Have you ever sat with someone who just talks and talks and never listens? Or have you ever caught yourself talking not to someone, but at them? There is a part of us that demands to be heard. At times, we just want to be validated – we want someone to agree and, if they don’t, we’ll say it again until they do.

But that’s not a conversation, is it?

To lead to something interesting, the sharing of ideas or really learning, we need real conversation. Real conversation requires that we listen at least as much as we talk. Not just nodding our head while we think of the next thing we want to say. We must engage. Connect. Understand.

For us both to benefit, we must really listen.

Film and television provides a great platform for those who like to talk at people. Many of us think this is how it works: people sit in front of a screen and we present our amazing vision. We bombard them with what we want them to see and hear.

But that’s all wrong. Really, it is a conversation.

I’m finding it is often people in preschool television who understand this best. Dora stops to listen to her audience. Elmo listens to children. Barney, whatever you (or I) may think of him, listens. They are all in conversation. Is it any wonder that children respond to these characters? Yes, technically when broadcast the reality is little more that ‘head nodding’ because your television cannot hear what your children are saying (yet) but the answers of so many children have been listened to, considered and often completely understood before that show was made.

For me, the best of children’s television (Sesame Street, for example) listens deeper and asks their audience what they need. The want and the need aren’t always the same thing but Sesame Street aims to ascertain and satisfy both in their conversations.

It has taken me a long time to really embrace this. It often goes against that part of us that demands to be heard. Just last week, for example, I was working on a Cosmo script that had a contentious story element and my first instinct was to ask myself what was truly important to me in the story. That was the right question but aimed at the wrong person. I needed to connect with my audience and engage in conversation. Having been through many excellent conversations with my audience up to this point, in this instance it was nothing more than a purely imagined exchange, which can be just fine if you do it with honesty and stop talking and start listening. A wonderful clarity comes from conversing with our audience, getting to know them and wanting to give them the best. It allows us to untangle what we’re making from our own ego.

Of course it is something we can apply well beyond preschool.

We can take a break from pushing what we want, our precious ‘vision’, and take a moment to listen to our audience. Try it. Try seeking out your audience or even just create them in your mind and ask them:

a) What do you want?

b) What do you need?

Then listen honestly. Consider. And respond appropriately.

It is a conversation.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, Children, Cosmo, writing

Voice recording for Cosmo begins today and we’ll be recording all week. I have been buried in the scripts to make sure they are nothing less than excellent and I am very much hoping I haven’t missed something. We will also be making decisions on our animation team this week and beginning to put together our systems and libraries for the upcoming production. So it is going to be a very busy week.

The busy times are a test.

Not really a test of our abilities to stay on top of things. Most of us who make shows have to have developed tight management systems, studio pipelines and tricks for dealing with many completely different jobs at once. Being able to keep up really is such an essential requirement that it just has to be a given or else you go and do something else for a living. And, for me, both writing and directing Fluffy Gardens (as I’m doing for Cosmo) taught me lot about juggling.

No, the real test when things get busy is keeping the most important person in your mind at every moment of production, during every decision: that child who, some day, will be sitting there watching what we have made.

Keep that person in mind at all times and it’s hard to go wrong.

Of course I’m hoping it will be more than just one child. Two or three at the very least…

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Monster Animation attended the IFTA Awards on Saturday night and, while Punky didn’t win, it was a great night and a testament to the quality of Irish productions right now. But that was a looooong ceremony. They don’t even televise the longest section – shame they can’t just do it in highlight form live. Still, we had lots of fun and congratulations to all the winners.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, Children, Cosmo, Punky, writing

I was giving a talk to the students of IADT last week and one of the pieces of advice I gave was to take advantage of every bit of creative freedom you are offered. You won’t always be offered much. But what if you’re given it all? What if you can do anything you want, with no limits? What happens?

You create the most amazingly creative piece of work ever?

Oddly, no. Not usually.

Instead what often happens is that we just do the same things we always do. We fall back on our old habits (often confusing them with instincts) because we have been given little reason to do otherwise. Being able to do anything and everything is a surefire way to achieve little but a complete lack of focus. It removes all challenge and, really, that’s no fun and it’s certainly not how we achieve our best work. We need our limits. It’s in how work within them or, often, how we challenge them that we find something incredibly interesting. Something that is as unexpected to us as it is to everyone else.

Some years ago, I became very aware of my bad drawing habits. At the same time, I was beginning to create a show. At the early stage of creation, every option was open. After all, at that point, it’s little more than an imagined concept – reality has not yet kicked in. So, in a sense, that was complete creative freedom. But every single one of my drawings looked the same. I had begun to realise the flaws of those bad habits and I needed a way to break out of them.

The answer lay not in freedom, but in limitation.

What I did was this – I drew with a computer mouse. I was so used to a pencil that my hand often went on autopilot, but to draw with a mouse? Well that was a challenge. My arm felt different, I felt a complete lack of control and the results I got were not good drawings. Not by a long shot. They were very crude. But they were different.

Those mouse drawings are what would become the residents of Fluffy Gardens. Refined, yes. But the core of who those characters were came from having to draw them with a mouse. Had I not imposed that restriction, I never would have found these characters.

Many years later, I would come to design Cosmo. Not with a mouse this time. But not with a fancy graphics tablet and huge computer screen either. No, instead all the early development work for Cosmo was drawn with my finger on an iPod Touch, with a screen just a couple of inches high. This image below is the first one that really defined what this show would look like. Building on a style I never would have found without those Fluffy Gardens limitations and now adding a new challenge…

When it came to translating this to a show that would have to fill a television screen, it was actually much harder than doodling them on the tiny screen to begin with. Backgrounds got busy, characters lost some of their charm and I had a terrible time with the colours. Mostly, seemingly, because I could choose any ones I wanted.

So I went back to the iPod but, this time, limited myself to pixels and very small colour palettes. Until I reached here…

Drawn one pixel at a time on a single layer, these images had what I was looking for in the show. They had the charm and they had the colours. And they would go on to form the basis for the design and background development. These limits gave me what I needed and yet they’re what creative freedom couldn’t give me.

They gave me Cosmo:

These particular limitations worked for my preschool aims, where simplicity is a must and yet often harder than it looks to achieve. Each project or creation could use whole different restrictions depending on the desired outcome. I guess the trick is to find a way to prevent ourselves just doing what we always do. And it goes beyond design, of course. When I think about how I have helped others on our shows get the best from their work, I find that comes down to limits too. No tweening in Flash, for example (tool of the devil, I tell you!). No elbow joints. Odd limitations at times and yet, all the while, I’m encouraging animators to surprise me. To use their freedom.

We need limits.

Perhaps real creative freedom is being able to pick and choose just what limits we will give ourselves and maybe, if we’re smart about it, we’ll end up restricting ourselves more and more until something exceptional breaks through.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, Cosmo, creative disobedience, design, Fluffy Gardens

I’ll be crewing up soon for Cosmo and Monster Animation has put out the call for animators. A few would-be applicants have been in touch on email or through twitter to ask for advice, for any tips on what I might be looking for or what we might need for the project. So I thought I might offer a few general tips that spring to mind. These all assume you can animate (Tip 0: Learn to animate) and so are tips based on what I would look for in an applicant, but they’re also just for people who want to work on the type of projects I work on or with the type of people I work with. I imagine most will work for any studio and even well beyond animation. So here we go…

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TIP 1: Be the person who gets in touch to find out what people are actually looking for.

Those who got in contact with me already have a head start. Because, firstly, I let them know what might help (not easy admittedly on Twitter at 140 characters) and, secondly, now I know their names and I’ll recognise them when I get to see their work. I have already filed those names in folders labelled ‘keen’ and ‘has initiative’. These are good folders to be in.

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TIP 2 : Know the project.

Know what it is you’re applying for. The truth is, many of us aren’t really looking for animators, as in people who just take scenes, look at the storyboards and make them move. We’re looking to build a creative team. Someone who really contributes to the project. That requires knowing the intended end result.

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TIP 3 : Be professional.

Getting into the ‘stating the obvious’ territory now, right? Sure, but I know from having made it through animation college myself that the working world is a whole different place and there is some adjustment that takes place. Get past that adjustment faster and you will do better. Be courteous, on time, do things when you say you’ll do them even for something as basic as sending an email. Proof read those mails too. Why does it matter? It’s all an indicator of where your internal quality control is set.

Oh and if you’re wondering if I take people straight out of college – yes, I do. I try not to fuel that ‘you need experience to get experience’ paradox, and I’ve had some fantastic people straight from college in the past.

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TIP 4: Don’t be too professional.

We’re not in one those CV/Resume grilling-interview kind of businesses. At least, I’m not. I make cartoons. They’re fun. A big part of fitting into a creative team is personality. If your guard is up and you’re so well-rehearsed with speeches about making your deadlines and what made you want to be an animator (to save lives!), it makes it harder for me to know what you’re really like. By the way, this is why industry events and nights out are fantastic. You get in front of people and they’ll quickly see you who you are. That counts for a lot. So, if you’re in Ireland, get to those Pegbar events – they’re really good.

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TIP 5: Show what you can do.

Make it easy for people to see what you’re good at. Make everything accessible – online at one click. Try to keep a showreel short, so we’ll make it to the end. Bear in mind the needs of the project. If we’re looking for Flash animators, we want to see some Flash animation. But also try to mix things up a little. Keep it varied because you just never know what might interest someone. If someone tells you a showreel or portfolio needs lots of a particular something, what they mean is they want to see lots of that particular something. You can’t be sure everyone wants to see the same thing. Variety is good.

Tip for students – the quicker you replace that student work the better. Even with really talented hard-working people, the nature of college seems to create a similarity in projects that can wear people down when they’ve just watched twenty showreels. Whether paid professional work or personal projects, aim to replace that student work quickly.

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TIP 6: Enjoy it.

Animation is fun. We make cool stuff. You’re not in it for the money (there are far easier ways to make money), not in it for the glory (few animators become celebs, right?). You’re likely doing it because you love to animate. Or you love to tell stories. Or love playing with fun characters. Or love the idea of giving something really good to children. Don’t lose that. Sure, there are difficulties and every studio has its quirks, not everywhere suits everyone but don’t let that drag you down. We’re going to make children smile. We’re going to touch their lives in a positive way, especially making a show like Cosmo. This is important. A big responsibility, sure. But a great one and one that should be fun, exciting and full of creativity for all of us.

So enjoy it.

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Without getting into the technicalities of the actual animation process (and there are lots – if anyone ever wants my personal tips on those, see Tip 1), these are the six tips I would give to anyone wanting to work with me on any projects and I’m sure they apply to many, if not most, other places too. To you Irish animators, you’re in a great place right now with an insane amount of work going on. This is fantastic and it means you can pay special attention to finding the right project or studio, rather than just accepting what’s available.

As for me, I’m excited about taking on some new crew members for Cosmo and I wish you all well, no matter where you’re working or where you’re applying for work.

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Tags: animation, Cosmo, How To, Monster Animation

Cosmo is go! Monster Animation has officially closed the financing on my new show, Cosmo, and we’ll be moving into production early in the new year. A huge thanks to everyone who helped pull it together, especially the Irish Film Board and RTE. I couldn’t be happier to be bringing this animation show to children. It’s one that will entertain, make children laugh, have them up singing and dancing. On top of all of that, it will introduce children, boys and girls alike, to the Solar System. A group of absolutely amazing planets, especially that little blue one we call home.

Who knows, maybe this show will lead to a whole new generation of astronomers, scientists and more. At the very least, it will spark questions and a new interest and understanding of just where we live and our planetary neighbours.

And it’s going to be fun all the way through!

I have been developing this show for about two years now. It has felt like an epic journey already, but it’s one that’s just beginning. We’re going to be putting together a fantastic team at Monster Animation and giving everything we have to this show. 2012 is going to be a good year.

You’ll be hearing more about it soon but here’s a little look at what to expect…

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, Children, Cosmo