As social distancing and remote work have become the norm in many places, how can teams still create media and tell stories collaboratively and safely? Animation is one obvious solution, as it can be produced entirely remotely. That is, it can be, so long as you have the right systems in place and the right tools available.

I wanted to share some of the tools and processes that have set up our team for success as we all work remotely, and allowed us to go from client brief to final cut, all from the comfort of our house slippers. In part one (which you’re reading now — hi!), I’ll go over project management, communication, and productivity/file sharing, and in part two (stay tuned!), we’ll have a look at our creative collaboration tools for storyboarding, design, and animation.

Project Management

A couple of years ago, I spent months searching for the right project management tools, ones that allowed us to work the way we wanted to work, but even more efficiently.

Finally, we settled on a combination of Asana and Instagantt. Asana is great because we can easily assign tasks to both our internal staff and freelancers, and everything appears on a calendar. When tasks are complete, assignees can check them off and get that wonderful feeling of satisfaction (who doesn’t love crossing items off their to-do list?). Plus, there’s even a unicorn that flies across the screen (seriously!) when a task is completed.

Meanwhile, Instagantt, which can be purchased as an extension for Asana, lets us chart out projects on a timeline, allocate our resources, and see how projects are overlapping. Sam, our producer, lives in Instagantt, keeping track of the status of every detail. Without Instagantt, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be nearly as efficient as we are, as it helps us schedule and allocate precious resources with a ton of precision across multiple concurrent projects.

Communication

Slack is our most important remote communication tool, by far. We create a “channel” for each project so that everything for that project lives in one place. We also have channels for artwork, animation, and ideas that inspire us; potential freelancers; upcoming events; and more.

We recently added a little app to Slack that allows us to take polls to get consensus on creative decisions. Here’s a recent one Mollie made to help us decide which music track to use for our upcoming reel:

When we need to talk one-on-one or as a team to go over an issue, discuss a design, or share our screens to go over a sequence we’re working on in After Effects, we hop on a video chat. We also meet more formally three times a week to hang out and do a show and tell. There are, of course, many solutions for this, but we prefer Google Meet, because it’s part of G Suite, which we use for email, as well as sharing docs, calendars, and spreadsheets in the cloud.

File Sharing

This is a biggie, as the lifeblood of our work is the creative files we’re creating and sharing, and many of those files are quite large in size. After Effects projects, Illustrator files, Photoshop files, audio and video files.. the list goes on and on.

For about a decade, we have relied on one solution that is essential to our operations and has almost never let us down: Dropbox for Business.

Why is it the best, in my view? It gets out of the way, and it just works. Create or update a file on your computer’s hard drive just like you would any other file, and it’s instantly available to your team members on their hard drive. It’s as simple as that. Need to send a file to a client for review? Right clink on the file in the Finder or Directory, and you’ve got a link to share with them. Everything is backed up effortlessly, too. There’s a great feature, called Smart Sync, that lets you decide which files actually live on your desktop vs. being stored in the cloud. This lets you download files when you need them, so you don’t fill up your hard drive with files you’re not working on, or use infrequently.

Stay tuned for part two, when I’ll show these tools in action as part of our remote production process.

We know it’s tough to be cooped up, so we thought we’d make it a little easier by creating a “Color Board.” What’s a Color Board? We adapted a storyboard from one of our favorite series, Yana & Egbert, and created a coloring book. Download it by clicking the big purple button below, and enjoy!

When you’re done coloring, watch the episode to see how your color choices compare to ours.

And hey, feel free to send us your creations and we’ll post them to our Instagram.

On Monday mornings, the Planet Nutshell team sits down for a weekly meeting to go over the week’s tasks and tell scintillating stories about weekend adventures. During a recent one, the conversation turned to Planet Nutshell’s successes, which led me to proclaim, “How the heck did I do this?!”

How indeed? There are many reasons I think Planet Nutshell has stuck around and made a name for itself, but here are a few of the most important ones:

Do What You’re Good At

Here are a few things I’m pretty good at: coming up with ideas, storytelling, writing, communication, leadership, interpersonal relationships, emotional intelligence, organization, eating, and riding bikes.

Here are a few (relevant) things I’m pretty bad at: accounting, bookkeeping, design, illustration, animation, and math.

When I first started, I tried to do all of these things — and do them all at once — and it wasn’t sustainable. Eventually, I got to the point where I could (and needed to) hire people who were great at the things I’m really not-great at. And as time has gone on, I’ve evolved even further. I now also have the pleasure of working with people who are even better than me at the things I’m good at.

My advice: focus on what you’re naturally good at, outsource and hire for the rest. Look for ways to build a community of people who can help you build that whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Be honest with yourself and others about your strengths and weaknesses, and reward and celebrate the strengths of others. Which brings me to my next point…

Hire Well

Choosing the right people to work with has been the toughest challenge of all, and a lot of what I’ve learned has come through trial and error. There are so many talented people in the world of illustration, animation, and media production, but only a small subset of them share our values and want to be a part of something bigger.

When I hire someone, technical and artistic talent (which can be nourished and honed), are secondary to the skills and talents that are rarer and more precious, like emotional intelligence, humility, interpersonal acumen, self-reflectivity, and a willingness to grow.

Stand for Something

The industry we operate in is extremely competitive. Lots of people do what we do, but no one else does it the way we do. I learned a long time ago that if you simply follow the trends, take whatever work comes in the door, and compete on price alone, trying to be all things to all people, you’re playing someone else’s game on a competitive landscape that’s overcrowded with indistinct choices.

I chose a different path. I chose to become a small media producer whose work is an extension of our humanity. Above all else, we want to have a positive impact on our viewer’s lives. That might mean we make less money than a traditional ad agency. It might mean we don’t have a fancy office. But it also means that we are true to who we are as artists and as people. Some might call this process of individuation “building a brand.” For me, the notion of a brand — the word “brand” itself — is an attempt to co-opt a set of values that are outside the commercial sphere.

My dream is that work remains a human endeavor, not a purely commercial one. And after 12 long-yet-brief, wonderful years, that dream is still alive and kicking.