Redesigning Reality: Ryan Summers on Obsession, Vision & the Future of Creative Work

What happens when creativity becomes a way to reimagine how we experience the world?

In this episode of The Developing Life Podcast, Ryan Summers — whose career spans Pacific Rim, Person of Interest, Blizzard, and Warner Brothers — opens up about his journey from chemical engineering to motion design, the lessons of resilience after being laid off, and why obsession, voice, and vision are the true moats for creatives in an age of AI and rapid change.

Together with host Heather Crank, Ryan explores:

• How to turn uncertainty into a superpower.
• Why input matters more than output for artists.
• The aversion to decision-making, and how bold choices fuel growth.
• Why curated, human-crafted experiences will always outshine trends.

This episode is about finding your voice in a world that never stops shifting.

Perfect for thoughtful creatives, lifelong learners, and anyone who believes design is more than what we see — it’s what we feel.

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Mentioned in this episode

Ryan's Linkedin | https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrryansummers/

Keys & Curves (Substack) – by Ryan Summers
https://www.keysandcurves.com/

School of Motion – premier motion-design training
https://www.schoolofmotion.com/

ShotDeck – cinematic HD screenshot reference library
https://shotdeck.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:12:13
Unknown
Welcome to the Developing Life podcast, people. Tick tick tick.

00:00:12:13 - 00:00:38:03
Unknown
What if every space you entered told a story and made you feel like you belonged inside it? That's the question Ryan Summers has been answering for more than two decades. He's made the impossible real by blending cinematic craft with human connection, whether through a breathtaking hotel lobby that plays like a scene from a movie, a flagship store that transport you to another world, or digital spaces that seem almost tangible.

00:00:38:05 - 00:01:05:12
Unknown
His career spans the high octane visuals of Pacific Rim and Person of Interest to brand experiences for Warner Brothers Canada Goose and Blizzard, each one designed to leave an impression that last. His skill set is one honed through curiosity, bold creative risks, and a deep respect for the people who step into the worlds he builds what truly ties it all together is Ryan's belief that the best work isn't just seen, it's felt.

00:01:05:14 - 00:01:16:03
Unknown
Today with our host, Heather Krank, we'll step inside a career built on bold choices, world class craft, and a passion for connecting people through the power of story.

00:01:16:03 - 00:01:26:05
Unknown
Ryan Summers, welcome to the Developing Life podcast. Heather, did you write that? Because I feel like I feel like this is like, this is your life. Like you're going to just bring in people from my past?

00:01:26:07 - 00:01:50:03
Unknown
Like it was like that was ridiculous. Like way more than I deserve. But thank you very much. I thought that was crazy. You're welcome. Devon actually wrote that. So you can. Devon, I will pay you to to write the next thing somebody has to say about me. Oh. So, Ryan, I'm so glad to see you. I think it's been about 7 or 8 years since we last actually met in person.

00:01:50:03 - 00:02:11:06
Unknown
Well, yes, virtually. So I'm thrilled to be able to ask you a lot of questions. There's a lot going on in the world. But what I want to start with first is some of your history. Sure. So you begin your career in science and then somehow you ended up in motion and animation. How did that happen? Oh, man, it's so crazy.

00:02:11:06 - 00:02:27:17
Unknown
I mean, I have to say thank you before we get going, because that was the when we actually met in person and was for the Bend Design conference, was one of my favorite conferences to go to. And you gave me my my first opportunity to actually, like, get on stage and talk about like, not just my career, but like opinions on just like the industry.

00:02:27:17 - 00:02:43:06
Unknown
And that was a very formative thing for me. So just, you know, thank you very much. It kind of changed the arc for me quite a bit. But one of the things we, we talked about that I think what was the title? It was like the Artist Guide, the Scientists Guide, Artist Guide to the Scientific Method. Yes.

00:02:43:09 - 00:03:00:20
Unknown
Right. And I remember yes, yes. And it was it was great because I was really struggling to figure out what to talk about because I hate talking about myself, but I love talking about people's journeys. And you kind of forced me to think back like, yeah, I went to school for chemical engineering for a lot of reasons, good and bad.

00:03:00:21 - 00:03:26:13
Unknown
And I had kind of like this just very like mid, mid college career discovery of, like, oh my God, you can do the things you love for a living. And that might sound right now, it's probably sound stupid now. But like back then, there weren't a lot of places where you could actually figure out, like, oh, if you drew or if you'd like grabbing a camera and filming things, or you thought animation was neat unless you lived in LA or a couple other places, there wasn't even like a pathway or a peer to talk to you about it.

00:03:26:15 - 00:03:52:04
Unknown
And I had a lot of different factors that kind of pushed me towards doing something I was good at with science. But you're you're pushing me to do the talk was great because I really realized that a lot of the things that formed my ideas of art were based on, like training, like rigorous training, and like a career where I was aiming to be a scientist, you know, like powers of observation and testing and reporting and creating this cycle of like a feedback loop of what your obsessions are.

00:03:52:06 - 00:04:14:21
Unknown
And then you you take them apart, you figure out the different materials, and then it's science. The goal is to figure out how something works and it reassemble in a different way and test it. And in a lot of ways, I never knew I wanted to be a creative director, working in like, the creative arts industries. That has helped me so much to look at almost any problem with that same scientific point of view of like, there's a problem, there's a solution, there are different elements.

00:04:14:21 - 00:04:44:12
Unknown
You take them apart and rebuild them to try to like that's basically pop culture. Like we have all these things in a mix and you basically nothing's new, but the remix is the new thing. So it shocked me actually having to write that, that speech and sit down and talk about it out loud. How much I think one of the things I said during the talk was that I'm really happy to feel like I don't view those as negatives or opposing forces, especially now, eight years later, in a world where everything is binary opposition and fighting with each other, it was really, really kind of fun to go back and watch that speech to

00:04:44:12 - 00:05:11:22
Unknown
be like, I feel like that's one thing I said that still rings true to me even more now is that they're just two different prisms or viewpoints looking for the same truth, but from opposite ends of the spectrum, and they actually complement each other really well. And there is a natural path for someone who has a scientific training to be an artist or somebody with an artistic bent to learn something from science, and that has, especially in the last 3 or 4 years in my life, has benefited me so much as I go a little bit away from the on the box making.

00:05:12:00 - 00:05:31:21
Unknown
Like. I like to say that in the creative industry there's three phases. There's three things or modalities you can think of. You can either be in the lab, you can be in the factory, or you can be in the mind of your customer or your audience. And I think when you said that, I realized, like, yeah, being in the lab and being with the person who's using it are actually the places that my weird past has become a superpower.

00:05:31:21 - 00:05:49:10
Unknown
As much as I love making stuff that's so still like, super exciting, but, it kind of being able to be forced to have that, that thought with myself in that conversation kind of created the arc and made everything make sense. So I guess that's a double. Is that a double? Thank you. Thank you twice. Like it was amazing to kind of revisit that again recently.

00:05:49:11 - 00:06:18:07
Unknown
Thank you Ryan. Okay. So you've moved from you've not moved. Maybe you incorporated your scientific background into animation and you're moving along your career, moving into creative direction more into business. And then I see your Substack post, which if you're not following Ryan, please check out Keys and Curves. I see your Substack post and you've been laid off and I'm like, oh my God, how is this possible?

00:06:18:07 - 00:06:53:21
Unknown
So how are you doing? Yeah. How did that go? Thank you. It's weird to say wonderful, and I feel so much better for having it had happened. Because it's not, it's it's not knocking down anybody who's been through it because we know, I call it. I call motion design a field now, less of an industry, but any kind of creative field right now where you're working professionally, it feels it feels special to be able to have experience that that other similar thing that I feel like a lot of people are going through it now, whether it's the uncertainty before a layoff or an actual kind of surprise layoff, whatever that might be.

00:06:53:23 - 00:07:10:20
Unknown
Because I feel like I have this, like crazy sense of optimism. I feel like it gives me a lot more capability to be like it's founded in truth, because I literally went through the worst thing you could possibly go through at one of the worst times you could go through. And I'm on the other side of it, still figuring things out, as we probably all will always, but I feel a lot stronger for it.

00:07:10:20 - 00:07:24:10
Unknown
But yeah, no, I, I think it's probably two months ago. It was like two days before me first, so whatever that would be, I got a text message from my owner saying I need to talk, and I knew exactly what that meant. And then it was like, just a basic, like, hey, it's not you, it's us.

00:07:24:10 - 00:07:42:17
Unknown
We have to lay you off. Business has been slow and we have been able to figure it out. So rather than bringing you, keeping you around for, you know, uncertainty, we're going to let you go. And I think for about two hours, I went through every kind of whatever those seven steps, the seven steps are like, I was shocked, I was angry, I was deadly afraid.

00:07:42:19 - 00:08:01:18
Unknown
I was questioning whether it was it was actually happening. And then I think about two hours into I just snapped. It's like, let's go to work and go to work meant the thing that I've been preaching, I do a lot of like, like coaching and anybody listening this can can get open office hours times with me. I just started using things that I've been applying to other people to myself.

00:08:01:18 - 00:08:16:07
Unknown
And I was like, now this is where I really get to test if what I've been saying is true. Or useful at all. But I really started testing my network and relying on that, and I started doubling down on. It's not necessarily about the final pixels that you provide, it's about the other things that you provide.

00:08:16:09 - 00:08:33:11
Unknown
I'm a big proponent that every artist, the inputs are, are an order of magnitude more valuable than your outputs. And a lot of people get very mad at me because they they hold on to the, the making as the thing that defines their identity as an artist. But I really do think, especially in the the pressures that we're now receiving.

00:08:33:11 - 00:09:02:14
Unknown
And I'm sure with you we will talk about AI today. But I the economic pressures that have nothing to do with what we do, but we have to deal with, the geopolitical considerations, the changing value of creativity, what brands need, all that stuff. The moat that protects you as an artist is here. Not necessarily your hand or your pen or the thing that you used to render with and, I feel like that's slowly become a mission for me for the last ten years of, like, trying to really reinforce to people that what you bring to the table isn't just what you make.

00:09:02:14 - 00:09:27:16
Unknown
It doesn't. It's not the only thing that I that is your identity or your definition. I think that's super important. Especially with AI in the way that it's evolving and the trajectory that we seem to be on. AI, your brain is going to be your biggest tool and your biggest asset. Right now there are a lot of people who are like me.

00:09:27:16 - 00:09:54:20
Unknown
The the creative industry is up and down, and we're in work and out of work, and people are trying to jump into this industry out of school. And everybody's confused. Everybody's struggling. From your perspective, what advice would you give people going through this yourself on how to navigate the uncertainty and sort of the turbulent, industry or field we're in?

00:09:54:22 - 00:10:17:14
Unknown
I love that question because I feel like it's it's something that everybody, for every generation has had to deal with. I think it's very peculiar now because we live in a time we were joking about this right before we went live. There's never been a bigger supply of training. There's never been a greater range of tools. But I really feel like both the training tools don't actually speak to the things that most artists need the most and have always needed.

00:10:17:14 - 00:10:32:22
Unknown
But especially now, like I, I have had so many conversations and I've actually had to, like, privately reach out to people who maybe on LinkedIn or somewhere else, complain openly, like I've spent my whole life being an artist. Why do I have to also be a business? And I will say, like, right now that is the one place, right?

00:10:33:00 - 00:10:52:13
Unknown
I kind of hold the line of like, if you are working professionally, even if what you think is you want is to like be a freelancer, and you're saying that like what you're saying is you want a job, and at that point it means that you're giving up a quite a bit of control and a lot of different things in terms of developing your voice, your vision, your obsessions, your your base of what makes you you and I don't.

00:10:52:14 - 00:11:13:14
Unknown
It doesn't mean that I'm saying, like everybody needs to be a freelancer, but I do think you need to start, especially if you're coming out of school, because very few schools teach you anything about entrepreneurship or business or and not even like the rudimentary gritty details. Just the the psychological mindset of saying I have to be able to demonstrate how I can fill up a blank screen or page every day to get paid, and then wake up the next day and do it again.

00:11:13:16 - 00:11:38:05
Unknown
That is a deep set of like psychological entrepreneurship business that has nothing to do with, like if you need to learn Houdini arrive or anything. A lot of my advice is like, spend as much time while you're in school building your networks, identifying your superpowers, understanding what your personality is, being able to evoke what your brand is as a creative as much as it's a dirty word.

00:11:38:05 - 00:11:54:11
Unknown
And we all hate it and it sucks. Brand is really important now. Like to be able to cut through the noise. If there are $5, I can give you the best example. A few years ago I had to hire two artists and I think it was. I had to look through 442 demo reels in two weeks. Oh my God.

00:11:54:11 - 00:12:06:11
Unknown
And I'm a fan of every anybody who sends me a reel like right now. Like it will send at the end. I'll tell you the link to be able to like if you want to reach out to me and do an open it off. I look at more reels. I think I look at them as real as possible, at least in motion design.

00:12:06:13 - 00:12:21:15
Unknown
And I am a fan of every single reel that shows up. But I have to tell you, the reality of that world is when you have to look at 100 reels while you're trying to eat lunch at your desk, you're very quickly going from rooting for everybody to being like, give me a reason to skip. Give me a reason to move on to the next level.

00:12:21:17 - 00:12:39:19
Unknown
And I at like for me, it's like I was really almost like, like repulsed by how cutthroat I had to be in those conversations. I'm just like looking at reels, at the end of the day of looking at 442 demo reels, while we were looking for middleweight animator and a middleweight designer, we only reached out to 12 of them.

00:12:39:21 - 00:13:03:06
Unknown
Wow. Seriously, because the the lack of specificity, the lack of understanding who they were and what they were applying for, like our middleweight job description was pretty specific. Shockingly, the amount of people that had no way for me to even contact them, no, between their demo reel and their resume, just not even having like an email or a link that was working to a website.

00:13:03:08 - 00:13:18:07
Unknown
That's business stuff that has nothing to do with being an artist or your your artistic style or your look. So that's getting really into the weeds, but, and I will say, the two people we ended up hiring were both people who had previous relationships with somebody at the company. It came as a personal recommendation. So what does that mean?

00:13:18:07 - 00:13:42:03
Unknown
Networking, branding. So, and if I was getting super, super granular and super specific, there's anything I would take away about somebody coming out of school or someone struggling to find the next job. Focus on three very specific things across your entire persona, across your real, your website, your work. The way you talk on LinkedIn. If you use LinkedIn, how you speak on social media, how you enter into like a real world conference.

00:13:42:03 - 00:14:01:06
Unknown
If we were all hanging out together, try to figure out how to be the most brief, most specific, most memorable version of yourself. Those three things, those get very, very granular. And we can, you know, talk about this further but brief, specific and memorable. How do you do that as somebody coming out of school, someone's work for as long as you and I have both worked, you know, like it's a constant question.

00:14:01:06 - 00:14:22:20
Unknown
You have to kind of always kind of evaluate, like almost like like like quarterly basis, like a company, like a publicly traded company has to report to their shareholders. Here's how we're doing these things. It's something you should be doing yourself all the time. So basically what you're saying is one, you should probably do a self audit every so often to make sure your voice hasn't changed, update your skills.

00:14:22:21 - 00:14:44:00
Unknown
How would you recommend somebody go about developing their voice, their voice or their brand? Can you give me three recommendations? Yeah. So I always say I break into those three things obsessions, voice and vision. Obsessions being the stuff you came to the world of motion design or animation or school before you ever got there, your vision.

00:14:44:06 - 00:14:59:04
Unknown
What do you want to see out in the world? What is it that you would do if you weren't getting paid or if you have to stay up until two in the morning to achieve? So what's your vision for the world and yourself in it? And then your voice. How do you how do you express that? You express it through, through LinkedIn post.

00:14:59:05 - 00:15:22:09
Unknown
You express it through personal projects. Do you express it through organizing people like this and having a podcast? Like, what are those things? Those are the three things I tell all the time obsessions, voice and vision. Because it's kind of like past, present and future as well. True. And and you treat those like a job, right? And you track those however you feel like, like I have a whiteboard that has all the stuff that I, I'm trying to keep track of.

00:15:22:11 - 00:15:44:01
Unknown
If I wasn't moving right now, I have like literally like a string of wire with all the stuff that I'm working on. So I can just one big thing I would recommend to people is get get out of digital in terms of reminding yourself like your goals are. And those three things, if it's a whiteboard, if it's if it's a whatever, it might be like being able to physically surround yourself with like your past or present new future goals.

00:15:44:03 - 00:16:00:03
Unknown
Has another like kind of tactical thing because it's I love digital tools and I'm always trying new to do list and Evernote and like, raycast just got released for window. Like I love those things, but those are things that like to keep the happy accidents and the correlations from occurring because you're not looking at them. You're not.

00:16:00:03 - 00:16:17:13
Unknown
You don't see them when you're tired. You're not looking, you're definitely not looking at those things when you're bored. Right? Or, you know, those are purpose driven interfaces. So they only allow certain kinds of interactions. But when you can just have it around and you're like, I don't want to think about this assignment. And then you look and you're like, why did they even print that out and say, oh.

00:16:17:13 - 00:16:37:21
Unknown
And then you see another thing from a totally different part of your brain out in front of you, create a space that allows for those kind of sometimes I feel like it's a little nuts, like it's like in every murder mystery, they always have that guy with the red string and he's got the board in there. But like, in some ways it is taking your brain and putting it out into a physical space where you can kind of make those connections.

00:16:37:23 - 00:17:00:06
Unknown
Yeah. I don't know if those three things make sense to people, but that's where I try to live in. It makes perfect sense. And also, we're kind of hard wired physically, through the way that we move and that even using your left hand versus your right hand that activates certain centers in your brain were so all about optimization, which I love in the computer, but it really does not have the same physicality.

00:17:00:06 - 00:17:24:18
Unknown
And like you said, outcomes of doing things with your hands. Yeah, absolutely. So how would you advise people if you're a little bit shy or introverted, which a lot of us are who work in this industry? To get the courage to get out there, have a voice and, you know, be present so people can see them.

00:17:24:19 - 00:17:43:05
Unknown
I mean, I'm that way, right? Like, I'm sure it sounds stupid for me to say that now, but, like, when I was coming out of school, this is something I talk about the speech like I couldn't do this, I couldn't talk, I couldn't, like, publicly. Like if it was me and one other person I'd find, but I actually had to go to like take like a speech class three, three semesters in a row.

00:17:43:05 - 00:18:00:23
Unknown
And I found I was very lucky to find someone who identified some of the issues and was like, come back and audit the class. I know how to fix this, but it's going to take reps. It's going to take time. I feel like it's so weird because it's like with everything being digital and everything being remote and everything being possible, we're like somehow simultaneously connected more than we ever were.

00:18:00:23 - 00:18:15:17
Unknown
But also wildly disconnected. Right? So like even just doing stuff like this is amazing because it's like I can see faces, I can hear voices, but most of the time you just live in slack or you live in your social media platform of choice, and you just do your work and occasionally you take a zoom call with a client.

00:18:15:17 - 00:18:37:22
Unknown
But like for me, if I was introverted, I would try to find ways to. Well, even before you go into physical spaces, I would try to find ways that aren't shining a spotlight on me because I feel like sometimes that's where it comes from. Like, I mean, or not worthy or my questions might sound dumb, or if I if it's identified as me, I would try to find more times.

00:18:37:22 - 00:19:02:11
Unknown
Just like there's this term of the sub. I'm gonna use a professional wrestling term. But there's this whole idea in professional wrestling about the people who are the most valuable, are the ones who can make other people look good, and it's called giving the shine. There's a moment in almost every wrestling match where the bad guy, the the bad guy in the match gives the shine to the younger good guy to make, like, how could this person do this to this person?

00:19:02:13 - 00:19:20:00
Unknown
Like, how could and it's call you and it's basically like reverse psychology of being like reverse an expectation. So I, I've always tried to demonstrate kind of like humility by sharing or spotlighting people that are people I would like to get to know, or people who I just admire in a non transactional way, like not asking for anything.

00:19:20:00 - 00:19:33:22
Unknown
So like back in the day when Twitter was actually a place you'd want to spend time at, and it wasn't just about fighting each other, I feel like I was able to make a lot of connections just by saying, like, I found this dope thing. Anybody else think this thing is dope? Can we find the person who made this and ask them how they did something?

00:19:34:00 - 00:19:57:05
Unknown
And that's where like my email newsletter, like that's what occurs is basically a natural extension of, just trying to find an audience. People are interested in stuff. I want to know how it got made and just sharing and identifying. Like, I really think at least in the field of emotions, like we we hurt so much by not having like a side of record, like my oceanographer used to be a part of the title when they were healthy and vibrant, and there was a place everybody checked every morning.

00:19:57:06 - 00:20:15:13
Unknown
Don't have those. Again, we're wildly connected. We can see and feel more things than we've ever been able to, but we're so disconnected that because there's so much we don't even talk about it. Like, to me, it's so wild in In motion design that we don't have a place where we celebrate and elevate and spotlight people as a as a monoculture of motion design.

00:20:15:13 - 00:20:31:01
Unknown
Right? Like either people don't care. They haven't been trained how to care, identified, or they're just so busy they don't care. They just don't think it's important. But I think that that's the first time that the first sign that, like a field or an industry is in trouble is when they don't actually celebrate their own work amongst themselves.

00:20:31:03 - 00:20:52:11
Unknown
And I don't think we do that to any, any degree anymore. Oh, that's that's a really good point. Do you think the industry is shrinking? No, I really don't. That's where I feel like it's so weird. It's like I feel like that's why I stopped calling an industry. I think the field of motion design, which includes in my in my definition of it, that includes animation, that includes video games that like motion.

00:20:52:11 - 00:21:12:18
Unknown
So to me, I think it's so weird right now because we're all feeling the new pressures of the world as it's changing. But I think the need and requirement and questions and curiosities of what it is we do at the core and then at the final pixel at the core of what we do as like people who make things and move them and breathe life, then the needs for expanding so fast we can't even identify it yet.

00:21:12:20 - 00:21:31:19
Unknown
Like I stopped calling, then I stopped calling them like screens. I just started calling things canvases, which is where I started going into experience. Design is like the need to take a brand and make it move and give it life. The need to take a concept and explain it. Not in a 32nd explainer video that sits on YouTube kind of thing.

00:21:31:19 - 00:21:57:18
Unknown
God, right? Right. Like like that is so like like I feel like people have to kind of accept and understand the fact that, like, anything that's new is like a brand new car that comes off the, the, the lot when it's sold, like the value for something brand new. The second everybody knows how to do it, or there's a tool that kind of modifies it, its value is almost automatically cut in half, and then it's just a timer for how long that like, not that long ago, explainer videos were the thing that got so many people in the school of motion to learn how to move stuff and use AfterEffects just enough.

00:21:57:18 - 00:22:16:01
Unknown
And it was a cottage industry and then it filled. But those tools, those abilities communicate those fundamentals of design and animation, that value has never gone away. It's just, where's a new place that needs that? And the those those things are coming online and changing all the time and expanding, it's just the way you got trained in school to do something.

00:22:16:01 - 00:22:38:09
Unknown
And the value that was prescribed to that final pixel output will always diminish. And that's why I keep on like going back to being thing. Don't build your identity and the way you position yourself based on your output in your final pixel, because that will wither and diminish. Build it around how you get to those final pixels, and what makes you and your thought process unique.

00:22:38:11 - 00:22:52:21
Unknown
That's not saying it really has to be a creative director, but the way you talk about your life as a working professional, that's what I would do. Like I had a great example of somebody reach out to me yesterday and they're like, I've been working in broadcast for ten years. I know that that's shrinking. Should I go on to Disney?

00:22:52:21 - 00:23:18:07
Unknown
Should I learn rive? Should I go back to school to do this? Should I just quit? And I was like, those are all the wrong things to be thinking about. You have these amazing skills of like, what is it that you did in broadcast? Were you able to think in, think in systems and create toolkits for a whole team to be able to create stuff that's rapidly, you know, malleable at the last second, were you able to create, stuff that reacts to the world re able to to take somebody who has a question.

00:23:18:07 - 00:23:37:08
Unknown
I have a show and it's about a murder mystery and it needs to look different from these five. I don't know how to do that. And you made title sequences that did that. Guess what? Every challenge or brand in the world that has five other competitors that use the same brand color, that have the same key benefits, they need you, but you are not identifying and positioning yourself and speaking to those people in a way for them to find you.

00:23:37:10 - 00:24:01:02
Unknown
So I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's a it's like a constant battle I have all the time. It's like you have so much more value than the thing. You're so great again, lab factory mind of a have an audience or a client. Most of us are only tripling down and positioning on factory. So people are talking about the lab, are talking about the way we approach the mind of the of our audience too.

00:24:01:04 - 00:24:24:15
Unknown
So taking all that into consideration, where do you think the industry is going? I think just the very nature of what brand like, if we're seeing motion design equals animation for advertising, which I don't think is the full some of it, if we're just talking about that portion of it, I think the very nature of brand is being tested and questioned.

00:24:24:17 - 00:24:52:00
Unknown
Like when you go to a website, when you go to a brand's website, like let's say Adidas, and the biggest growth that they're having is Adidas build something that allows you to generate an image using whatever tool they may say is generated. They're not going to get in that conversation, but maybe it maybe it's AI, maybe you built it and you can create an entire, essentially almost like mini personal campaign for your own stuff, but it just happens to be facilitated by ideas.

00:24:52:00 - 00:25:12:00
Unknown
And I'll put the little three stripes on it somewhere. What does a brand. Because you're disintegrating everything. I used to make a brand before. We're going to tightly control what the messaging is about. Our new stuff that also remembers the brand equity of the last 25 years. And now you're just saying, like, hey, we'll print a shirt for you, like Zazzle, but we just got to make sure that the Adidas logo is on there.

00:25:12:02 - 00:25:33:00
Unknown
The very question of what makes a brand a brand is kind of being unraveled. We have the ability to help as people who do animation for advertising, the thought process that we give away, the pitching that we do, the deep thought, the looking into the, the like, the culture as it is today and trying to predict maybe 2 or 3 months into the future because we're working on so many different things.

00:25:33:00 - 00:25:54:16
Unknown
We don't work inside one silo. That just does one thing that has so much value that's not going to go away. So again, I would just say like it's it's finding ways to take those three things obsession, voice and vision and put it at the front part of whatever you're saying, like, here's why you should come and work for it with studio X on your campaign or your explainer video or your sass service.

00:25:54:16 - 00:26:16:12
Unknown
Because we have this viewpoint and experience and knowledge that other people don't, because that's a moat. That's a moat. You can defend in a world full of anybody can make anything at any time. Yeah. Well, okay. Well why how what's the connection to the past? What's the thing I see in the future that I'm predicting? Right. Like, it's weird how it's like, I hate these words, but their true taste and instinct are the moat against all this stuff.

00:26:16:15 - 00:26:39:05
Unknown
So true. But those words are so emotionally charged that I don't use them. I say obsession, voice and vision. So I think those are a little bit more human. We all have stuff we're obsessed about. There's all stuff. When we were kids were like, I love Voltron and F1 racing and McDonald's, right? Or whatever it might be. So everybody's everybody has a unique recipe that got them to the stage to say, I want to be a working artist, live with those, connect to those, understand why.

00:26:39:07 - 00:26:55:14
Unknown
If you find something you love, like for me, what I love is finding the journey for someone to get to the point that they're identified. I've had, like, what makes David Fincher, David Fincher, what makes Ash Thorp, Ash Thorp? I want to go to the three orders back of like, they don't even know why they like it. Like Ash Thorp loves, loves Akira.

00:26:55:15 - 00:27:13:06
Unknown
Okay, well, the guy who made Akira loved some things, and those guys and women loved other things that have nothing to do with the final pixel you see coming from ash. That's where your recipe lies, and that's your competitive advantage. When everybody can conjure up anything and I will, they'll never going to think of the thing I'm going to think of.

00:27:13:11 - 00:27:32:11
Unknown
And I also have these hand skills that they're never going to be able to then combine it in ways that an AI tool will not allow you to do. Right. Like, I again, I don't want to make this whole conversation, but I feel like people are not like we said, where are the classes and the thought leaders that give you the training to really refine those things?

00:27:32:11 - 00:27:54:05
Unknown
Your obsession, your voice, your vision. Because that's what for your art schools used to do. You went away for four years to understand, define and refine those things, and you come out fully formed as an artist who then can be used in a lot of different ways by creative directors and brands. There's got to be a way to connect back to that, but it doesn't mean you have to go to a four year school.

00:27:54:07 - 00:28:15:15
Unknown
I worked at School of Motion for three years. I have a very, very strong opinions about walking away with $150,000 in debt, you know, before you ever get started. Right? But those are things I would love to see more people talking about an argument and having podcast about. So it's going to be interesting because right now the whole educational system is really struggling and is under fire.

00:28:15:17 - 00:28:41:22
Unknown
So I'm going to be curious and I wonder what your thoughts are as schools are having trouble with funding and staying afloat, and staying relevant. I see a lot of schools are just a little bit behind, and it's sort of their albatross. Where should people go to train right now? I mean, I still think like like if you had the time and the inclination of the money, like, I would never say like, don't go to Artcenter.

00:28:41:22 - 00:28:57:02
Unknown
I think there's some people that are my peers that are like, that would rally against that or whatever Scad or whatever, like, I mean, if you have the means and it doesn't hurt you, there's amazing people there that are going to be able to teach you amazing things. And again, like we were saying, you have that amazing time of like having four classes the same semester.

00:28:57:02 - 00:29:17:05
Unknown
They're totally unrelated that have these connections that you start to identify and rally around. And like, there's nothing wrong with that. I, I also know there's a lot of people who can't afford that or don't even have that anywhere near them, and they're just relying on YouTube to teach them. Right? You know, like that. I think it's it goes to I'll invoke his name like I do it every, every time, every class.

00:29:17:05 - 00:29:35:23
Unknown
Like when I was working with Cameron El Toro, he would always say this thing or it's like all anybody ever wants to ingest is eye candy. He's like, but my job is to give them eye protein, like your diet. Like whatever it is, your diet is like like whatever you're you're you're consuming. You can only it's like the people who say, you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time around.

00:29:36:00 - 00:30:03:20
Unknown
Then I think as an artist, you're some of the five five places or feeds or sources of inspiration. You know that you spend the most time around. Evaluate that, like evaluate that. Like, what is it like? Are you looking at photographers like, I think Kat is on a call or is on here right now. She's an amazing creative director that I work with at Sourasky, and we're working on this project that is, about a location in the 1830s, and we're pulling references from all kinds of crazy places.

00:30:03:20 - 00:30:28:17
Unknown
We're pulling Japanese street photographers, we're pulling painters from the Renaissance period. We're pulling, you know, movies that have nothing to do with the time or the place that it's at. But we're finding an emotional core that matches what we're trying to evoke from the viewer. I don't know if this answers anything you're asking, but I feel like I feel like it's it's like when you go to school, you spend a lot of time just focusing on yourself and not like the end audience.

00:30:28:23 - 00:30:47:00
Unknown
I think when you're living in like, a creative arts industry, you spent so much time thinking about the audience or the client that you don't think about yourself. And I feel like the answer is normally like if you spend a lot of time in one space, afford yourself the ability to spend some time in the other space and have those be kind of in conversation with each other.

00:30:47:02 - 00:30:59:00
Unknown
I know I feel that all the time. I don't know if Kat feels this way, like sometimes we spend so much time thinking about what the client needs that we forget that they came to us because for the most part, they don't really know what they need or they're looking for us to add something or change something that.

00:30:59:02 - 00:31:23:06
Unknown
Otherwise they would just use their in-house branding. Right? Like that's why they would come out to a place like us. But if you're not feeding that and cultivating and questioning yourself, you're going to lose that. Like it's like going to the gym. It's a muscle. You have to continually just, like, develop and build. So if you're asking me personally, like, I will spend a lot of time like I have like 5 or 6 places I'll go, but like, I will, I will spend a lot of time.

00:31:23:08 - 00:31:41:17
Unknown
There's a really cool, it's kind of like Pinterest without all of, like, the like and shit ification of, of, like, modern apps. It's called cosmos. I think it's cosmos. And they pull. Yeah, there's a lot of these new like smaller little like Micro Focus inspiration engines that are early enough now that they're just like back what the old day was like.

00:31:41:17 - 00:32:05:08
Unknown
Like what? It was just like, here's a cool site. I, I can send you those and we can share, but like, there's just a lot of places that are, like, lightly curated inspiration sources. I also I don't have them here with me, but I got these little, these little 16 by nine, like, whatever, post-it notes, and I actually go to there's a lot of them now, but there's a place called Shot Deck that, the DP of Joker.

00:32:05:08 - 00:32:23:00
Unknown
He's done a bunch of other movies. He basically went to all the studios and licensed for fully licensed, like Screengrabs from hundreds of feature films. But they are tagged by all kinds of crazy things, like what camera lens was used, what color palette. And you can go down this really fun, like rabbit hole if you're like, okay, you know what?

00:32:23:02 - 00:32:41:23
Unknown
I'm not really good at doing establishing shots, establishing shot Western. And then I just fill up a page and then you can click one and then you can say like shots like this or palettes like this or lenses like this. And I literally just take like the dumbest, the dumbest drawing utensils. I can like really thick fat markers and like, just like a one color, like grayscale tone.

00:32:42:01 - 00:32:59:23
Unknown
And I'll just like, sit here while I'm drinking my coffee in the morning and listen to music. And I'll just do like ten really quick studies on just these, like, everything's ephemeral, like throwaway paper, but like tools that cannot be very like noodly and detailed just to be like, cool, I need to free my brain from, like, the stuff we're staring at.

00:32:59:23 - 00:33:22:22
Unknown
All all the marketing and advertising stuff, and it's just reconnected. What? It could be totally different for you. Like it could be do it. Going out with a camera, doing street photography. It could be doing life drawing off of just like photos you find. But like connecting back to that sense of study and personal growth will unlock. It's just like you're saying, like in your hands, like like seeing people for real life or getting your hands around tactile things.

00:33:23:00 - 00:33:44:10
Unknown
That's a big thing for like daily habit. For me, it's like going to it's like you make your own little art, and then you try to try to go to as often as you can before you actually do your pain work. Yeah. Well, and it's also that concept development thing. I think one of the areas we need to be aware of is the laziness that is going to come with a lot of automation.

00:33:44:12 - 00:34:03:07
Unknown
The way to make yourself stand out is exactly what you're describing is to continue to develop your skills the way that you think, the way you develop concepts, how you pull ideas from a lot of different sources so that you give somebody a really visceral, unique point of view. I think that's super important. Yeah. Very much so.

00:34:03:07 - 00:34:35:18
Unknown
Now that Twitter's gone or it's there, but a lot of people have, it's changed. Let's just say that it's different change. Yeah. Is there another place that you've noticed where motion designers are hanging out, or is are we still sort of adrift? I that's something I lament like that's where I feel like I feel like an old person when I talk about this stuff, because it, I will say, like, I, I feel like I, I was able to like, turbo boost my career because I did invest a lot early on, specifically Twitter, you know, like when I moved to LA from Chicago, I didn't think I knew anybody till I showed up somewhere,

00:34:35:18 - 00:34:56:23
Unknown
and I posted that I was at a studio and then like four people came running and like, oh my God, you're here. That I didn't know. That just happened to be following me. So I definitely I love what it was possible to do. I do think that we've all kind of retreated to our own kind of like dark alleys and hidden corners, because there's a lot of conversation going on, but it's in little discord groups of 20 people or it's it's, you know, like stuck in, like private chat somewhere.

00:34:57:01 - 00:35:20:03
Unknown
And I think that's just because people don't feel safe or people don't feel like they're respected or valued. And I'm find a lot more like, actually, they're doing stuff like this, like, my open office hours has been just, like, a great way to when we went remote and because of Covid, just being able to still see people and talk to people, I think there's a lot more people are doing a lot more like accountability groups where they're having tighter connections with a small group of people.

00:35:20:05 - 00:35:48:10
Unknown
I think those are all great, but I feel for it like the just like in the greater sense of the world, the monoculture of motion design kind of got this, excuse me, disassembled. And I don't think it's ever going to really be put back together in the same way. And we're even seeing like, you know, like they used to people used to rally around like Max on doing presentations and they'd be in Siggraph, and I just don't feel like there's anywhere near the amount of conversation or like those used to be like canon events, sometimes like someone to show something, you know, it just flipped the entire industry on its head.

00:35:48:10 - 00:36:05:00
Unknown
Like, you can do what with what? And then it kind of washed through not just the artists doing stuff, but then because you knew that was possible, designers would see it and then see these would see what designers doing. Then that would change what they would pitch to clients. And then you'd have this kind of like it's still the, the snaking, its own tail kind of like trend chasing.

00:36:05:00 - 00:36:21:22
Unknown
But it was, it was it was initiated by our side for a little bit of time, you know, like I can think when like, Deleuze showed off all the stuff he did for the, for, for for Tron. There's a bunch of stuff that people didn't know you could do. And then also there's this explosion of like a fluid stuff like fluids and hot stuff that then just worked into everything we were pitching.

00:36:22:00 - 00:36:38:01
Unknown
I don't feel like we see that anymore as much. And I think that that the whole AI of it all has made that even less, because it's just I've never seen a faster like, trend eating dragon than I because it's like as soon as somebody figures out, oh, I can make a QR code that looks like a landscape, and then everybody, then it gets out there.

00:36:38:01 - 00:36:59:04
Unknown
If it does it CDs, ad agency, it they sell it. Yeah. Five drink commercials come out the same week and all that's like yeah that's old. Yeah. And the the lifespan of a trend is like two weeks, which is insane compared to like it used to be two years. So. So how do you keep up with that? That's a question I, I have all the time right now I can't how do I keep up with this?

00:36:59:06 - 00:37:15:22
Unknown
I mean, I mean what I sometimes saying like, what is this? You know, like like it's, it's not I mean, I, I honestly, I feel like that's actually like a thing that helps us all because there isn't one person who can't have their some on everything because it's like, how much time do you spend on TikTok? And then how much time do you spend trying to find what the next TikTok is?

00:37:15:22 - 00:37:33:00
Unknown
Because TikTok's not Kool-Aid or TikTok's going to get shut down. So do we go to blue Sky and like, no blue skies land like that is actually defense? That actually a defense mechanism for it? Because then it returns back to like, you don't need to be somebody who knows how to do three seconds of everything because it's impossible now.

00:37:33:02 - 00:37:49:09
Unknown
It's impossible. So what we've been saying, like build the build your persona and the things you care about, the things you have an opinion about, the things you feel like are coming up. And then that's the thing that people will find you for, right? Like, that's the thing we're sorely missing emotions. I'm like, can I all the time will be like that.

00:37:49:09 - 00:38:09:21
Unknown
We're just gonna call the same person because we know they can do that. Well, we need a freelancer versus ten years ago. It used to be like, oh, I have 50 artists in my head that when this thing comes up, I'm calling them because they do this one thing and they do it well enough, and they are on their own journey of development that not only can I tap into it, but I can actually help them further their journey because I'm giving them a stage to do it on, right?

00:38:09:21 - 00:38:24:13
Unknown
Like I'm doing a pitch for Apple and I'm going to pull Maurice Malia like she's going to do a thing she's been doing, but now she's doing it in the place where if it goes now, she's gonna be the person who's developing that for the next three years. Right. So there's this kind of like communal, kind of like interaction that I like.

00:38:24:13 - 00:38:40:22
Unknown
Then I'll say that it doesn't happen now, but I just feel like I, I have my head around stuff. I wake up every morning, spend an hour, and begins looking to see what's new. And it all looks the same. And then that moment you finally see someone doing something different, or even doing something nostalgic, but with a new tool, you're like, oh, bookmark, let's.

00:38:40:22 - 00:38:59:08
Unknown
I'm reaching now. I'm reaching. I'm doing business development too, but I'm doing it with artists, right? I'm reaching out to an artist. I'm like, I want to get on a zoom for 15 minutes. I want to talk to them. I want to find out what excites them. So I know that when a cool thing comes around, I'm calling in and they're going to be super stoked and they're going to feel like they're being, you know, like getting an opportunity to do something I haven't done yet.

00:38:59:10 - 00:39:16:22
Unknown
So, like, I personally, I'm always still kind of like I feel like as I become more of a creative director, that's part of my job, actually, is like the call response of like, who's doing what? How can I help them? Let's see what they do. Let's call them back, you know, like that. That's kind of what the industry used to do all the time.

00:39:17:00 - 00:39:39:14
Unknown
So I'm just going to pause here for a minute. If you have any questions for Ryan please drop them in the chat. We have a hard out today. So I want to make sure I get to everybody's questions. I'm going to ask him one more question and then we will do a Q&A at 1245. If you would like to turn on your camera and speak to Ryan directly, you're welcome to do that.

00:39:39:14 - 00:40:01:05
Unknown
We'll make sure you have permission. Okay. Back to you, Ryan. Is there a particular moment in your trajectory in your career where you felt like reality, as you know it is, was up for a redesign? Yeah, I think yeah, absolutely. Because and it goes back to that, that I'm glad you asked because it goes back to the whole idea of the monoculture.

00:40:01:07 - 00:40:19:15
Unknown
I don't think that that was good. Like, I remember when I was a kid and like everybody basically watched MTV and basically what, probably ten people in the music industry decided it was going to be cool. You would watch it and then every music video would do the same, and then you'd see everybody in high school drawing, doing the same thing, and then that musician would show up at the end of the summer for a concert.

00:40:19:15 - 00:40:39:16
Unknown
Everybody would stop and the whole city would go to the concert. And it was not. I don't think that that was necessarily a healthy thing. I think the absolute fragmentation across every board where there is no like, like discernible actual culture as well, isn't necessarily the best thing either. But what I, what I'm starting to feel is that a lot of people like the new thing everybody is talking about.

00:40:39:16 - 00:41:02:12
Unknown
It's like in that new it's like user generated content and ultimate like personal customization of entertainment to the point where this isn't the I can finally talk about this because a company is actually doing it. But for like 5 or 6 years, there have been a lot of VC bootstrapped stealth companies that are like going to Disney or going to Netflix to be like, we have this technology that if you want to put your boss's face on the Joker's face and watch Batman with you as the Batman and your boss is a Joker, you can pay.

00:41:02:12 - 00:41:24:04
Unknown
1995 and 40 minutes later, all of Batman Begins will have you beating the shit out of your boss. But it's just the Batman movie like that chasing that. I think, again, it's like a it's like a solution in search of a problem thing where it's like everything is like hyper personalized, down to like you live in a tiny little micro bubble of you and your own things, and that's it.

00:41:24:06 - 00:41:42:02
Unknown
I think what you're starting to see the reaction to is that sometimes we have these films that are so meticulously designed or an experience like you, I know you and Meow Wolf have a long kind of like conversation in terms of like your relationship with them or theme parks. The fact that we have this whole phenomenon of Disney adults now, which I am one of them.

00:41:42:02 - 00:42:02:05
Unknown
So I'm not I'm a pixie dust or till I die. So it's not slapping on anybody. But like this, I think there is a human need, not necessary just for connection or belonging, but to experience designed, curated experiences and so I think as we start saying like as brands start disintermediate themselves and say, you're the brand, you, you tell us what the campaign should be, you can make it.

00:42:02:10 - 00:42:26:10
Unknown
People at some point are going to have like an aversion to decision making. They don't want no one wants to hyper define every single thing and be like, oh, I want my food to look like this, and I want my shoes to look like that, like it's nice as a novelty. But I think what we are already experiencing, like when you go and you see how people play Minecraft or Roblox, like they like making their own things, they also really like having something made for them in their own language.

00:42:26:10 - 00:42:43:05
Unknown
Right? So like when you say it is really need a redesign, I think it's constantly going to be redesign, but it isn't always going to be just by the micro, individual person. I think that's a fallacy that like people who have this new tool, they're trying to sell you a capability that honestly nobody really wants. All the time.

00:42:43:07 - 00:43:01:09
Unknown
I think what people really want is people say, I'm going to go away to somewhere and ignore the rest of the world and something that whether and I know they did it, it's been handcrafted with intent down to the brick. And maybe I don't understand all the details, the intricacies of all those bricks. Right. But when I walk into something, it's like when I went and saw sinners.

00:43:01:10 - 00:43:17:09
Unknown
It is the first time since maybe The Matrix as a movie. That was in three minutes. I just like, relax. It was like, I'm in the hands of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and they're going to take me on a ride. It is a fully formed thought universe. It has its references that it's honoring. It has its message.

00:43:17:09 - 00:43:33:02
Unknown
It's trying to saying, and it's also just mindless fun, depending on however I want to take it. And I literally had this very visceral reaction of like, this is when I go to the fucking movies. I've been looking for this for like a decade. Like, like it wasn't made out of commerce. It wasn't made it to be a like a slavish representation.

00:43:33:02 - 00:43:49:09
Unknown
So they came for it was what we go to experiences for. I want to hear what do we say your obsessions. I want to hear Ryan Coogler's voice. I want to see what he's obsessed about. The jazz obsessed about vampire for. He's obsessed about representing Mississippi in a way that's never been shown on film. And he has a vision.

00:43:49:09 - 00:44:05:16
Unknown
This is what I want to see entertainment look like in the future. And yes, exactly. It's the first movie I want to see in the theaters three times in a row, in a weekend since I saw drive, and before that it was The Matrix because I wanted to see it. Then I was so because I want to take my best friend to see it, then I want to take as many people as I knew to go see it.

00:44:05:18 - 00:44:22:17
Unknown
And that's what I think people really crave for. And every time Hollywood's like, we don't understand why Barbie did so well, and they try to make it. About a million other things. Go to that movie. That's a movie that could only be made by that woman with that voice, with those obsessions, and then a team of thousands of people dedicated to that.

00:44:22:19 - 00:44:37:08
Unknown
So people came out like, oh, people are sick of the movies. Like, no, they're sick of being spoken down to, they're tired of not having an experience that was crafted by someone with something to say. And that goes around everything I think you can do, like you can do that with ads. You can do that with a 15 second pre-roll.

00:44:37:10 - 00:44:58:14
Unknown
You can do it with your own personal work. It's just, what we started calling everything content and not what it is like. Like, no, this is my line. No one is content with content. No one is content with it. When I watch it, I'm like, that was a damn fine piece of content. It's like, yep, that was a thing I had to watch to get through, to get to the thing I wanted to see.

00:44:58:16 - 00:45:28:18
Unknown
But that doesn't mean that you can't make content the same way when people do it really well. You know, there's if you want to look up McDonald land when you're done with this thing, there was a commercial campaign series ten years ago called McDonald land, and they finally brought it back. And when you first look at it, we got really pissed because like, oh, McDonald's is doing I, it's all this super psychedelic, super surreal, actual character and world building with physical props and real characters and the designer of it like a week ago they came out and they had to come out and actually show all this behind the scenes, making us go like, this

00:45:28:18 - 00:45:46:01
Unknown
is not Midjourney, this is not Korea, this is not we made stuff. Yeah, because we have this voice, this vision. It's like, it's so weird. It's at a place like McDonald's is actually, like making stuff that on the surface feels like content. But when you watch it like, oh, I would go to an experience show engagement where there's actually this world that was made for me.

00:45:46:01 - 00:46:07:02
Unknown
If that's my thing, that was, yes, I think reality needs to be redesigned. The cry for being redesigned will happen more and more, and it will be rewarded with like people's finances as they have less money to spend on fewer things. Their decision maker. What they spend will rely more on this versus oh, I get AI generated stuff force fed to me.

00:46:07:02 - 00:46:30:15
Unknown
What's the other experience that I can have? So not to say there's right or wrong, but like reality will be redesigned all the time for people's enjoyment, for people's education. I love that, Ryan. I know you're moving more into creative directing and business. What's next for you? Hopefully I my big thing. I'm super, super thrilled and fortunate to be at Seraph.

00:46:30:16 - 00:46:58:08
Unknown
I would love to be able to take what I have done and what Seraph. There's this really amazing ethos that comes from Aaron Suzuki, who is the namesake for Seraph Ski, of combining technology with actual craftsmanship and warmth and personal vision. I really, really want to extend that into taking spaces that are empty and devoid of, like, experience and making them places that people want to return to because they remember them, whatever that might be like.

00:46:58:08 - 00:47:22:17
Unknown
Like, I love doing all those things. There's title sequences. Kat and I just had a really wonderful conversation about a title sequence job that we both can't stop smile about. They have a ton of great people there who can do that. I would love to extend that ethos, combined with what I love and I'm interested in to expansion work where like, you can physically touch it, you can sit in it, you can absorb it, you can experience it how like like there's nothing better than an experience where there's some kids running to do every single thing.

00:47:22:23 - 00:47:41:01
Unknown
There's other people just sit down a chair and close their eyes and just soak in something. And just like taking the music, taking the tactility of it and the the range of ways to experience something are all summed up in like the place, and it could be a lot things that could be a hotel lobby, that could be a, subdivision, kind of like rec room.

00:47:41:01 - 00:47:57:16
Unknown
It could be a museum, it could be a theme park. It could be almost anything. It could be a public space that, like a government office, is like, we have to make a park and we need to make it different. All those things need the things we do in unique ways that may or may not have screens, may not have interactive things.

00:47:57:16 - 00:48:19:10
Unknown
But, I'm really excited about that. I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon. That's cool. And if I'm going to jump into questions here. But before I do, if people want to book office hours with you, where did they find you? It's, if you've seen the app calendly telecommute or not, it's. Odds are not.

00:48:19:12 - 00:48:35:01
Unknown
It's like my namesake. I've used everywhere. It doesn't mean anything. And. Well, I'm sure you guys will share that out as well, but, now, my Tuesday through Thursday for about an hour, I do 15 minute increments. And I think we're I don't even know the numbers that I need to check it, but I think I'm at like like 1314 hundred of them were the last like 8 or 9 years.

00:48:35:01 - 00:48:56:05
Unknown
So it can be about anything. A lot of times people just want to like have some look at your reel or your website or get career advice. But if you just saw a K-pop demon hunter, do you want to talk about it? I got 15 minutes for like, okay, I'm going to jump into questions, please, if you have any and you haven't posted it yet, put it in the chat or you're welcome to turn on your camera and let me know.

00:48:56:05 - 00:49:30:12
Unknown
You'd like to speak with Ryan directly. Devon would like to know more about Ryan starts in regards to the progression of the gaming industry and what potential he believes it has to unite people in a good way, and what positive impacts he hopes the industry will have. I mean, I think the like, Triple-A video game spaces is a frightening, awful place to consider what your career could be within it right now, because it is in such kind of like disarray and transition for a lot of different reasons, a lot of like financial reasons.

00:49:30:12 - 00:49:51:22
Unknown
And the I have it all. I think the lessons learned as a young artist in some form of gaming are wildly valuable, like if you're just starting out and if you can find your way into an indie gaming space or a place that does indie gaming or does interactive, that includes gaming for anything. I spent six years working at a slot machine company.

00:49:52:00 - 00:50:19:10
Unknown
Oh, the about the least. Like short of like working for an oil company or something. Something cigarets. But I learned so much about audience psychology and and gaming mechanics at a time when it was very early. But combining that with like, the, the craftsmanship of, like 2D animation or like Disney animation, I think it's a great I don't think there's a lot of schools that it's shocking that there isn't like an art center of like, gaming.

00:50:19:11 - 00:50:36:18
Unknown
It's a like both wildly like a mature field in terms of once you start working with people who could work with but incredibly immature in terms of like just trying to get training in it. Like there would be there would be people who will teach you the mechanics of like the factory side of it, but it's really hard to be in the lab or in the mind of an audience member for that.

00:50:37:00 - 00:51:09:08
Unknown
If you're looking for schooling, that that's where you get it for being at a company and doing it. There's never been a better time to actually start making your own games either, right? Like in terms of just for education purposes, I'm not going to say like you're going to make $1 million making a game, but the tools to be able to combine something like drive with unreal in a very lightweight way and then combine it with something like play and ship and launch stuff there, like EOS, is ridiculous, like the access that you can have to just making something, testing it, getting some people playing and then walking away and trying it again, that

00:51:09:08 - 00:51:26:12
Unknown
kind of stuff. If you want to get into motion design, will live with you forever. The same way the fundamentals of design or animation will benefit you and eventually become like a superpower. Because interactive is a thing, and experiential is a thing that is going to continue to grow as the tools grow, as the audiences, the people who are playing like, like, like there's a pipeline, right?

00:51:26:12 - 00:51:52:19
Unknown
It's like you play and I'll mix up the order, probably, but it's like you play Roblox, then you play Minecraft and you play Fortnite. And there's a level of interactivity and expectation of interactivity and sophisticated interaction that all of our content platforms do not support because it's made by people 40 years older than them. But as those people all grow up and they become in a position, it's just like anime as everybody grows up and they grew up on anime starts growing into the position to be able decide what gets made.

00:51:52:21 - 00:52:18:16
Unknown
You start seeing anime, McDonalds commercials, and Nissan never showing a real car, but a like like like, what is it like a like a Tokyo Drift style commercial where it's all animated five years that that would never be allowable. Gaming and interactivity will do the same thing, and I think it's a great skill set to understand, like when I press a button, how does my animation work when I, when I give someone a objective, how did the targets and triggers reward them?

00:52:18:17 - 00:52:33:20
Unknown
Like how do I how do I balance a meta game and a mini game with an overall quest? Those are all things that as you start going into marketing and advertising, no one in that world knows what those mean or how to use them. But that's the reason why I like psychology for like YouTube viewers or for people on TikTok.

00:52:34:00 - 00:53:03:01
Unknown
That's all lessons learned from gaming and gambling. Interesting. Dopamine. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a like a reward system. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Petula. Hello. Petula has asked I'm really interested in Ryan's concept of an aversion to decision making other than opportunities for creators, what are some of the good and the bad? I say that again. I heard the aversion to decision making.

00:53:03:06 - 00:53:23:05
Unknown
Yes, aversion to decision making. Other than opportunities for creators, what are some of the good in the bad? Well, I would say, decision making, I like I had it blown away from me when I sat with Karamo while he was working at Pacific Rim, where he's like, the only thing worse than a bad decision is no decision.

00:53:23:07 - 00:53:38:06
Unknown
So you have to get really good at making decisions and not not the decision you make about being very comfortable with saying he's like, he's like, basically, my job is every ten minutes I get asked 100 questions, 99 of them, I have to say no, and I have to figure out the right one to say yes to. And you have to get very comfortable with that.

00:53:38:08 - 00:53:51:18
Unknown
And I think it goes back to if you're into sports at all, which I know a lot of people aren't like the whole point of sports is to learn how to fail as fast as you can so you can adjust, right? So if we're talking about decision making, it's the same way. Like if I'm looking at something, I'm an artist.

00:53:51:20 - 00:54:24:06
Unknown
If I spent seven hours trying to figure out the perfect decision, I've just kneecapped and handicapped my artist as a creative director. But if I make a decision now and say, try this, and this is what I'm looking for, an intense ten minutes, I can come back with a rough again. Sorry, I keep on calling you Kappa Cat and I working on a project that rather than having somebody create a beautiful storyboard once every four hours, we have one artist who's making something that's barely recognizable as a napkin sketch every five minutes, and that's allowing my editor to throw in 50 things every hour.

00:54:24:06 - 00:54:36:11
Unknown
And we hit play 50 times. They're like, is that it? I can't it was that supposed to be a person or was that a car? Oh, that's a person. Okay, cool. No. Move the car over here. Give me another one. And 30s. They could sketch you. They can move around or in the edit, we can play around with it.

00:54:36:13 - 00:54:56:10
Unknown
And then we just iterate visual fidelity. That's way like the sooner you can get used to making mistakes with your decision making on a timeline, and it's something that's as close to it in situ as possible, the faster you'll become a much better creative director, or a business owner or a freelancer with your own work. I think that answered maybe the first half of the question.

00:54:56:10 - 00:55:20:00
Unknown
I didn't fully understand the second half, but I hope that was a petrilla. I hope that answered what you're looking for. Petrilla did that answer? Oh yeah, she said. I love this hat, sir. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Okay, so we have. Yeah. Fail upward. We have five minutes remaining. Oh my God, that's. If anybody has any other questions, feel free to turn on your camera or drop it in the chat.

00:55:20:02 - 00:55:24:13
Unknown
I will wait a second if we've got more.

00:55:24:14 - 00:55:35:22
Unknown
Okay. So Ryan, I'm going to close. Unless any other questions show up here. So Guillermo del Toro, is he your favorite film director of all time?

00:55:36:00 - 00:55:48:11
Unknown
This is like the hardest question in the world. I would say like, this is like trying to figure out the difference between favorite and best.

00:55:48:13 - 00:56:29:13
Unknown
I think, man, I go back and forth like, like I grew up with Steven Spielberg, so I disqualify him because he has too many films, and I feel like that's nostalgia. So I try to like, like try to step away from it. I would say there's probably some world where there's a tie between Miyazaki, Pete Docter and General del Toro, and I would tie it to to put a bow on all this, because I think all three of them find a way to take their very specific, peculiar personal obsessions, turn it into like a voice, and then use that to describe their vision throughout an impossibly long career.

00:56:29:15 - 00:57:06:05
Unknown
Like if you know anything about any of them, like all three of them have made very commercially successful films about very weird things. But they also each film is almost kind of like a in conversation with each other, like they learn something from one that changes the way they do something to the other, and to be able to observe like, like if you know how Miyazaki makes his films, like, it's unlike it's unlike any other anime director and the animators unlike any other animation director, which are very different than live action directors like he will literally create a basically pitch book full of watercolor images that he's like, I don't even know who the

00:57:06:05 - 00:57:22:23
Unknown
characters are. I'm not entirely sure what the story is, but if I can get enough money to get you 50 people on my team to believe me for 4 to 6 years, this is what we're going to do. And then he goes off and basically goes in a room and storyboards. The first 20 minutes as fast as he can so his animators have something to do.

00:57:22:23 - 00:57:38:13
Unknown
So they're not burning money, just sitting there. And then while they're making the film, the first five minutes he goes off and storyboards another 20 minutes. And invariably what almost always happens is by the end of his film, they have three months left before the movie's supposed to go in theaters, and he's still storyboarding the last 20 minutes.

00:57:38:15 - 00:57:55:18
Unknown
He's not doing the, like, assembly line. Let's figure out the general idea of the theme, and then let's do like the act structure, and then let's add some lines and then let's maybe animate nuts. He's literally like they're doing finished production within like the first six months. And then at some point he's got a team of a hundred people, just like, I don't have anything to do because you don't know what the movie is.

00:57:55:18 - 00:58:19:11
Unknown
You how fast can you get it done? And he's basically put himself through the most torment to do that once. It's impossible to do a lifetime of that with films that don't follow any other mold, don't follow any other formula, and still break records and still be 80 years old and want to do it, and still have tried to retire three times and can't stop and have things that are making commentary on the world today.

00:58:19:13 - 00:58:36:06
Unknown
It's a one of one. There's no one else like that, right? So I guess I'd say Miyazaki. Sorry. Gamble and gamble is like a like a 1.25. Like as close as you can get to that. I love that. Severo. I'm hope I'm pronouncing your name right. I saw your hand up. If you have a question, now is the time.

00:58:36:06 - 00:58:55:02
Unknown
Because we've got just like, one minute left or drop it in the chat and we'll try and get the question to Ryan. And while I'm waiting for that. Right. How can we support you? Okay. Sorry. I mean, I mean, you've already supported me so much, my career, I don't I mean, I would say I'm getting ready to start, keys and curves back up so you could follow that.

00:58:55:02 - 00:59:10:15
Unknown
My Substack. It's been on pause for the last month or two while I went through being laid off and find a new job and having to move like, like a bunch of stuff. But where that's going to come back and I'll probably come back with a vengeance will be a lot more. But I mean that that's just a great community and it's just basically sharing stuff I find that I like.

00:59:10:15 - 00:59:36:04
Unknown
So that's cool. I'll be great. Here's your last question. I'm going to be fast because I know you have to get out here. Yeah. What would you say to somebody who's obsession, voice and vision doesn't have a commercial way to pursue it? Don't don't worry about commercial, but the whole point, about the whole reason we got in this to be a capital A artist is not to figure out how can we turn ourselves into the most obvious way to make money like that?

00:59:36:04 - 00:59:51:05
Unknown
That's not why we do this, right? Like that's a different thing. I'm an invoke your Christo again. We're not here to be bricklayers. Typically, in this part of your career. That is totally fine. But if we're talking about, like you are sacrificing so much of your life to take, your most people will not be crazy enough to do this, right.

00:59:51:07 - 01:00:07:08
Unknown
It will come eventually, as the only thing I can say is if you invest in yourself to create your own voice, whether what it is will be defined by you. But that's personal satisfaction. Answering the questions of life, making lots of lots of money, whatever that thing will end up being. But if you don't do that, you will definitely feel.

01:00:07:08 - 01:00:24:17
Unknown
If you're asking this question, you will definitely feel a level of dissatisfaction. I've just found other people who have voice, vision, obsession, having to follow them for the rest of your life. So I would be like, and it's not what you do from 9 to 5. It's the stuff you do outside of that that gives you that fuel and builds the obsession and creates the voice of the vision.

01:00:24:22 - 01:00:43:20
Unknown
It's about holistically being a capital artist, if that makes any sense. Beautiful. Ryan Summers, I can't thank you enough for taking this time to speak with us. It's so nice to see you again. Segment some point, we'll high five again in real life. It'll be there. Okay. Thank you everybody. This has been another episode of the Developing Life podcast.

01:00:43:20 - 01:00:52:23
Unknown
Thank you for joining us. And please follow Ryan Summers and check out his Substack Hickey and Curves. Have a great day. Thank you all.