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June 4, 2020

Animation: A How-to Guide for Remote Production (Part 1)

  • Posted By : Joshua Gunn/
  • 1 comments /
  • Under : Uncategorized

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.

The Asana calendar from a recent project.

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.

A look at a recent project, mapped out in Instagantt, available as a standalone product, or as an extension for Asana.

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:

A Slack poll helps us make creative decisions as a team.

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.

A recent Google Meet video chat. What’s going on here? Who knows!

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.

No matter where you go, everything is always in the cloud and your workstation. Thanks, Dropbox!

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.

Dropbox’s Smart Sync feature is fantastic and simple to use, giving you access to the files you need without filling up your hard drive.

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


May 4, 2020

Thoughts on Remote Company “Culture”

  • Posted By : Joshua Gunn/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Uncategorized

Up here in New England, spring finally seems to be on its way. Warmer weather means you may run into neighbors on the front porch and find yourself chatting, as I did this weekend, with the family that lives below us in our apartment building. Making sure to stand six feet apart, we didn’t talk about anything particularly noteworthy; we caught up about our lives, our work. We commiserated about toilet paper. Then, it dawned on me that this was one of the first extended conversations I’d had in the physical world — not via video chat — for a very long time. And it felt so good!

For me, there’s something about in-person contact that can’t be re-created via video chat. And I feel a deep sense of loss about that. Video flattens the nuances of body language. It forces interactions, especially among teams, into something different from a conversation. It feels like a parade of presentations, of “now it’s your turn to be on camera” moments. Indeed, it’s becoming clear that video conferencing is more stressful and exhausting than in-person conversations. And I feel that way, too.

Instead of recognizing this, the response to our new reality from many organizations has been to exacerbate that stress by hosting all manner of video-based social meetups, happy hours, and other gatherings in an effort to maintain company “culture” and morale through a trying time. The goal seems to be to re-create the way things were in an effort to protect employees from the way things now are.

But that’s impossible. The world is different now. My feeling is that organizations and the people of which they are comprised should be given the space to grieve that lost world. I think we are just now in the first stages of that. It has been said that denial is the first stage of grief. Perhaps the desire to keep things as close to the way they used to be is part of that denial.

So, what are some practical solutions for maintaining a sense of team cohesion in times of change and stress? What does a more authentic culture look like, one that acknowledges that we are undergoing a trauma? Here are some thoughts:

  1. Recognize that this is hard. Don’t try to protect employees from the hardship by denying it or reframing it as something that can be solved via video chat or other forms of technology. This is hard. This requires grief. Own that.
  2. Be transparent. If you lead a team, show your vulnerability. Maybe you’re scared, or overwhelmed, or just plain weirded out by all of this. Show that, so that others can feel like they can show it too. (Maybe even write a blog post about it and post it on your website?)
  3. Lay off the meetings and let people be so they can figure out what works best for them. Let people know you’re there for them, but let people discover their pathway forward.
  4. Connect authentically. Find a way to connect your team in ways that let them show what their real lives under social isolation are like. One strategy is to do a show and tell. We’ve been doing that each week for nearly a month now. We each show something meaningful from our homes. For me, it’s often bike stuff. For Sam, it’s inflatable unicorns with a gorilla on top. It’s a little ritual that acknowledges the oddity of our times, while giving us a real way to connect, to get to know more about each other, even when we can’t be with each other.

Things are different now. Let’s challenge ourselves to feel the loss of what came before, but to also find authentic joy in new places.


April 15, 2020

Stuck at Home? Time to Get Coloring!

  • Posted By : Joshua Gunn/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Uncategorized

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!

Yes, I want to color!

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.


March 26, 2020

An Escape from The End of The World

  • Posted By : Joshua Gunn/
  • 6 comments /
  • Under : Uncategorized
Gentoo penguins in Tierra del Fuego setting the standard for social distancing
(photo: Jill Gatlin)

Now more than ever, it’s important to stay together, even while we stay apart. So I wanted to take a moment to personally wish you safety, health, and courage and to let you know about some recent events on our planet that have left me with new perspectives and a whole lot of gratitude.

Last week, a long-planned, long-anticipated trip to Patagonia came to a sudden end for me and my wife. While backpacking through Argentina’s Glaciares National Park, a ranger found us deep in the wilderness (in the shadow of Mt. Fitzroy, to be exact) and told us to pack up our tent and get out. All Argentine National Parks were closed in response to COVID-19.

Thus began a harrowing journey back home.

Closed for business: Mt. Fitzroy in the heart of Argentina’s Glaciares National Park
(photo: Jill Gatlin)

It took us 10 miles to hike out, and when we emerged, we found a changed world. Luckily, and by complete happenstance, we heard that the Argentine border was closing in just a few hours, leaving us little time to drive 300 miles to get back into Chile, our only way back to the US. 

With barely any sleep, we packed up and drove through the early morning hours, hopeful that we would avoid one of the many checkpoints the Argentine police had set up to enforce quarantines on all foreigners. Eventually, we managed to find an obscure border crossing on a potholed dirt road. My heart pounded as we approached the border guards, but thankfully, we were allowed to cross. 

Had we not heard about the border closing we’d still be in Argentina under quarantine. Many from the US, Europe, and elsewhere are still caught there with limited options–including a Belgian family of four we befriended.

The lonely road to Chile, aptly named “La Ruta Fin del Mundo” — The End of the World Route.
(photo: Jill Gatlin)

Once in Chile, we had to decide if it was even wise to return home, as the situation in South America is much less dire than in Europe and the US, with far fewer cases and limited community spread (so far). Ultimately, though, we did decide to return. The pull of home, of familiarity and community, outweighed the risk. And I wanted to be closer to the Planet Nutshell team during the crisis. 

However, by the time we’d made the decision to come home, we found most flights were cancelled. Somehow (again, a pure stroke of good look) we ended up on a flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and from there, we boarded one of the last flights to the States. 

All told, it took us six days to get home after the park ranger evicted us. And throughout it all, the Planet Nutshell team has shown incredible resiliency, courage, and kindness. They’ve shown me yet again what a special group we have managed to assemble. I am deeply grateful.

There is no way to know how this situation will resolve. The only thing that’s for sure is that we will be all surely changed by it. At Planet Nutshell, we know change — however frightening — will push us to grow, to discover, and to help. 

Our team continues to work remotely and we remain open for business. To all those in the Planet Nutshell orbit, I invite you to reach out and say hello. Let us know how you are in this trying time.

Stay safe and be well.


February 19, 2020

How to Run a Small Creative Business (and Stay True to Yourself)

  • Posted By : Joshua Gunn/
  • 2 comments /
  • Under : Uncategorized

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.


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