027: Aaron Ray - Moving on after doing the legwork
Co-Founder of Legwork Studio opens up about closing up shop after 11 years
Aaron Ray is an independent animation director and designer with an inclination towards illustrative design and character-based work. Previously he was a creative director at Legwork, a studio that he co-founded in 2007, where he directed, designed and animated commercial content for brands and agencies before he and his partners chose to close the doors in 2019.
NOTES
early influences by his mother and father, especially his father’s illustrations of helicopters, Akira (the comic before the movie), and skate culture
the creative process for client work and personal projects
his passion for music and artwork for bands/record labels like album covers
opening Legwork Studio (which has an interesting story behind the name and a little surprise for you during the interview) with several partners and fellow artists then choosing to close the doors after 11 years
four key things he would do differently with a new studio
and advice for younger up-and-coming artists that have many different things to deal with in today’s world
LINKS
TRANSCRIPT
Aaron Ray: 00:00:00 So like at the end it kinda came down to that, but it, it was a decision to close versus like having to close the three of us we were just doing, we were just feeling a little exhausted, exhaustion from it all. And we never wanted to risk not being able to pay our staff. Not that that really was going to be a risk, but it was, it just felt closer than it ever had in the past. And with kind of the future being unknown and if this was going to be a consistent thing of clients paying late became something where it just wasn't fun having to watch that all the time. It'd be more about that than just like creating work and having a good time at the office.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:00:42 You're listening to The Artful Entrepreneur podcast, a show about living an inspired life filled with vitality, creativity, and fulfillment. My name is Gabe Ratliff, and I'll be your host as I interview fellow creative entrepreneurs from around the globe to hear their stories and learn more about their work so that you can tap into your creative purpose and live a life that's drawn, not traced on the show. We talk about things like the creative process, personal development, community equity and contribution as well as the lessons learned along the way. All right, let's get to it.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:01:24 Hey, Artfuls! How's it going today? I hope you're doing well. I hope you're kicking ass taking names and I hope you're ready for a really powerful conversation because we're about to get into a conversation with Aaron Ray about something that is not always something you want to be dealing with or thinking about with your business, but it is something that you have to think about when you are in the place of developing a business or you're in a business and you may not have thought about the potential for this outcome and it's, it's really relevant. It's a reality that we have to think about as creative entrepreneurs and I'm really excited to have Aaron on the show and for him to talk about this because it is something that's like really powerful and like I said, it's really relevant and it's just a reality that we have to deal with.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:02:23 Aaron is a independent animation director and designer with an inclination towards illustrative design and character based work. He previously was a creative director at legwork, a studio that he co-founded in 2007 where he directed designed an animated commercial content for brands and agencies. In this episode we talk about his early influences by his mother and father, especially his father's illustrations of helicopters, Akita, the comic before the movie and skate culture, which was a really big influence on him as well as, and we talk about the creative process for him and what that's like with client work versus personal projects. We talk about his passion for music and artwork for bands and record labels like album covers and we talk about opening legwork studio with several partners and fellow artists and then choosing to close the doors after 11 years, which just recently happened a few months ago and legwork itself actually has a really interesting story behind the name and a little surprise for you during the interview, so hope you'll enjoy it. We talked about the four key things he would do differently with a new studio and he also has advice for younger up and coming artists that have very different things to be dealing with in today's world with social media and the comparison culture that we have these days. And so really great conversation. Let's get into it.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:04:07 Aaron, thanks so much for being here on the show. I'm so excited to have you here, brother.
Aaron Ray: 00:04:11 Thanks man. Good to be here.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:04:13 So I thought we would start out with, but I was like to take us back where we started our journey and I thought that would be a great place for us to kind of begin
Aaron Ray: 00:04:23 Growing up. My dad drew a lot and I always kind of remember that he was in the military, so I saw him drawing helicopters and like military things and I think that was like the initial spark for it. But then kind of moving forward, you know, I got into comic books and skateboarding and music eventually and those things really, they, they all have a very strong visual presence, you know, skateboards especially, there was just graphic specially like in the late eighties that were really influential on me and really inspired me to kind of start drawing stuff. You know, it was like skulls and stuff like that constantly. Does that bones brigade, some bones brigade stuff. Yeah. Overall to the Santa Cruz stuff. All that stuff. And then even going into the nineties like the graphics and like all the smaller companies that formed in the nineties sort of out of those, those bigger 80s companies, they started doing things differently.
Aaron Ray: 00:05:25 And there was all these young artists and young skateboarders that were creating the graphics for the company because they start, it was sort of the DIY thing where you go from, you know, there was probably only like a handful of large companies in the, in the 80s had like Powell, Santa Cruz and division and then all the, the team riders broke off and started making smaller companies. And so they're doing everything themselves. They're, they're drawing the graphics and they're running the company. And so anyway, all that graphic stuff from skateboarding is, has always been a big influence on me. And yeah, comic books and, and animation kind of like in my sort of junior, junior high, high school years really kind of got me on that path would say DC or Marvel. Probably more Marvel. But even more than that, Akira was my biggest influence by far. Like I had all the comics. Oh, I still do. Yeah. and I actually, he was reading the, the comics before the, before I saw the movie. Even though the movie came out in like 1989 I didn't see it until after I had been reading the comics for.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:06:40 Wow, that's awesome. Cause I was the other way. I saw the film and was like what? So
Aaron Ray: 00:06:48 I'm loving too. It's still like competes today.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:06:52 Yeah. Amazing. We were blessed man. I that actually came up on the episode before this with Steve sweatpants we were talking about. That's right. I said Steve sweatpants a, he's a street photographer in New York and we got on at the end of the show. We got on this like big brand about anime and like Monga and I if you, I don't know if you've heard of it, but there's a, there's a Netflix documentary on anime.
Aaron Ray: 00:07:21 Yeah, I watched about half of it the other day.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:07:25 Yeah, it's interesting. I was, I was more fascinated about how they edited it and like how they, the actual doc itself was tweaked to kind of play into this whole chaos of Japan style and anime and manga and like all that. I thought that was really fascinating.
Aaron Ray: 00:07:43 Yeah. Netflix is doing a lot of original content now. So I think they may or may have made that documentary as a way to kind of promote their sort of original animated content that they're producing
Gabe Ratliff: 00:07:55 For sure. Oh yeah. I mean they had Adi (Shankar) talking about Castlevania and does look amazing. I've gone this second season of that currently and I was a big fan of that game back in the day to see an actual decent video game story, but just told animated instead of trying to do this live action thing, I was just like, thank you. This is good. Thank you. I'll take this. But yeah, we were blessed man. I mean we had like Ninja scroll, Akita ghost in the shell. We could city, I mean there was just [inaudible].
Aaron Ray: 00:08:33 There was a lot. Yeah, I got into some like some other ones that were probably a little more under the radar at least in the U S but they were more like series. There was this one called Bubble Gum Crisis. Oh yeah. There was Silent Mobius. Yeah. Yeah, those are awesome. But still like even out of all of those, it was a cure, like the way that he illustrated [inaudible] just, it just blew my mind. I mean it was technically super accurate, like the architecture and stuff that he was drawing in there. It was just so detailed and perfect. And then after I found out more about him, I believe he even studied like architectural drawing growing up and stuff. So kind of made sense.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:09:19 So when you were getting into that back in the day you were talking about your dad and then when you started to get into illustrating what, what were you drawing? What was, what, how is this influencing you? What were you cranking out?
Aaron Ray: 00:09:34 So kind of before the comic influence, you know, when I was younger, probably based on what my dad was doing, I remember drawing like ideas for video games, you know, like side scrolling, kind of video game scenes and things like that, spaceships, stuff like that. And then kind of as I got older and got more into the comics and skating stuff, it became monsters and skulls, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Like the answer always. Like why can't you draw something nice? Like I was really going for like the gory violence stuff and I was probably, I think about it and I was probably pretty young like drawing that stuff and you know, I have a daughter now so like I guess I could see why my parents were like, why are you drawing this exploding head?
Gabe Ratliff: 00:10:24 Yeah. That's where there's like this immediate thought of like are they okay? Yeah. You know, we have the 70s to blame for that. I bet. You know, we've got like Rosemary's baby and you know, like Damien and the omen and always movies where kids are freaking out. Exorcist. They're just like it's my kid. Okay, I'm fine. It's art about that same time, cause I was on the same path you were. I was skating, we actually had skateboard club in junior high was awesome. I remember listening to salt and pepper was push it and like practicing bonuses off of the, the like concrete benches out in front. And I remember I was really big into similarly Marvel. I had been into DC when I was a kid. I was big in the Batman and cause he was dark and just, I thought interesting cause he was normal. He wasn't superhuman, he did it all himself. And I was, I was really starting to get into Marvel at that point and choose your own adventure books. These came up the other day. Do you remember those? Yeah, yeah, it was big fan of those. I just thought they were grabbed as similarly into like the fantasy scifi and stuff. And I just, I used to draw the weapons. That was my thing. I was like always into the drawn weapons and creatures and stuff from those similarly dark.
Aaron Ray: 00:11:45 Yeah. Actually I forgot. Another huge, huge one for me was the original Ninja turtles, but Eastern and wired Ninja turtles. I was thinking, I have like boxes of comics over here next to me. And recently I even went to a comic bookstore and I'm like, Oh, I was just looking for the old turtle comics. They're like $20 each now when they were like a dollar before. I know. But that that stuff was great too.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:12:12 Yeah. Yeah. I remember I used to draw those. I'd be like give people instead of buying a card for them for their birthday, you know, and we'd be celebrated and be like front buddy's birthdays or whatever. I would draw them. Michael Angelo or something. You're in that same style. Yeah. Was your mom creative?
Aaron Ray: 00:12:30 Yeah, I remember her. Painting and stuff as well. But for some reason there's these illustrations that my dad did that always kind of stuck in my head and like the helicopters, like you'd be drawing these military things and I remember them being really dynamic and from like these very interesting perspective, you know, versus just like the side of a helicopter. It was like a three quarter perspective flying through clouds, you know, just much more dynamic. And I feel like that always stuck.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:13:02 Wow, that's awesome. And I could totally see that trajectory to things like a Cara, right, where it's like, so architectural and geometric, you know, if you're grown up seeing like helicopters from these really awesome perspectives. And then you're seeing, I mean, cause I remember there's a lot of really great shots in Akita that are really cool perspectives. I remember when that one iconic shot with the bike, it was for that maybe one of the main cover art pieces in the poster. I mean it just
Aaron Ray: 00:13:36 Where he does like the, the side slide into the camera.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:13:39 Yeah. And you've got this like just a little bit elevated shot. It wasn't street level. I mean it wasn't like super high. It was like just up above him enough. But it was this really great perspective with the city behind him and there's great vanishing lines. It was just Epic and then you just, you get to see, I thought it was just such an iconic, like stoic shot with the bike as that character that it was, not to mention just the other characters, how iconic they were. But you know, when you get to, was it Tetsuo and like, and then when the shit starts to go down and you start seeing the like transformation happening and then you get really spherical, right, like the, the body started to get more like blob globule and, and spiritual and it was these organic shapes. But then you've got the city that's all these like really super clean, sharp, sharp, beautiful geometric shapes. Yeah. I guess I could just see that kind of progression with you from that. That's awesome. Who would you say, I mean obviously you had the influence from your parents, but do you have any mentors to speak of that you kind of think through over the years that have sort of been your Yodas along the way?
Aaron Ray: 00:14:59 Honestly, not really. I mean, I feel like my high school art teacher gave me a little drive to kind of focus and keep going with art. But he was a very, like a flat blonde kind of like you would make other kids cry, you know? And he was very honest, I guess in his critiques. And so I think even though he would sort of give me jabs and stuff like that, he was always kind of pushing me, I think to keep on, on track and focus. Cause you must have seen that I had something there, you know, other than him though. I mean offhand I can't really say so I feel like I just, I saw the things around me that were inspiring and that kind of like maybe it was my mentor were just like all these things, you know, just seeing other people. Especially like again going back to the like skateboard kind of DIY thing, just seeing other people doing things sort of inspirational for me to just say, I like drawing, so I'm gonna keep, keep drawing. And you know, we talked about this earlier, but I'm also pretty introverted so I spent a lot of time drawing and not focusing too much on other things around me. So maybe I'm my own mentor.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:16:21 Yeah. I mean, yeah, sure. I mean I connect with that. I mean I remember same thing for me growing up. Like I was just in my room listening to music and drawing for hours and hours and hours and I was, I remember working on band logos. I was really big into band logos as I kind of shifted from like weapons and creatures and things and I haven't, you know, I was into drawing the, you know, superhero forms and stuff, but I remembered, I really got excited about coming up with my own logos and just like different forms for them. For, you know, bands that I was into at the time. Yeah. Just kind of zenning out for hours and not thinking about anything else. Yeah, for sure. Skating,
Aaron Ray: 00:17:09 Yeah. Or scaling anything was nice because it's like an individual thing, you know, it's an individual sport and there's like no rules and you can like be creative within skateboarding as well. But yeah, my sister was like eight years older than me and so I remember in fifth, sixth grade, she must've been 18 ish, somewhere around there. And this was in the late eighties, early nineties, I guess. And she was really into thrash and like old metal and stuff like that. So I started getting kind of introduced to like old Metallica and Slayer and that kind of stuff. And so I do remember like trying to mimic like a lot of those logos and album covers and things like that too. I think that's kind of where I started to see like the art in music as well.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:18:04 Yeah, I was just gonna ask, you know, what was, where were you transitioning from those early things you were doing that were related to like, you know, Monga and, and skateboarding. Where was that taking you? So is that where you were heading into at this point or was there other things you were starting to draw at that point
Aaron Ray: 00:18:25 Was still comics and stuff like that I guess were influential. Like the skateboarding style, like that style of art is something that I think I can still attribute to kind of how I do art today. So I think that's like still with me. Music, that was probably my first like insight into art for like the music industry. And even though I probably wasn't thinking about it at that point because this was like sixth grade or something like that. Eventually as I got more and more into music over the years and that the fact that I could like create art for music or album covers or whatever that is eventually became a thing for sure. I kind of like through like after high school kind of transitioned a little less away from like illustration and kind of went more into like graphic, more like graphic design kind of stuff for awhile.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:19:16 Nice. When would you say that you kinda hit that point where you recognized your own style starting to come to fruition? When would you say that you actually started to see your own style start to come forth?
Aaron Ray: 00:19:33 Well, you know, it's weird like I think that I actually don't have my own style and I think that's because of sort of these different industries that I've kinda been interested in. I've never thought that I would be like a fine artist or like, like a pure illustrator. I think if all I did was illustration and all I did was painting or something, then I probably would have a style. But since all of the industries that I've kind of worked in have required me to be able to come up with different styles and work in different work in different ways. So I worked at a record label for awhile, so I was doing artwork for different bands and every band has a different idea of what they want their album to look like. So I had to be able to kind of jump back and forth between different things.
Aaron Ray: 00:20:21 And then I worked in doing like snowboard graphics and stuff like that. And kind of same thing you're doing, each graphic has to sell to a different market or you're doing it for a different team writer who has sort of an idea of what they want. And then from there I kind of, in terms of like my career pads I got back into kind of animation and motion design and that's kind of the same thing you're working for. And every client has like an idea of what they're looking for based usually based on something else that they'd seen. So in terms of like personal style, I'd say like broadly I have a style that's influenced by like pop culture and skateboard art and stuff like that. But it has to be versatile enough to like address every situation.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:21:13 Yeah, copy that. Definitely understand that there's so much in there that I totally understand. I was going to ask you about that because I feel like that's a really great teaching point for people listening, you know, is like how, because of that need that we have with clients that are wanting to branch out, you know, or, or jump around like you were talking about, right? If you've got writers or you've got companies or brands or you've got just kind of one off projects and they're, they're promoting this whole [inaudible] bands, like you said, and they're promoting this specific style they're going for, how do you, how do you get into that space? How do you in that creative process kind of engage into that and like do you do a bunch of research? Do you, you know, do you just kind of jump around on Google whether that was alive and well back then or not or you know, how, how do you kind of get into that space? Do you go to the library and get a bunch of books or what does that process like for you?
Aaron Ray: 00:22:16 Again, I think like each kind of industry that I've worked in is a little bit different. But like since kind of motion design is the most current kind of thing that I'm in, you know, usually what I do, like they'll come with some sort of idea or some sort of brief on what they're looking for. And then really like what I want to do first is think about like a concept, not even a visual concept, but like a story idea and what's gonna make this story unique in the first place and how can we tell this differently? And a lot of times clients might come with a reference that isn't really that exciting, but at least I'll give you kind of an idea of where they're thinking. And then that's always nice because you can just push that so much further. So coming up with the concept, I'll usually think about sort of keywords or key things that they're sort of looking to, to address with making this piece.
Aaron Ray: 00:23:06 And then I'll usually write like a brief kind of outline. Like I'll just sit there and write like a paragraph or two on like how I see the story. I'll even write it a little dramatically. Almost like it's a creative writing kind of exercise. You know, like I'm writing a little bit of a story even though I'll keep it brief because I'm not really a writer. But that's a good way for me to kind of get it down. And then from there I'll, I'll kind of do visual research. I think a lot of times they do come with like an idea of style that they're looking for, but I don't always stick within exactly what they're, they're looking for. So I don't like to just go to other animators or illustrators for like the reference or the inspiration either. I mean it's easy, easy to do that.
Aaron Ray: 00:23:51 And I definitely do do that cause there's like people out there that are doing amazing stuff. So like a, this, this person did this thing, so let me look at that. But on top of that I'll, I'll even put together mood boards that are just like organic, like maybe a mood board of textures or like a mood board of colors, things like that. So yeah. And then I have like a basis for a story and I have kind of a visual idea. And then from there I'll like design out frames, which are like my take on the visual direction, you know, you present those back to the client and like here's kind of what I'm thinking visually. Here's what I'm thinking for the story. Sometimes there will be a storyboard that goes along with that so that they can see the story kind of like roughly flowing visually. So, yeah, I mean it is, it's just a, like it's a lot of research and sketching and just kinda pulling stuff and putting it together. But it's always that first step that I think is kind of the most important is coming up with the concept and and like storyboarding the idea.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:24:50 Yeah. Do you have ways that you sort of tap into your creativity or find inspiration when you're working on projects? Sometimes you can,
Aaron Ray: 00:25:02 You can definitely get creative block and some ways that I've found kind of around that or like not necessarily create a block but sometimes it can be hard to kind of get into the project initially. And I think what I've learned kind of over the years is to not be afraid. Just to like really quickly throw something down. Like look like you have a blank canvas, just like sketch something. It's probably terrible or has nothing to do with what you're even thinking. But like don't be afraid to just put something back cause that's all that I really have to do to start flowing I guess. So just like working quickly and fast and rough is kind of how I get into it. But yeah, I mean I'm always listening to music so like music can be an inspiration. Usually music is more an inspiration. If I'm working on like a personal project though, if it's a client project then maybe I will like listen to music or seek out music that I feel like might work with what we're trying to do. And that can kind of inspire like, like what you're doing actually music is probably like one of the most important things. If there's going to be music in an animation. So that's something else, like in that research phase I will like look for music probably right up front is just hearing music kind of gives you ideas.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:26:28 Yeah, that movement. Yeah. From within the song and yeah, I'm a big, like I, that's one of my favorite things in my years of of doing video production is music supervision for film or video because I totally agree. And it's like if you have that, and I've seen stuff where I'm like, what were you thinking that you know, they'll pick the most random obtuse song and I'll be like, what? That ruined it. But then you find, you know, when you find the gold and everything just really jives together and it just makes sense. And you can hear the visuals in the music and vice versa. You S you can T it, I think it makes the edit a lot easier cause you could just get the flow. It gives you the cadence and the pacing of how things are gonna move.
Aaron Ray: 00:27:20 Yup. Yeah. Have you ever seen there there's a director named Mike Mills. He directed a movie called 20th century women that's like, cause newer one. And then he directed a movie called beginners a few years back. But in both of those movies he has this, this thing that he does where he has these segments where there's just like music and there's like a voiceover from one of the characters, kind of just like talking, telling a bit of a story. But it's kinda, it's very natural talking. And then it's matched to just still photos that are kind of edited. I saw that. I mean I love his movies and I've watched a 20th century women a few times, but I watched it again recently and just those segments were like a big inspiration, not a big inspiration but an inspiration for this idea that I have. And I got one image kind of idea planted in my head from watching that. And, and then I started looking for music and like that whole thing kind of planted the seed of like this personal project that I'm going to start where I'm gonna find music. But I really only have one visual image so far in my head. So I'm, I'm basing the whole thing off of this kind of feeling of like music matched to imagery. So it's like music first and yeah. Interesting.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:28:49 Yeah I love those moments. You know, where you, whether its comes together and you know, that's the thing I think is so great about how creativity begets creativity. You know, it's like you watch this film and then it inspires you to have this whole other idea to then go off and, and then as you find the music and you take that image in your head, it's like putting that one, I really dug what you're saying about killing the white canvas as quick as possible. You know, it's like the same thing. You have this starting point and it just goes from there.
Aaron Ray: 00:29:25 And you know, now that I've kind of like taking the next step in my career and closed down the studio, I want to sort of connect with music somehow again. And so like music videos is something that I really want to get into even though there's not really much money there. It's like a way, an obvious way for me to sort of attach my skill set to music and be connected with music again after all these years. So hoping to do a bit more of that.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:29:54 Yeah, I saw you just came out with hands in the heart by the Raven in the writing desk.
Aaron Ray: 00:30:01 Yeah. That was something I was doing at the studio for kind of a while and I was just sort of doing it at nights and stuff. And it was kind of just a way to explore some different techniques and again, just kind of work with music cause it's something that I love. Yeah, it's weird. Bands these days, I mean obviously record sales and things like that, unless you're huge, artists aren't really, probably aren't paying the bills all that much. And you know, music videos seem to be like, especially animated music videos seem to be picking up more and more, I'd say over the past five years or so because it's a, I guess it's a fairly inexpensive way of promotion
Gabe Ratliff: 00:30:46 That seems so antithesis to me because I know how much it takes to make them.
Aaron Ray: 00:30:53 Yeah. I think unless you get in with the sort of medium to large size labels, you're not making a lot of money doing these videos. But it's also a good way to sort of just get your foot in the door as a director too. And that is where, you know, we were talking about personal style or like personal point of view, even though I'd say like my art style is pretty diverse. I do feel like there's plenty of people out there that are kind of like animation directors that have like their personal point of view on projects or they, they kind of create things in a certain way or tell stories in a certain way. And so I think that's something that I've been kind of trying to develop over the years. Even at the studio. You know, my role there kind of became less of creating art and animation every day and becoming more of a creative director. So I really was doing a lot more of that coming up with the concept and designing the initial look of it. But then, then we would work as a whole team and kind of create it from there.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:32:00 I was just gonna say that's great because it reminds me of like a show runner, right? Like they'll, they'll do the first episode and they'll direct it and then they'll set up that style in a show and then they'll kind of hand it off and then let people, they'll give other people the opportunity to direct it or whatever do part in it. But they, they establish that look and feel. How, what was that like for you? Cause I, I've done that same thing where I transitioned from being the technician to more of a lead role and that kind of overarching creative direction role. What, what was that like for you to making that transition and in that role
Aaron Ray: 00:32:38 There's a lot of different ways that I look at it. On one hand I think it was a new challenge and it was doing something completely different. So that was exciting because it kind of taught me sort of new skillsets. On the other hand, we always kind of tried to stay fairly small. And the way we did that initially for the first handful of years was to it was us, it was the six donors. W we haven't even really touched on the studio, but we formed as three of us and then we added three other partners, so we had six partners and so we kind of did all the work ourselves for a long time and then over the years as we kind of added more staff, it was sort of an organic growth from there. So we just kind of had to take that, that role. I don't know, I think it was hard at first to not be creating the work, but then like I said, like you learned this other way of working, like you have to learn how to be more of a like a director and a and a manager and a sort of I guess a leader, which is fun in its own way.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:33:42 Yeah, I agree. It's, it's been the, it's been that way for me too. It's like stepping into that role was definitely weird, especially like as a photographer when, when I was shifting or with video, I mean both of them. As I shifted from being the one behind the camera to being the one leading the team behind the camera. Or, you know, editing or whatever the work was. And I have to say, I was, I remember getting into it being like, Oh Holy shit, this is weird and different and you know, there's all this self doubt and things that go into it as well when you're doing something new like that. And just the unknown. But then I realized as I started to do it and just that color, because I love collaborating and seeing on love about creative work is that we get to collaborate and you can do stuff on your own, but you can do it together.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:34:35 Just like skateboarding, right? Like you can, you can skate by yourself, but you can also go skate with your homies and you can like go have this experience together. And it's the same with the creative project. You can do your part but then you can do it together and it really allows you to like tap into your space but to also be able to grow and to like learn from each other and have these ideas that you might not come up with that didn't get accentuated by somebody else. And then you, then you take that and you're like, Oh wait, what if we took that right? And then you take your experience and say, what if we took that and did this? And then it becomes this whole new thing and that, that progression and that transformation that occurs with a project because of that. I think it's just special.
Aaron Ray: 00:35:18 Yeah. And I mean it's, it's satisfying to see a project come out really solid in the end that you actually didn't physically create with your own hands, but you helped provide the team with what they needed to make it the best that they could. And it's just like it's just a different way of creating, I guess.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:35:40 Yeah. Let's go ahead and make that shift to legwork first. Where did the name come from?
Aaron Ray: 00:35:46 Well, we had a whole list of names, but it mainly came from a Seinfeld quote. It's an episode when Kramer is trying to sell a bunch of trench coats that he got from somewhere. And Jerry asks him if there's, if there's going to be a legwork cause he's asking Jerry to help him sell him. And Jerry says, is it going to be legwork? And Kramer says, Oh, there's labor. And then that quote was also uses a song title by a band called none more black. So I don't know. And I mean the, the word itself kind of just means it's sort of a, it's kind of a funny looking word when you look at it and think about it, but it also just means like putting in the effort, you know, and that's kind of what we, that's how we started. You know, we're just going to go for it and we're going to put in the effort and we're going to do it the way that we want.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:36:37 I love it. And for those who are interested in seeing this episode, I looked it up. It's season five, episode 18 the rain coats. Nice.
Speaker 5: 00:36:46 She shouldn't say anything bad about your red, your partner. No, no. You know, we're not really partner sign to get 25% 45% that was your idea. Yeah, I know. You're doing all the legwork. That's right. He's ripping you off. You have a right and he's ripping me off. Everybody should be getting more. It's you [inaudible] you like that?
Aaron Ray: 00:37:09 Do you remember, is he talking to George or is he talking to Jerry about doing the legwork?
Gabe Ratliff: 00:37:14 Yeah, it's like, well there's a few scenes, the scene where he gets all riled up about how he's, he's only making 25% and George is like, you're only making 25% but you're doing all the leg work. And then he's like, I am doing all the leg work. Ah, and he freaks out.
Aaron Ray: 00:37:30 Yeah. You'll have to put that clip in the intro.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:37:32 Yeah, I was thinking, I was thinking so I, I thought this would also be a great opportunity to talk about what you guys like, what your focus was a little bit deeper. Like what is it you guys were mainly doing and who are you, what were the types of companies you were working with?
Aaron Ray: 00:37:50 Yeah, so starting out it was, it was around 2007 that myself and my other two partners kinda started talking about the idea. We had all worked together previously, like probably three, four years previously at a record label in town called suburban home. And I was doing like design art direction stuff. One of our other partners was doing like the website stuff for the label and then the, my other partner was doing kind of like the management money side, kind of like the business stuff and like tour management stuff and the label. So we all worked there together for a couple of years and then kind of went our separate ways and the different jobs. And then 2007 kind of started talking again and her started talking about starting a studio and it kinda seemed like we had the right set of skillsets at that point. You know, I was doing kind of graphic design stuff.
Aaron Ray: 00:38:42 I'd gone to school for animation, but I wasn't really doing animation that much at that point. But I was doing design and illustration stuff and then Joey had been doing kind of like business stuff and then the other guy was still doing like interactive. So about 2008, we started the company and we kind of, it was a slow, kind of a slow roll getting into it. I left my previous job on really good terms and that's the place where I was doing kind of like snowboard graphics and it was a a place called collective and they were like a youth branding marketing kind of agency. I was doing like snowboard graphics and ad campaigns, but it was all kind of focused around sort of like action sports,
Gabe Ratliff: 00:39:25 Which is pretty common. Good old Colorado. Yeah,
Aaron Ray: 00:39:29 Yeah, yeah. And so I left on really good terms with them and sort of brought work from them over to legwork. So that kind of helped us get our start in a way where they are kind of feeding us a little projects to begin with. And in terms of like what we were doing, we didn't really know exactly, we didn't think about it a lot. Then I think in general we're thinking like we're just a creative design studio. It wasn't like we're an animation studio and an interactive studio, we're just a design studio. So it was kind of generalized them like in my mind I really still wanted to be working with music and stuff like that and we did a little bit of that stuff. Probably within like a year or two though we all sort of realize like that's not kind of like gonna pay our bills doing like bam tee shirts and stuff. So I mean we just kept kind of trucking along and we were working with different types of clients and doing different projects, website stuff. We were doing some print stuff, some illustration stuff, and then eventually we started getting into some animation stuff again.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:40:31 I was curious about that because you brought that up about your school. You went to the art Institute and I was wondering about that when you said that you studied animation growing up, being into illustration, I could totally see, Hey, let's animate it, but I'm curious what was that that drew you to animation specifically when there's so much out there as far as illustration, like what was it that drew you to the, the moving picture?
Aaron Ray: 00:41:00 Oh, like in school. What kind of led me to follow that in school.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:41:04 Yeah. And then kind of led, I mean similarly has led you to what you're doing now and like what you've been doing in music videos, what you did at legwork. Like what, what drew you to that instead of doing, you know, you could, you could have done all kinds of illustration. I mean, you could've gone into comic illustration or,
Aaron Ray: 00:41:22 Yeah, so right before I went into college here in Denver, I was actually came up and visited the school thinking that I wanted to join there, sort of video and film program. I don't know why. I guess like at that time I was just really ended up to live action movies, like independent film and stuff like that. And also, again, not to beat a dead horse, but skateboarding and like skateboard videos. I was playing around with cameras a lot. So I kinda thought maybe I wanted to go into film, but then when I came out to visit the school, I just had like stacks of drawings and their character drawings and they're background drawings. There was character style sheets or like turnarounds of characters. And so I think the, the advisor there, she recommended I joined their new 3d animation program. It was a new program.
Aaron Ray: 00:42:17 So like in retrospect, I think maybe she was just trying to like fill the program a little bit since it was new. Cause she was probably right. I mean I didn't have any film work. I didn't show her like skateboard videos or anything like that. It was just a bunch of drawings. So she got me, she recommended I go into that program and I did what I realize though, like at that time, this was sort of this was 98 so it's a school from 98 to 2001. And this was when like computer animation was kinda just starting out, like toy story one had been released probably a couple of years earlier. I think 95 96 is when that came out. Bug's life was kind of around that time. So the whole curriculum was based around kind of like character animation for film and visual effects for film.
Aaron Ray: 00:43:10 So it was like Pixar stuff and like star Wars stuff. Right. And I just, I really didn't like it. Like I think I still had this I still have the sense of like it was missing like a design aspect to it. Like there was no graphic design in the animation curriculum at that time. There was no such thing as motion design at the time. So I don't know, I went through school, I learned the tools, I wasn't the best student. I like graduated and immediately went back into doing like or went into music stuff. Like my first job out of school was at the record label and I was in bands at the time. And so I wanted to keep creating artwork for the music industry. So that's kind of what I did. Cause the animation schooling wasn't really that exciting to me at the time. Yeah. So then fast forward to starting legwork again between 2001 and 2007 the term motion design started to become a thing and that that was way more interesting to me cause it was combining like animation with typography and in a more graphic way. So yeah, when we started like where the we, we weren't thinking animation websites, print design, album covers, we weren't thinking any of that. We were kind of just like, well we're here to do it all.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:44:32 All right. As we usually do. Yeah.
Aaron Ray: 00:44:36 And so that's kinda, that's kind of how it all started.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:44:38 I feel like it's just such a powerful story. This arc that you've gone through, right? Like where you did 11 years with this business that was full-on, right? You had six partners, you had a staff and you were doing all this really great agency work and I mean I did stuff you guys were pumping out. It was amazing. I feel like it's just such a great thing to, that's why I wanted to chat with you on the show because I feel like this is such a great thing to speak to because as of this year you've closed the doors. And so I wanted to kind of get it as this to this point as we kind of keep going through your arc, but to talk about things like what were the, some of the things that you learned from this process of of 11 years of having legwork studio.
Aaron Ray: 00:45:24 I've kind of see now that I can kind of look back at the whole timeline and just looking at the industry over that time, things really change quickly to the same point as I mentioned before of like motion design wasn't a thing and wasn't really a thing in 2001 but by 2007 it was in the same way the internet. So we were doing, you know, websites and stuff and we were doing video and linear sort of animation pieces. Advertising changed over time as well. So the type of work we were doing was kind of changing and we adapted actually pretty well. So like on the interactive side there was less sort of like micro site things, but people started asking us for more kind of augmented reality or like virtual reality things we're doing, just kind of different stuff in that technical space. And then in terms of of animation, that was always kind of like something that I was pushing to grow that was a learning experience in and of itself is just kind of learning how to, I finally kind of decided what I felt I was best at doing and how I could, what I could provide to the company.
Aaron Ray: 00:46:42 All the other partners were kind of from interactive backgrounds. So I was sort of like the odd man out there, kind of did the, the design graphic design and animation stuff. And so for a long time it was kinda easy just to sit there and like do work and like we were having a good time. We were friends, we were just like doing cool work all around. It didn't really matter what it was. And it wasn't until later when some of the types of projects we were getting were changing so we were getting more of this like experiential kind of physical space kind of stuff and that stuff's really fun too. But I think like at at what I really love is sort of linear storytelling kind of animation like ADB kind of stuff. And while the experience stuff is kind of a combination of like interactive and animation and it's really cool, like in the end I think like the process of making it was just something that that I didn't love.
Aaron Ray: 00:47:39 That's one thing that I saw over this timeline was just how things changed in the industry and what type of work we are getting. That also made me realize like if I was ever to do another studio again, I would from the outset I would be super focused on what I do. Like we did so many things that it was really easy to kind of be typecast in one way or another. We are lucky to like always be getting good clients and interesting projects. But like I said, we always had to stay on top of the animation stuff. We always had to be kind of pushing it out there and promoting it to get that type of work. So yeah, starting over or starting a new studio, I would, I would want to know exactly what I'm good at and I would want to put that out there and let everybody know and, and kind of just focus on on that kind of thing. I think we're lucky. Like I guess another story about the businesses, I think we were lucky having six partners that were able to work together for so long and we all pretty much are friends still, which from what I've heard and talked to other people, that can be rare. Yeah.
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Gabe Ratliff: 00:50:20 Well, it's like a band, right? It's the same thing as a band. When you get, you know, four or five guys together depending on the style near K six that's a lot of cooks, you know, and you're all creative and you're all your own being and you have your own tastes and experience and all these things and when you put money and business and clients and you know, as we get older having kids or a family and bills and all those things go on at the same time and you mix it all up. I mean that can definitely be a recipe for who knows what.
Aaron Ray: 00:50:57 Yeah. And you know, we definitely didn't see eye to eye on everything and we've gotten plenty of fights and arguments and I think at the end of the day though, I've kind of looked back at it and I'd rather be friends with somebody who I was friends with 10 years ago than just like dwell on being mad about something they did at a business that we started. It's more important to me. I think it's, it's too easy to like slip into being mad and holding a grudge. I guarantee I did stuff that like pissed them off too. I think it's, it's nice that you can just kinda like let that stuff go and a focus on the now and the future and try to stay stay buds
Gabe Ratliff: 00:51:37 Here, here. I mean that's, that's great. Right, because it is more important. Yeah. And there's so many, like we were just talking about, there are so many variables that come up in business, you know, that we take, we make these decisions cause you think, Oh, maybe this'll be a great project to get us doing something we want to do or to get us into an arena we want to get into. Or I mean there's a lot of decisions to be made when you're doing especially creative work, right? Cause we're looking to keep growing and to do stuff that's going to keep titillating us and it'd be exciting and new. Like you were talking about getting into experiential stuff. It's exciting and it's different. But then you got into it and you realize, Oh that's not feeding my soul as much as doing linear animation. You know?
Gabe Ratliff: 00:52:21 And I, that's amazing to figure that out. And I think that's part of the process, right? It's like figuring out where your pendulum swings and what center for you. That's, that's another big thing for all of us to learn and to take from that. Thank you for sharing that because I think that's really important for us because when you put creativity with entrepreneurship and you know, we're, we're managing a business and clients mixed with this thing that's very personal of creating and, and putting something out that that is created, then that's definitely something that you have to manage. So that's, that's awesome.
Aaron Ray: 00:53:01 Yeah. And that's a tough thing to manage actually. There are times when you're going to get paid pretty well for a project that you don't love doing or repeat projects that you don't love doing and you're getting paid and you're paying the company and the, and the staff. And that's all very important as well. It's, yeah, all of it. The culmination of all these different things can cause some stress. I mean, it's a lot to think about. It's a lot to manage at all times. And like you said, it's a creativity and creating is kind of a personal thing. So you really have to have tough skin and you have to like weigh the pros and cons of kind of every single thing that you do when you're running a business like that.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:53:46 Yeah. What are some other challenges that you could speak to that came up either with, with yourself or with, with running the business that might be relevant?
Aaron Ray: 00:53:57 Getting paid on time was a challenge. Yeah. Became more of a challenge over the past couple of years for some reason. I don't know what it was but it kind of seemed like a bills were just being paid much later than I would expect. Kind of combined that where, you know, we went through this phase where a couple of partners left and like right before they left we had been sort of thinking about growing the company and like what the future for the company was and the ideas was that we are going to kind of grow to handle a little bit more of this this other kind of work that was coming in. And then those partners left and that other kind of work sort of left as well. So we were sort of stuck there in this kind of middle ground of like we had hired people already and we were kind of growing and so it took the remaining partners a little bit of time to kind of figure out if that's actually what we wanted after the other partners left.
Aaron Ray: 00:54:54 Like do we want to grow or do we do our best work and we kind of stay at the size we were three years ago. And so now we're kind of in this position where we have like decent sized staff, not nothing huge. Like at the end we were only 16 total and three of those were the owners. But do we kind of shift and go smaller and combine that with the late payments from clients. And then, you know, we didn't really have a consistent sales cycle because that was something else that the three owners had never really managed in the past. And so we are kind of figuring, we were kind of like picking up a lot of pieces that had left with the other partners and trying to figure out how to handle them as three, but it was really just kind of like the sales stuff mostly because we had never been involved in being out there and trying to sell. Right. We had always been doing work.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:55:46 Right. Well that's another key feature of being a creative entrepreneur. Right? Is it you, that's another thing that you have to tack on is your sales hat. Yeah, and not to mention that creative work has its own ebb and flow as it is, right? You get around the holidays, everybody goes run into the Hills, right? If you don't have stuff lined up or if you don't have something that you're doing, that creates some kind of passive income for your business that keeps you getting through those periods. You're waiting to get through to January. When people get their new budgets and are ready to start creating again, they get through the holidays and they're like, Oh yeah, that's right. We still have stuff to market our new budget. Okay. By the way, can you make some stuff real quick?
Aaron Ray: 00:56:35 Yeah, yeah. We did. You know, we did a, I think we did a good job of pivoting pretty quickly though and we started taking on more of that role. We hired a sales person for a time there, which I don't know. No, that's kind of more of a test, but it helped take some of the load off our plate for sure. Yeah, we did find like the, the last few years we actually ended up doing some of my favorite work in terms of like animation. I took it upon myself to kind of reevaluate how we were budgeting and scoping projects cause that was something that we kind of, that I personally hadn't played a big role in previously. So I kinda did that and figured out that we could be getting more money for projects by not being afraid to actually put a number out there that is what actually should be versus kind of being unsure and like maybe making it a little lower. I was like, Oh no, no, let's just, let's just make it what it should be and we'll do like the right amount of kind of markup that we need and we need to sort of estimate what, what kind of profit we actually want to get from this project. And that, that process was really successful at the end there.
Gabe Ratliff: 00:57:50 Yeah, I mean that's another big thing. Rise. It's pricing. And we talked about that off off record. Just you know, about how the time for money conversation that is you know, prevalent in the creative space and how it's really about the value you bring and what it really takes to make the thing. And when you're the expert and they're coming to you and you're saying, Oh, it's this, they think, Oh, okay, well it's that, that's a great deal. You know, or, or well, that's crazy. It was some other 10 X number at this other place. And then you end up doing all this work and you may love it, but you end up getting that, you know when you do get paid, you look at it and you're like, shit, that really took way more and we brought the rain, they loved it. But now we've set this level with them for how much we cost. You know, and then it gets really difficult when you have an existing client to raise that you have to start fresh with a new client and say no, this is how actually how much it costs for us. And that's a really tough thing for so many of us. So many of us.
Aaron Ray: 00:59:00 Yeah, it is tough to reset that with clients that you've worked with in the past. So yeah, those, those better budgets that we were getting these past couple of years where with like new clients, but with the ones we had worked with in the past, we tried to up it kind of a little bit to make it a little more realistic. And I think the other thing too is, you know, we were based in Denver, so like our overall cost of living and overhead and all that stuff is naturally lower than LA and New York and San Francisco. So we're, we're able to charge a bit less than some of those other studios that we're competing with. There's no reason that we, we needed to charge less. We should have always been charging as much as we thought the LA studio was because from the client side, I think that I actually, I guess a lot of clients didn't even know we were in Denver a lot of times they didn't even know where we were. So, but there was this kind of perceived thing that like, Oh, they're coming in $50,000 less than this other company. They're kind of like the low budget option, you know, so that you have to walk a fine line there.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:00:08 What a, what a game we have to play. I want to kind of move us forward now and, and, and talk about as we get to what's leading you up to deciding to close the doors. Can you, can you talk us through what kind of got you to that decision and, and what that's been like as far as that kind of an experience to have, you know, 11 years as this studio that's cranking out all this really great work and, and you said, you know, the last few years you're doing work here you really were having fun with and that you're really proud of what got us to this point.
Aaron Ray: 01:00:43 Yeah, so I think it was a bit of the combination of a few things. I mean, first of all it was sort of like a lot of clients were kind of paying late and that kind of messed up our cycle a little bit where we started to have concerns that like, Oh well if they're paying too late, you know, we're going to be really like kind of cutting it thin. Like from the start, we never had that. We never started the studio with credit cards or anything like that. We always were like always even and profitable. And it wasn't until like partners left to where you know you have like buyouts and things that you have to do when you have a partnership. So one of our partners who had left and we were, we were paying out. And so that kind of ate into our nest egg.
Aaron Ray: 01:01:31 And so now, you know, going forward, whatever, five years, we don't really have that nest egg. We have this staff that's kind of amazing staff, but probably more staff than we needed. We have clients paying late. And so like at the end it kinda came down to that, but it, it was a decision to close versus like having to close the three of us. We were just thinking we're just feeling a little exhaustion, exhaustion from it all. And we never wanted to risk not being able to pay our staff. Not that that really was going to be a risk, but it was, it just felt closer than it ever had in the past. And with kind of the future being unknown and if this was going to be a consistent thing of clients paying late became something where it just wasn't fun having to that all the time. Right. Can you more about that then? Just like creating work and having a good time at the office, you know?
Gabe Ratliff: 01:02:28 Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. I know this isn't like an easy topic to be talking about because it's, there's so much to it and you know, it involves a lot of people and everything, so I really appreciate you sharing that with this for Aaron. Because again, when I, when I saw your post about it and was just thinking about what that's like now, cause you know, I was in corporate for so long, I was a corporate creative and is what I've been calling it. And then I was laid off and I was like not just drinking the Koolaid, I was making it at that place. So I like was devout to what we were doing and I loved my team. It's super, if that's the thing about our work is it's very familial, right? Cause you're like, you were just saying like you're playing around, you're having fun.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:03:12 Like we're not the S, you know, we're not this like sit at your desk, heads down something that's a little bit more strict, right? Like we're, we're doing stuff that's a little more loose and fun and it's creative. And so there tends to be this familial type environment, right? And there's a lot of fun that can be had in these environments, but there's also, like you said, there's a lot to juggle. There's the business side as well and you know, when you've got mouths to feed, especially, you know, you're, you're a dad and all of those things like you understand firsthand what that's like. But then you also got this staff [inaudible] and you've got the other partners. And this story is, I feel so relevant to many of us because if you're trying to go from a freelancer status into this space of having a business, I've just feel like it's so important to also hear these stories of what it's really like.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:04:08 You know? And to understand what it's like to put yourself out there and to like go to this level of having a full on studio and, and making a name and having a staff and doing this kind of work. And it's something that can be scary for people, but it's something can also be so fulfilling. And I love hearing that you are able to make this decision. It wasn't made for you. Cause I think that is also a very personal thing, right? When you're running a business, it's your baby and making that decision is a big one. And so if you're able to make that as a, as a, as a choice as opposed to being forced into that, that also says something. And so again, I appreciate you sharing that.
Aaron Ray: 01:04:48 Yeah, for sure. You know, also I think about making the decision like we never want it to be owned by the money, right? We never wanted money to control what we were doing. We wanted to make enough money to do to live decent lives and pay our staff and then be able to do awesome work kind of behind that. And you hear about so many places closing and to me it seems like maybe they got into position or they're chasing the money too much or whatever or growing too fast or whatever it is. And I think at the end there we are kind of in this position where things just weren't exactly like they were when we started and the money was sort of dictating what we're doing more than than we were a little bit. I think that goes back to skateboarding, DIY and punk again, it's just like, you know, don't do it, do it for yourself and don't let anything else kind of determine why you're doing things. And you don't have to be greedy. Obviously you have to live and make money. I'm a fan. I mean money, money is a tricky thing.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:06:01 Oh sure. His brother I'm sure is the I w I want to ask like what are some of the, if you just had like two or three things, just real clean and clear that you could say to, to the audience about like what you would do different, right? Like you were talking earlier, you made a comment earlier about if you did it again about the how you would be really focused about the work and you know, not kind of branching off as, as, as you were experimenting with things like experiential type interactive work. What are a couple of other things that you could maybe share that you would do differently with, with if you started a new stiff and when you started a new studio?
Aaron Ray: 01:06:46 Yeah, I think that's definitely one of them is sort of knowing exactly what type of work you're going to be doing and be able to focus on that and make that the best it can be versus doing too many other things. I think a second one would be if you're going to have partners, make sure you're both on the same page and in line. And partnerships can be tricky even if you're friends. So make sure you're, you're feeling very comfortable about who you're partnering with to start a business. And then third, I think have a very clear vision of what you want the future of the company to be. We never did, like we started out and we were just like, well, we're starting a company. We're going to do cool work. That was, it was then, it was like we were in the, in the moment, we never thought about the future of what the company was going to be.
Aaron Ray: 01:07:36 So if I was going to do it now, I would, I'd probably write a more detailed business plan and I would know is the objective of my company to sell it in five or 10 years, you know, or be acquired or is the objective to be stay as a small studio and do this until I retire. Just kind of having a clear idea of what you're trying to do with the company. And I guess that kind of goes into who you're partnering with too. They should have that kind of same, same idea and that stuff changes. I mean, people change over time, so that's never going to be perfect. But I think I'm having a couple of those things locked from the start is pretty important.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:08:17 Yeah. I mean, especially with, you know, if you have a family, if you, you know, if it starts to grow and your priority changes as far as what is important to you, you know, if that's time with family and you know, I've, I, something that I think is been a benefit of the internet and our modern world is that you're seeing moms and dads be able to stay home with their kids and be able to do work and be able to interact and not have to get a babysitter or a daycare or anything like that. You know, where they can actually interact with them in their early stage years and, and, and beyond and have that kind of engagement. And that's, you know, we don't have kids but that's something I, you know, I have a nephew and niece that are just super important to me and they live really close and we don't on them as much as possible and it's important to me to have time with them. And I can't imagine what that's like if you're a parent and you're needing to put food on the table but you want to have that engagement with, with your family. So that's a big one. I know for a lot of people when they're in that kind of state of, of creating a business like you, like you had, when you've got that going, you know that you, that's also another factor you have on your personal life that can make a big difference about what your priority is.
Aaron Ray: 01:09:39 Yup. Yeah. If you're going to start a company that's, that's another good point is having what, what you see your work life balance being or like what you need. And I think we started with this idea to where we are going to be not workers at work ourselves to death and like have time to spend with our families, which we did. But again, things change. And we got, you know, we started doing so well and we started putting in tons and tons of work and effort and we were working late nights pretty constantly. So, and we love our work and they love our work. Yeah. That's a hard thing to, that's a hard thing to control because if you want to compete with the other studios out there, you have to put in a lot. And it's, it's tough. That's something that I'm still figuring out how to juggle this. Got it. You're the best work but also not kill myself trying to do it.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:10:36 Yeah. I mean it's also because we're, we love what we do and right. And we like it. It's, it's part of us. We've been doing this for years and you know, there's that whole inner competition of wanting to keep to growing and getting better. And there's the competition across our industry with other peers and colleagues. And, and businesses. And there's that just innate passion for what we do
Aaron Ray: 01:11:02 With creative work. There's always something more you can do to it to make it better. You can like noodle it till the very end.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:11:09 A little tree. Let's add a little friend here, some burnt Sienna. We're going to start wrapping this up here. You were talking about the work life balance and I love that. So, so you had the, the top few things are being focused about the work you do, the partners being on the same page. If you have partners, understanding the future of your business, what you're planning to do with it down the road as far as like selling it or you know, staying a small, nimble studio and being able to just keep creating what you want to create. And which I, that's one thing I loved about Pixar in the early years, they stayed small and focused and then they grew because so many people love what they did and now they're just massive because Disney bought them. But then you talked about work life balance. So I was thinking, you know, what about that, could you speak to maybe like from the w the business side, were there ways that you guys were able to sort of establish that too because you had staff members that you also had to kind of create that environment to separate the two to some degree.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:12:19 Did you have anything that you did and action to do that?
Aaron Ray: 01:12:22 Well, yeah, we like for one, we didn't really track vacation time. If anybody wanted to take a vacation, they just had to give us notice. So we weren't like, you only have this many days per year. I mean in 2018 one of our employees without even knowing it because he just wasn't paying attention. I think he took like 30 days of vacation, which is kind of a lot, I guess. Generally speaking for America. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But yeah, we were just like pretty laid back about that kind of stuff. We were, like I said, we worked a lot. Like we spent the night in the office plenty of times and anytime that was happening we would try to make it as easy as possible. I mean there was lots of beer drinking at the office constantly. It was just a super laid back environment. But there was a lot of work to do too.
Aaron Ray: 01:13:15 So it's, it's easy to say that we are kind of open and deadline driven, but at the end of the day, like everybody there had to work a lot to meet those deadlines. But you know, we tried, I guess we tried to just keep it open and trust people to do what they wanted. Outside of that, you know, we would try to take off and like do rear back titties. We took everybody to do like a screen printing workshop one day we went to a couple of years back where you went to Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, drove everybody out there for like two days. We'd pretty often go like snowboarding and skateboarding and stuff like that together. I like to think that we tried our best to give everybody freedom for life or for their lives. You know?
Gabe Ratliff: 01:13:59 Yeah. I feel like that's a big thing that gets in the way of being an employee, you know, is that, especially if you have a cool place to work, there's this sense of, of devotion and commitment to the, to the company, right. Cause and there's this devotion to your craft and so you work hard. But to also give that freedom to people where they can, what my design mentor said, have your big boy pants or big, big boy job or your, your big girl job, you know, that you're grown up, do the work, however you need to work. We're creatives. If you have to work at night, if you're a night owl, if you like to work early, whatever, just get the work done. Yeah. But then, you know, go off and you know, let your hair down and have fun together and enjoy what you do after doing all this awesome work. So that, that's awesome.
Aaron Ray: 01:14:53 Yup. My impression is that a lot of companies kind of say that and I wonder how successful it is and I don't even know if we are successful at it, but like I said, I feel like we, we tried to to make it work.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:15:07 Yeah. That is so true, man. Especially with the startup world. I worked at several startups and that was one of the things, you know, it was all this like cool shit. Then you think, Oh, it's such a cool space. But I was working 70 hour weeks and my weekends were literally just like recouping and trying to just get some sleep and rest and get an energy backup to go and keep creating and being present and committed to the work, you know? And I remember just being so spent when I left. Yeah. After four years just being like, I'm spent man,
Aaron Ray: 01:15:46 The ping pong table doesn't make any difference.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:15:50 Yeah. I mean, how much are those, are they really, really, I mean, frat houses that being Palm tables too, so they're, it's not like they're that hard to come across. I know a bunch of people that have pool and ping pong tables in their basement. So I didn't, I didn't feel like that was that big of a thing. Yeah. So what's next for you? We've, we've talked about, and thank you again, so much, Erin, for sharing this story because I really feel like this is something that's just super important to people listening to this, to hear about this type of experience because it's not something that comes up all the time and not everybody's open to sharing that. And I appreciate you being willing to do that, but what's next for you?
Aaron Ray: 01:16:31 Yeah, so I'm freelancing right now and I'm going to do this for awhile. It's, it's interesting. I've, I have friends in LA, in New York and stuff, so I've already made some good connections at studios and I have a portfolio right now that I'm proud of. So I dunno, I think it's going to be exciting to work with other studios and kind of see, you know, cause we've been in this for so long, we had our processes and we had our ways of doing things. So it's going to be nice to like work with different teams and, and just kind of see how other people do things and like as far as how I'm or what type of work I'm doing, it's kind of creative direction or animation direction, but also just design and illustration. So I'm excited to maybe work in different capacities depending on kind of who's looking for what.
Aaron Ray: 01:17:21 I think probably for the most part it would be just kind of designing and doing style frames and stuff for emotion pieces. But you know, I'm already kind of working with a company in LA, first project done I kind of helped on was like pitching on a project for them. And that was exciting cause I got to not only design but also kind of work on some ideas around the concept and stuff. And I think that's, that would be kind of ideal is kind of working on the pitch stuff and the, the big picture kind of stuff. And then like the initial design or art direction. I really love doing that stuff. But you know, like I said, at the same time I'm excited just to be like somebody calls me and says they just want me to illustrate like five frames. That's fun too.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:18:08 Yeah. And I will keep note of that for myself as well. I had a couple of last little sort of, you know, Jedi questions for you that I thought I would pose. What, what advice would you give to whether it be your younger self or to, you know, young people who are younger people coming up as artists that are maybe looking to do, whether it be freelance or, or start their own studio.
Aaron Ray: 01:18:36 Yeah. maybe this isn't so much for my younger self cause the, the world has changed with social media and stuff, but I could see how intimidating it could be to be like a young artist who's looking to get into freelance, especially in the animation and motion design world because there's so much stuff out there. There's so many like really talented, very young people. Even just coming out of school that are just like crushing it. And I think social media like Instagram, it makes it hard not to feel intimidated, I would assume. Because I look at it and I'm like, wow, these, this kid just graduated and they're like beyond what I've ever even been able to do. Like the talent is like crazy. It's so good. And it's just everywhere. And it seems like people are like churning out work constantly to like really fast.
Aaron Ray: 01:19:29 So if you're like a young designer illustrator looking to freelance don't be intimidated by what you see on social media. Use it as inspiration, like to, to make yourself maybe work harder if you, if you want to be in that world, like maybe it'll help push you, but don't think that you're not as good just cause there's so much out there or that you're not as fast. At the end of the day, if you're a freelancer, all that matters is you make a connection with a producer at a studio for a project. And if you do a good job for that producer, they're going to it and they're gonna come back to you. So you might not be the best out there, but if you help them on a project and you're a reliable, that's really all that matters at the end of the day.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:20:17 Nice. Has a work of art, film, literature or music ever directly influenced your life?
Aaron Ray: 01:20:25 Lots of music for sure. Did you say directly influenced my life? Yeah. That he said. Yeah. I mean yeah. Music for sure has kind of driven me into kind of where I'm at and kind of kept me going. I think. Yes, it's great. I mean there's so many. That's a really tough question.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:20:47 Yeah it is. I I like ass on that one. Cause some people they have something right off the bat and other people have a little bit deeper message like you, you know, cause I'm similar music saved my life and continues to keep me going. It's been a long sorted history.
Aaron Ray: 01:21:08 Oh we kind of, we kinda like talked about some of that earlier. Just like the music and the skateboarding stuff. I mean yeah, in general. That stuff I think I can, Oh, I can say that's why I am where I am because of those things
Gabe Ratliff: 01:21:23 Here. Here. How about favorite documentary or movie
Aaron Ray: 01:21:29 [Inaudible] movie also so many right off hand her. So her early, like the ones I mentioned earlier, Mike Mills 20th century women and beginners as they're both great. You know, I like terrible movies as well or like giant blockbuster movies. It can be fun.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:21:51 Was the beginners the one with is that with you and McGregor? Yeah. And his dad and or like his father. It's this whole thing. Yeah.
Aaron Ray: 01:22:00 Yeah. Like documentaries, like beautiful losers. I don't know if you've ever seen that kind of about that whole kind of art movement that sort of came out of skateboarding and like New York.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:22:12 Yup. What would you say is the best or most worthwhile investment that you've made?
Aaron Ray: 01:22:17 Yeah, an investment. [inaudible]
Gabe Ratliff: 01:22:20 It could be anything. It doesn't have to be money. No, it doesn't have to be money. It could be time.
Aaron Ray: 01:22:24 I taught myself how to screen print posters. So that was worthwhile cause that's something that I loved doing. And it's something I'm probably gonna do for the rest of my life. I taught myself how to play guitar. That was worth the time I spent doing it. For sure.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:22:40 Yeah. Usually I, I don't go to monetary investment with that question. That's always like the last thing I'm thinking about. Okay. Is there anything else that you'd like to say or any like final parting words that you'd like to share that maybe you weren't able to say before?
Aaron Ray: 01:22:57 Nothing in particular, but just like, I, I think what you're doing is awesome. I think especially for like younger generation, getting insight is super valuable. I know it was for me kind of growing up and actually I don't even think I really had anything like this when I was kind of starting out. I'm always open for sort of helping youth and sort of younger generation people kinda like, I don't know, I'm, I'm always open to sharing whatever I have, you know, even if it isn't that much, like people need to know that they're not doing things wrong, you know?
Gabe Ratliff: 01:23:35 Yeah. Or alone. That's a letter that I like to say cause I, I remembered feeling alone.
Aaron Ray: 01:23:42 Okay.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:23:42 And not even that long ago, you know, but I remember growing up just feeling very, cause like we were talking about, you know, create creativity, a lot of it, you know, illustrating, drawing and things. A lot of it's an so an indoor sport, right? And you, you're hanging out by yourself and it's like this thing that you can do very solitary and it's a very personal thing. So to like feel like you're alone I think is also a common thing that I, I remember being in this place of like, even though like you were talking about like there's the comparison thing with social media and seeing like there's all these artists out there and you just think you can feel alone in that you're like, I'm not as good as all these people out there. And they're cranking out all this work and are amazing.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:24:24 And you know, they're doing all this stuff and they're like 17 or 15 or however old, you know, and they're like designing stuff for video games just out of high school or whatever. And you can get really intimidated by that. I thought that was a really great comment. But that's also, that's kind of sense of feeling alone and that like your stuff isn't worthy. Meanwhile, I think the other thing I got from what you talked about is that it's really about figuring out what is worthy for you. Right. And like what really speaks to you, just like you were talking about where you were doing some stuff that wasn't really filling your, you know, filling up your, your soul as much as some of the other work that you do with animation.
Aaron Ray: 01:25:08 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something that I think took me a long time to learn is that it's okay to look inside and, and realize maybe you're not happy doing something and just because everybody else seems to be happy doing it doesn't mean that you have to be excited about it or, or it doesn't have to be a positive experience and it's okay to switch gears or do something different.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:25:34 Yeah. Especially, especially a lot of us, I feel like, you know, we at least a lot of the creatives, I know we're fortunate to not just do one thing. We're usually creative in all kinds of ways and I believe that we're all creative. And that there's the big capital C creative and the little C creative. There's like you're saying, you taught yourself to play guitar and you taught yourself to screen print and it's just really like, Hey, this interests me. I'm curious about it. Let's go check this thing out and we'll see where that takes me and not get stuck in a rut of like, I'm only gonna do this one thing and you know, and then give yourself that space to find something else that you might love if it's, you're hitting a wall with what you've been doing. Yeah. Well, last question, Erin. Where can people find you on the interwebs?
Aaron Ray: 01:26:24 Website is Aaron J. Ray.Com Instagram is same thing slash Aaron J. Ray. That's pretty much it. Twitter's the same. Yep. Aaron J. Ray.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:26:38 Nice. Well, at least it's consistent. Yeah. Some of them I'll get, you know, they're, there's like dashes and underscores and you're like, I'm sorry. That's a lot to keep track of. Yup. Well man, Aaron, thank you so much brother. I really appreciate you the work you're doing. I appreciate the story that you shared. I appreciate your time and keep up the great work, man.
Aaron Ray: 01:27:05 Yeah, thank you man. It was awesome talking.
Gabe Ratliff: 01:27:10 Well, that's it for this episode. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much for being here. I really hope you enjoyed the show. The Artful Entrepreneur podcast comes out bi-weekly and is available every other Thursday for your enjoyment and all links and show notes for this episode can be found at theartful.co. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to the show and leave a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to be a guest or know someone that would be a great fit, please go to theartful.co/guest and thanks again for listening. Until next time.