say your contact information should be “obvious and easy to access.”