Barry Kelly Interview
Mack Garrison and Barry Kelly talk a little shop in this interview with the Emmy award-winning artist and director at Titmouse, who shares his journey in the animation industry. From his early influences and experiences growing up in Nebraska to his work on major projects like Star Wars and Star Trek, Barry discusses the evolution of animation, the tools and techniques used in the industry, and the importance of storytelling. He reflects on his inspirations, the challenges of the animation process, and the significance of creating content that resonates with both his younger and older selves.
Takeaways
Barry Kelly describes himself as a 'nerd from Nebraska' who found his passion in animation.
He emphasizes the importance of being of service through entertainment and creativity.
Barry's journey into animation was influenced by his love for comics and cartoons.
He highlights the cultural impact of shows like The Simpsons on generations of viewers.
Working on Star Wars allowed Barry to channel the feelings those movies gave him as a child.
The animation industry is driven by people and collaboration, not just rules and guidelines.
Barry discusses the challenges of getting mature animated content accepted in the U.S. market.
He reflects on the importance of flexibility in animation tools and techniques.
Barry draws inspiration from comic book artists and filmmakers like Paul Verhoeven and Ridley Scott.
He believes in the importance of making content that resonates with both his eight-year-old and eighty-year-old selves.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Barry Kelly and His Journey
02:56 The Impact of Animation on Personal Identity
05:58 Working on Iconic Franchises: Star Wars and Beyond
08:53 Navigating the Animation Industry: From Nebraska to LA
11:58 Early Career Experiences and Learning Opportunities
15:11 The Evolution of Animation Tools and Techniques
18:03 Flexibility in Animation Production: Tools and Techniques
18:59 The Evolution of Animation Tools
20:48 Experiences at Titmouse Animation Studio
22:06 Dramatic Storytelling in Animation
25:03 Memorable Projects and Personal Highlights
27:10 Balancing Artistic Integrity and Industry Demands
29:03 Quality Assurance in Animation Production
33:05 Inspirations and Influences in Animation
36:52 New Chapter
Transcript:
Mack Garrison (00:00)
Hey, what's up everyone? Mack Garrison here, co-founder of Dash Studio, and I'm excited to be back with another speaker series interview. And we got the talented Barry Kelly, who's a nerd from Nebraska, self-described nerd, who also loves to be an Emmy award-winning, who happens to be an Emmy award-winning artist working in animation for the past 18 years. Director at Titmouse cartoons, his credits include Star Wars, Galaxy of Adventures, Son of Zorn.
and Venture Bros. He recently wrapped up the fifth season of the hit sci-fi series Star Trek Lower Decks for CBS Paramount Plus. Welcome to the show, Barry. So glad to have you here.
Barry (00:34)
Hey, thanks for having me, Mack Morning on this side.
Mack Garrison (00:36)
feel like,
my gosh, that's right. You're up bright and early. I'm on my third cup of coffee. So if that comes through in the interview, you know why. I think it's first, we need to just like acknowledge like how cool our lives are right now. Cause we're sitting here, you're coming to speak at the Dash Bash Animation Conference and we're gonna talk shop and just kind of hang out like pretty neat that this is our job in middle of the day for me at least on a Tuesday.
Barry (00:45)
Yeah.
Yeah,
I I'm always like, am I, am I doing, am I useful or I don't know how to do anything else. You know, like, I don't know, like I know how to draw pictures and I know how to, you know, make like like a, like a cool image. And I'm like, I'm so into like comics and toys and all these things. And I'm like, I hope, I hope I can entertain somebody so I'm useful, you know, that being of service is something I subscribe to, you know.
Mack Garrison (01:21)
I saw the news come out recently that 2024 YR4 asteroid that could hit us. don't know if you saw this in like 10 years. was a random, yeah, there's a random asteroid and it's plummeting towards us. I think there's like a one in 42 chance that it hits us. And I was thinking, I was like, you know, if there was like a shelter, know, Greenland style like shelter or something like that, we would not make it. Like they are not looking for animators to join the team. Maybe if we were architects or someone in
Barry (01:27)
No, no, I'm assuming it's happening all the time. This is what I assume.
Mack Garrison (01:49)
you know, healthcare space.
Barry (01:50)
Or in those scenarios,
I always think like, you know, you have to do a tally of like, what can you do? What can you do? What can you do? And like, I can build lodging, can build, I can hunt, I can do this. And then it gets to me and it's like, I can draw and they're just like, your food. And they're just gonna, you know, I'll just be the thrown in the fridge.
Mack Garrison (01:56)
Right.
You're like I can make a good joke from time to time on occasion
Barry (02:09)
Yeah, yeah, on occasion. It's
quantity over quality though.
Mack Garrison (02:14)
So funny, it feels so accurate. But yeah, no, you're right though. I mean, we are in a cool space. It is lucky to be able to do what we do. I'm always curious how folks end up here because like animation has a multitude of different routes from like more of the entertainment space, production space. mean, there's a lot. When did that moment kind of hit you where you were like, oh, animation's kind of like the direction I need to go?
Barry (02:37)
I always feel like there's like a group of wannabe comic book artists that got sucked up by the animation industry and I'm definitely one of those. There are comic book artists that were legitimate that actually got published for real that became sucked in the animation industry but I'm definitely one of the ones that's like I can draw kind of. I like film, you know, I like all these things and like you know when I moved out to LA it was kind of like my talents that I could you know that I was okay at.
Mack Garrison (02:56)
Mm-mm.
Barry (03:06)
which was kind of drawing, kind of film stuff, kind of like led me to like the combination of the two, which is animation. And I don't know why I always think that, like, I never thought I'd get animation, because I've loved cartoons just as much as I loved anything else. Like, Simpsons and Batman were huge in my life. And think Simpsons kind of like probably has like a huge effect on more people than we realize, just because it's been on for so long. There's generations now. Yeah, there's just like...
Mack Garrison (03:21)
Mm.
my gosh, my childhood. Yeah, it was like
after dinner it was like Simpsons were on, you know, my household.
Barry (03:33)
Yeah, it's like reruns.
Yeah, reruns of the Simpsons was worth it. And like now like there's generations of kids who know a Simpsons I don't know, you know.
Mack Garrison (03:40)
yeah, which is really interesting in this new, not to talk too much about the marketing side of it, but like, you know, you have these like worlds, like, you know, Disney has a Simpson ride. There's the old Simpson shows, there's the characters and how all these people are coming into the world building from different areas. It's just kind of wild and bonkers this day and age.
Barry (03:44)
That's fun.
Yeah, I think that was something else that triggered my... I guess I'm trying to think what was a good example where you saw the movie of something, like maybe Transformers or something, and then you saw the toys and you're like, well, that's kind of different, but it's the same. And you kind of realize that there's like... When they become a different medium, it's almost like you get a different expansion of that IP or that idea. And it's really cool to see how it's translated.
Mack Garrison (04:08)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (04:26)
I think early on, like, wasn't ever like, there was no like definitive version of anything, like all the, all the like, uh, whatever came out kind of became your, you know, Oh, that's what they look like as action figures. That's what they look like is, is that it's like, is like that, that whole world that you're talking about, it kind of just adds to it.
Mack Garrison (04:36)
Right.
Was it,
were you growing up, were you a big Star Wars fan? I'm just thinking about, you you got to work on like Star Wars, Galaxy of Adventures, these kind of like little shorts, like how did growing up being a big fanboy of Star Wars kind of, Star Wars kind of translate into that.
Barry (04:45)
yeah.
Yeah.
I mean with
those shorts it's kind of like, there's a certain feeling that those movies gave you, gave me, and that's kind of what I was trying to channel. What's pretty special about, at least for me with those shorts, usually if you're making something of Star Wars today you have to expand on it or maybe go back in the prequel origins of Star Wars and what was fun is I got to just mess with the three characters that I...
love in Star Wars, which was Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca, and Darth Vader and stuff. Not many people get to just play with those characters. what I got to do was make the way those feet, the feelings that those movies gave me, how important those fights or those confrontations felt. I got to do that and make those animations feel that way. I made them feel a little bit more epic or more dramatic than maybe they would.
watch the movie, a little bit, you know, they're shot with real people. And then this one, I get kind of get to do like, the excited animated, dramatic version that just capturing like how they felt to me as a kid. those are special.
Mack Garrison (05:58)
With something like that,
a brand that's like has so much history, right? For so many people, when you get on a project like that, I don't know exactly what the terminology would be, but like a character Bible, for lack of a better word, like are there things like you get that, you're like, all right, these are do's and don'ts, you can explore your take on it here, but you gotta be honoring this piece of it. Did you get a lot of that with that project?
Barry (06:20)
A
little bit, yeah. It's more the people that you're working with that kind of become that Bible. There was a guy named Mack Martin who is kind of like the Star Wars Bible in a way. But they all kind of know, they want you to know and don't know about what else is going on so that you don't step on anybody else's toes. It's very much people driven. the Lucasfilm, it's a story group that they call it. And they're all pretty great. they're all, no one is really like,
You can't do this or like you can't go too far like it's I was kind of surprised at how much like like I'm like Can I cut off someone's hand in this you know like they did it they did it in the movie? But can we do it and they're like yeah, well it happened so we can do it like it's like they're very much about like It what encapsulates Star Wars and other properties is like you know you need it to be dramatic when it's dramatic You need to be scary when it's scary you need it to be funny when it's funny and it's like as long as you're pushing those moments where they're supposed to be they're all important and I think like
Mack Garrison (07:00)
Yeah, right.
Barry (07:18)
Yeah, as far as like the Bibles and whatnot, they there's so much, like you said, there's so much history. There's so much 30. mean, at that point, there's 35 years of books and and and comics and everything. And there's definitely like it was after Disney. So there was definitely like a chunk of stuff that like is called legacy. And that's the stuff I grew up on. like they're still they're still trying to like, you know, they don't want to.
Mack Garrison (07:30)
Right, yeah.
Mmm, true.
Barry (07:45)
completely exercise it from the speed from they're kind of like we don't like like weaving it into some of the the the new Disney like post Disney canon and stuff. So there is like a little bit of that going on but they kind of the story group is kind of like the ones who kind of keep everything on track as best they can which sounds like a stressful task because I don't know how you please everybody when you're in that kind of like yeah.
Mack Garrison (07:54)
right, sure.
Yeah, a hundred percent. can't write. I mean, there's no
way you're just trying to massage it the best you can. That's so wild. Yeah. I was obsessed with star wars as a kid. I had like, one of my friends were like collecting baseball cards. had like the star wars customizable card game. Like I don't even know. Like I don't even people realize that that was a thing, you know, just investing tons of money into it. You know, it's like sitting in a drawer somewhere. Maybe it'll be valuable at some point.
Barry (08:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
yeah?
There
were tournaments, people played that, just like Pokemon, know, that was a big thing. And your friend group, yeah, you might be the only one.
Mack Garrison (08:31)
I know, but you're like one of five people who knows that that exists. Yeah, you're right.
All right. So tell me this, you you grew up in Nebraska. I wouldn't exactly say thriving animation scene, but I don't know, you know, Nebraska could be, ⁓ how did you end up making the move and saying like, cool, I'm gonna go out to LA or like, was it school and full sale that really sent you down that direction? Like, how'd you kind of go down that path and get out into the industry?
Barry (08:53)
I was, I always had some encouraging art teachers growing up. But what was kind of like the trigger for me was in high school, there was like kind of like a lottery grant to our school. Our school was pretty good. Like they had like some of the computer labs, like they had PCs and something that I think that was new to me. Like I was used to every school having Macs. So we did have PC labs and stuff. So like we could, we could mess around with Photoshop and stuff. Excuse me. But
Mack Garrison (09:11)
sure.
Barry (09:18)
One thing that happened in my senior, like junior year of high school was our school got like a lottery grant and they created like a technological school. they had, they had an art school. had like, cannot, like they called it a zoo school. It's like a science kind of magnet school, but they had this tech, this technology one and it had like three brand new computer labs. And like some of it was for like coding and learning like, um, Oh gosh, Cisco that stuff. And like, and then the other one was like,
Mack Garrison (09:31)
Nice.
⁓ sure, yeah, okay.
Barry (09:45)
I think they called it like creative or arts program or something like that. it's pretty much a computer lab that had like Photoshop, Final Cut, After Effects and Flash. This was like Macromedia Flash. This is Final Cut like two. Yeah, Like Photoshop was like six and like our teacher actually wrote the technical manual for Final Cut Pro, but like
Mack Garrison (09:54)
sick.
Yeah.
Yeah. Final Cut's like, we're glad to be open right now and working.
Barry (10:16)
It was generally kind of teachers who also didn't really know the software either so much. So it was, it was a lot of us just fucking like messing around and just screwing up like, like in, in, in the programs like crazy. And eventually like, I don't know how we wrangled ourselves to make some video projects, but we did that and kind of like learned, you know, in high school, like a very shitty pipeline of, you know, recording on high eight digitizing it, adding special effects to it and green screen chroma key stuff.
Mack Garrison (10:40)
nice.
Barry (10:45)
And it got us some like stupid awards that, you know, like we won like an iPod, like the first iPod, the very first iPod, which is still, which is still the best iPod I think I've ever had. It's like five gig. It like lasted, had the longest battery. It worked the best. Yeah. Yeah. So that was like our prize at the time, but that kind of like, kind of like gave me just some tools that I could, like I could work with now. Like, you know, you got the iPhone and you got, you know, the
Mack Garrison (10:51)
You got it, nice, 1. ⁓ my gosh, 100%.
The the scroll wheel, the tactile nature of it, 100%.
Barry (11:14)
Final Cut on the iMovie and all that stuff. yeah. Yeah, yeah, I can't believe it. Yeah, like all the face swapping and all the effects and stuff like, like, but that kind of gave me just like a good tactile knowledge of like how to use software and stuff and like what was universal between programs. And then after that, like it was like, okay, I literally saw Full Sail in the comic book.
Mack Garrison (11:16)
I mean, TikTok is probably more powerful than what we were learning Final Cut on the old days, right?
Yeah, crazy.
Hmm.
Barry (11:40)
Like they had put ads in comic books. Yeah. And I was like, well, this is everything I want to do. I'll just go there. And then that's literally how that was my decision maker. I was terrible in school. I was never going to go to like a fancy, you know, on education. That is true. That is 100 % true. I just remember that now.
Mack Garrison (11:41)
⁓ no way.
That's amazing.
School for you had to come out of a comic book.
That's so funny, I love that. You struck a memory for me. I'm jealous at least you had teachers who kind of knew what they were doing to kind of direct you in high school, at in the early days. My first animation experience, this is not even a joke, this is literally my first animation experience. It was PowerPoint that you could adjust. So in PowerPoint, you could adjust so the slide playback was like 0.1 second. So I'd made this huge PowerPoint deck and just flickered through the slides to get the image. I know, so credit to my teacher for coming up with that. It was a flip book.
Barry (12:17)
yeah.
That is so smart. That's a flipbook. That's so
smart. That's awesome. Wow.
Mack Garrison (12:25)
was a digital flipbook. That was the first introduction to animation. I was like,
this is kind of cool. Maybe I'll do some more of this stuff. Super funny. So you ended up at Full Sail and then graduate. And did you go directly like kind of into the entertainment space out there? Like intern, get a job, did you go freelance? Like how'd that kind of roll?
Barry (12:30)
That is awesome. Never thought of that.
Yeah, so I went to Full Sail for a year and me and my buddy graduated and a bunch of guys moved out to LA, got in house together, just invaded each other's space. And then, I mean, I didn't know what to do out there. You're just trying to make friends, know? It's hard to do that. But one of my first jobs, mean, some of the crappier gigs I had was like I was an extra in...
Mack Garrison (12:53)
Sure
Yeah.
How nice.
Barry (13:07)
in
the background of a few shows, was kind of funny. I could tell mom I was going to be in the show and she'd catch me in the background of like Joan of Arcadia or something back in the day. But that was still interesting. I went to Full Sail to learn cameras and productions. So was still kind of getting to just watch them make stuff, even when I was a boring background artist. And then I kind of did the same thing. I was almost like an extra in video game industry. I became a video game tester, which was just like
Mack Garrison (13:16)
Lazy.
Yeah.
⁓ wow.
Barry (13:37)
you an office job, unlike the worst office job, because it was like you're, you're just shoved in, you know, offices, cold, you know, hospital feeling.
Mack Garrison (13:46)
I have vision
of Grandma's Boy. When I think of video game testers, Grandma's Boy, that sounds like an amazing job. And it sounds like in an office park, basically.
Barry (13:49)
I wish. Yeah.
And I, yeah,
think, I think, I think that that job does exist, but it's like, it's like, well, I learned like, if you were a game tester, if you work for the publisher, you're like, it's like 500 to you just playing the game. They just need hours of the game. But if you're with the developer, you're getting to talk to them and the artists and also, and you're like, oh, that's like where like, if you were, if you could work at the developers, that's where like, if you're a video game.
wannabe talent and like when that's that's your pad like you want to work with those guys because then you're actually and the publishers is just kind of like you're the guy just reading the book you know just just reading everything making sure like spelling yeah you're just bodies for the for the for the grinder or whatever but but no i while that while that was going on i was trying to get better at drawing and i got into i got an internship with a place called animax and that was like flash at cartoons like like like like back in the day and it was like
Mack Garrison (14:17)
Mm-hmm.
I see.
Yeah, it makes sense, right?
wow, okay.
Barry (14:45)
They were technically probably a competitor to Titmouse. There was like four or five like flash studios that were pretty big out there and Animax is one of them. And I was just doing, I was a story intern drawing like really bad, like revisions to storyboards on paper to, for some like national geographic shorts, like little, just, it was all like, it was either like, like websites for Disney or like, you know, like
Mack Garrison (14:47)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (15:11)
medical cartoons to teach kids about asthma, like all that like kind of like medical stuff. But it was all like practical work, like I was editor, compositor, I learned like I couldn't really draw, so I couldn't really animate that well. So that was learning from like animators who could animate very well as learning from story artists who could draw pretty well. But I kind of became like the de facto like compositor editor guy for them, like because of that all that work that I learned in high school, so I was still doing the same thing.
Mack Garrison (15:13)
yeah.
Yeah,
well, essentially, it's kind of all came together as kind of this generalist, right? Being able to do all these different things for the shop, you probably got a lot of exposure and trying different stuff there too, which is cool.
Barry (15:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, like, I guess I felt like definitely that whole jack of all trades, master of none thing. Cause I was like, it was like what I, and I think, I think I wasn't sure if I was going to stick in animation just cause I wasn't doing the art side. And like, and also we weren't doing like super cinematic storytelling, which is what I wanted to do. And, ⁓ 2008 happened. That was like the housing boom and like people got laid off and you know, I was kind of like editing on freelance and all that stuff.
Mack Garrison (15:51)
Yeah, sure.
Right.
Yep.
Barry (16:12)
I'm still trying to draw and I but I just hunkered down I was like I gotta get good at drawing and I like took like two years of like workshops like sculpting drawing all that stuff
Mack Garrison (16:19)
Sure. Today
they made it through like, cause I mean, flash kind of had its heyday and then kind of dissolved, right? Like did, were they still around the navigating? Were you there when they were navigating flash basically?
Barry (16:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think
they are still technically around, but it was like, at the time, it was like everyone realized that like, I think everyone learned like, why are we making websites in Flash? Like, why would we do that? Like there's whatever Web 2.0 came out at the time, or HTML2, I don't remember. And I think a big thing with them was like, they were making...
Mack Garrison (16:38)
Yeah, right.
Barry (16:49)
Everyone wanted to make a virtual world like for their toy. Like if you bought a toy or whatever, you go on here and you can make your avatar and whatnot. you know, it's kind of, it's not too different from today, but like everyone was making them in flash. And I think that was really when they realized like, we don't need to make these in flash. Like you can make them in something else or something smaller.
Mack Garrison (16:51)
right.
Yeah.
I wrote.
Well, Flash was so insane.
I mean, I remember doing Flash, learning it myself, and I'd open up the program for stuff that I worked on all day yesterday, and it was just gone. was just like, wait a minute, what? So brutal over the years.
Barry (17:14)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ the crashes would be so bad. And like, it's
like, and we're still using I mean, it's changed to animate. But like, we've we've tipmouse is still using it. We still use like, you know, it's funny that they never used to like, I feel like animators were like the bastard children to the Adobe or to the Macromedia Flash suite, essentially. Yeah, right. And now it's like supposed to be made for us. But I feel like the animate yet now they're like, they have they have no
Mack Garrison (17:22)
Sure, right.
I think we still might be, honestly.
Barry (17:42)
There's nobody else using it except for the animators. now like, like they have to. Yeah. Yeah. But, ⁓ you know, whatever code they used, like after effects flash and all that stuff, like whatever code is still in there is still super flexible and still, you can still do like a lot of amazing things with it. So it's, it's, it's, it's no wonder like we're still using it.
Mack Garrison (17:43)
Right. They're like, all right, I guess we'll add some features you guys want to hear. Whatever.
You know,
a random sidebar question because we kind of experimented this a little bit. You know, what we do a lot at the studio is a little bit more on the corporate side, but every now and then we get to do some sell work. And for a while we experimented with animate, we did harmony, we did TV paint. Do you feel like from Titmouse's perspective, like have y'all leaned in is is animate where y'all want to be? Do think that's like the best industry standard or do you feel like flexible that all three of those kind of have their time of day in certain instances?
Barry (18:16)
Mm-hmm.
I think it's a B, it's exactly what you said. I think maybe at some point, animate was gonna be like the all in thing. I think with, we do animation in house, we do animation overseas, there's no like one way we do it. And I think that's kind of the, maybe that's the special sauce, is like learning to be flexible. Cause I've had projects where I've got an animator animating in Clip Studio, I've got an animator animating in...
Mack Garrison (18:49)
Yeah, true.
Barry (18:59)
I've got one animating in Flash. the kind of, I mean, what I learned from that is like, oh, anybody can animate in everything they want as long as we can bring it together and kind of clean it up in color in the same way. Like once we do that, like we can get it into, you know, After Effects or whatever final suite you need. like, yeah, generally like if you need that talent, like the talented animators, you might need them to work in whatever they need to work in so that they can work as fast as possible. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mack Garrison (19:07)
Yeah.
Right, because you just need them to move quickly and whatever they feel comfortable in. Because oftentimes,
like I guess with deadlines, it's like, yeah, we can't mess around with trying to learn new things or get people on the same platform. It's like, let's just move and go, right?
Barry (19:28)
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think, I know that Blender's like has, has burned a lot of excitement being free and grease pencil and stuff, but I still haven't, I know, know some movies and features have been made successfully a hundred percent in Blender, but I know being a big, you know, Tim House is pretty big and it's like, like, I mean, employee wise, like it's big. So it's like, it's hard to move that like boat into something. So we're always trying to find like some small project that we could kind of do a little bit more experimentation on, but.
Mack Garrison (19:36)
Yeah.
Sure. Right. Yeah.
It's interesting,
mean, like even Blender from like a 3D standpoint, know, we were always kind of Cinema 4D that was kind of go to for the more motion graphic work. know, Maya's always been there for like character work, things like that. But it is interesting seeing just like what this newer generation is coming out of school. Like, look, I don't have any money. So I downloaded Blender and this is what I'm making. You're like, wow, that's actually like not too bad. know, Fidelity, this is pretty good, you know.
Barry (20:04)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's as long as you can figure out how to like connect to the other programs that you may need. I think, I think, I think you're in a good, you can, can learn how to use it and make it flexible. That's okay. That's all technical stuff. I get it. I love it.
Mack Garrison (20:23)
Exactly.
Well, I definitely took us down this like 80 D rabbit hole on like on technical stuff. was there. I was interested
in doing so let's go back. All right. So you're, you're out in LA. You're kind of getting this generalist knowledge. Let's fast forward a little bit. Cause I don't want to spoil too much that you might talk about at the bash. ⁓ you get over to tit mouse. ⁓ when did you first arrive at, at tit mouse?
Barry (20:47)
There was a cartoon that they were making called Motor City, which was one created by Chris Panoski, the owner of the studio. It's like a show he's been working on since the late 90s. tried, he used to work at Liquid Television back in the day and he made a show called Downtown. And, you he worked on like Beef and Butt Head and Dari and all that stuff back in the day. But he was, he's been making the show for a while or at least trying to pitch it.
Mack Garrison (20:51)
Mm.
wow.
Yeah.
Barry (21:14)
develop it and some of his creative execs from MTV Liquid Television work at Disney now. And they were like, hey, you still got that Motor City thing kicking around? And instead of like, they used to have cigarettes and tattoos and shit, but now it's like they made it a little bit more kid friendly, but it was like a cool show. It looked amazing. It looked like...
Mack Garrison (21:35)
Sure.
Barry (21:38)
It looked like Robert Valley designs and crazy extreme cars and stuff like super fun, like stuff made for toys, you know? But like all things, I've learned most in this industry is like, it's really hard to get past one season, like first season. So like it only lasted one season. It came out when like the Tron cartoon came out. So it's like another kind of Robert Valley, like two Robert Valley style shows that were coming out.
Mack Garrison (21:42)
awesome.
Yeah.
yeah, that's right.
Barry (22:05)
It was a mix of 3D, 2D, and that was like the, when I started working there and working on that show was kind of when I opened my eyes, like, you can do cool, dramatic stuff in animation. Like I always thought it was like, that's only in anime, which is, not in the US, but that like Motor City was an eye opener just to see like how you could push, you know, storytelling and animation in digital space and flash and all that.
Mack Garrison (22:18)
Right.
You know, it's interesting, like, you know, you're talking about just like how you can be dramatic in animation. Do you feel like the U.S. has kind of lagged behind in that? Like I remember watching like Akira for the first time, you know, and like just being like, holy cow, this is insane, right? It's just not even having an idea that that even like existed. Do you feel like we've been playing catch up into that a little bit compared to internationals? Or do you feel like we've kind of got, you know, caught up now at this point and kind of what we're doing?
Barry (22:42)
yeah.
I mean, I feel like it's just, more of the minority than it is the majority here. Cause it's, it's, it's hard to say we've been playing catch up in that. I just feel like even with lower decks, Star Trek, lower decks, like it's an adult cartoon. It's adult comedy, but like, I feel like, I don't know if it's a cultural thing or what, but there is like the moment someone hears it's a cartoon. It's kind like the checkout. Like it's like, it's, either a kid's thing or it's one those stupid Simpson shows or something like that. like.
Mack Garrison (23:08)
Right.
Mmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Barry (23:26)
There is like a definite, like a more like an envious, like, spectrum of anime and manga that they make over there, like for all, like for kids and for, you know, they can teach you how to cook, you know, like there's anime that'll teach you, you know, how to play tennis, you know? Like there's, there's, there's things that are, there's a, there's a bigger spectrum over there of what's considered, you know, quality animation material or manga material. And I don't know if like,
Mack Garrison (23:38)
Yeah. Right.
Barry (23:56)
I don't know if it's our cultural interests or where we've just trained everyone to say like cartoons or Disney and that's it. I feel like it's a little bit of that because we still have dramatic mature comics. It just feels more like a niche audience thing. I feel like, mean, the more that kids are into...
Mack Garrison (24:02)
Right. Cartoons are for kids or whatever. Exactly.
Barry (24:19)
Like they have more access to anime and manga than we ever have. like it's, it's, it's, there's proof in the pudding that maybe it's just maybe a boomer generational thing or something that like the kids will, who are into all that stuff now will still be into it later. Cause adult swim shows all that stuff. it, still just, it's just a minority. feel like getting mature series off the ground is, is definitely more difficult, but we've done it with, you know, Joe Bennett and scavengers rain and the new casual common side effects is awesome. Like that's kind of, to me, it's all that's.
Mack Garrison (24:33)
yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yes, badass.
Barry (24:48)
That's definitely in the right adult drama. There's drama, it's a comedy too. There's some lights that are shining, some bright lights that shining that are more for that mature animation side.
Mack Garrison (24:59)
Yeah, 100%.
Well, like you alluded to, know, Star Trek lower decks, you know, and like people, it's coming a bit more mainstream in some of those ways as well too, that are bringing more people in. You know, you've worked on, you know, I'm looking at all the different projects that you've touched. I mean, you've done so many cool things. This is kind of a big loaded question because it's hard to pick favorites or anything like that. But I'm just curious, you know, thus far in your, you know, the 18 years or so you've been animating, do you have any like favorite moments or favorite projects you've been able to work on that you're just like, yeah, all this stuff is cool. I'm so proud of everything I've done, but just really especially
like being able to work on this or what I did with this project.
Barry (25:35)
Star Wars was a biggie. It's funny, like Star, Star Trek, Star Wars, like I kind of get into this, there's things that start with Star. But Star Wars and Star Trek were pretty special because like, I feel like you can't be like, you know, there's always the stigma of like, can't be a fan of both or everybody, but am a fan of both. Most people are. And getting to play in the sandbox of both those worlds was pretty incredible. And it's not something I ever thought.
Mack Garrison (25:39)
Mm-hmm.
haha
Sure, right.
Barry (26:03)
would happen, you know, like that's there's still like a bit of that nostalgia member berry stuff happening when I'm when I'm doing that and like just trying to like make like the version that you wanted that you you know, I imagine there's other kids or whatever like that are there. Me now, you know, watching whatever they're consuming now and just like hoping that you're kind of like, you know, trying to set them up or make like those member berries now like for the for what you want them to watch when they're older, maybe inspire them to make stuff that like
Mack Garrison (26:07)
Yeah.
Barry (26:33)
similar, like it's part of them to make it feel, make those properties feel as like magical as they felt to you when you were smaller.
Mack Garrison (26:41)
Yeah, 100 % because I think it's still easy. Even though we're all kids inside and we're operating this play box of animation, which is super fun, there's still the politics of the stuff that we deal with and stakeholders and all sorts of stuff. And so it's easy to feel jaded and being like, fine, whatever, we'll just do X, Y, Z, right? If it just appeases everyone. But you know the 10 year old is like, no, you gotta do this. The guts have to come out of the hand or whatever. Which I do look, yeah, sick, nice, nice, yeah.
Barry (26:53)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Mack Garrison (27:10)
Someone told me one time, know, the best place to be in life. This was actually a quote from my executive producer. So Marin, if you're listening to this, thank you for this. She said the only two people that you need to make happy in your life are, think it's like your eight-year-old self and your 80-year-old self. And I really love that because it's like, you know, the 80-year-old self is probably saying like, look, don't work too hard, relax a little bit. And the eight-year-old self is just like make cool stuff, right? And I feel like with what you're doing, you would echo that sentiment, but I don't know, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Do you think you're impressing your 80-year-old self and your eight-year-old self?
Barry (27:22)
That's good.
I think there's some moments I've done, I'm pretty, I if you're like, if a lot of us are similar, I know that we all have like a lot of anxiety and self-confidence issues and I'm like overthinking every frame of what we're making and overthink, but I think there are some moments where I'm like, I think I did pretty good on that. Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's also like a big asterisk on all of this that's like, our egos are still pushing us to like do this stuff. Like we think we can do this stuff. Like we think we, like I think I can do this. Yeah, I'm the one who can.
Mack Garrison (27:49)
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Barry (28:09)
do this and nobody else would be better at it than me. yeah, they're still like, like, even though they're like all these like manic issues in your brain, they're still a big asterisk that's like, no, I can do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you could do this. Yeah, yeah. I'm the one who's right. You know,
Mack Garrison (28:19)
Yeah, 100%. Well, we
get so caught up in looking ahead on what we wanna do, or when we do look back, it's what we wish we would have done. I think that's a big thing. It's like, I wish I could have done this, but so rarely do we ever be like, yeah, I crushed that. Look how great this is. I'm proud of what I made here and this time and energy I put into it.
Barry (28:27)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I don't know if you have to like end up rewatching anything you've done in the past and just like, I didn't fix this. I can fix that. my gosh, look at that line thickness. That's way off. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (28:41)
God, yeah.
Oh, 100%.
You you catch like the little error and you're like, did anyone else see that? And you're like, I'm just going to pretend I didn't see that or whatever.
Barry (28:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Or
like, a fan or like an audience member catches something you didn't and it's like, know how many, you know how many we fixed like 180, you know how many, like one, how much stuff we fixed just to mess up that one time, you know?
Mack Garrison (29:03)
I know. ⁓ I know. It happens.
You know, none of us are perfect. You know, and you look at something a million times and you kind of become blind a little bit to it, right? You know, this is a random question for you all. How do you all do like a QA process when you're like shipping stuff? I mean, is it basically like everyone looking through it and like going, are y'all going like frame by frame on stuff to analyze it?
Barry (29:23)
You mean when you say shipping, you mean like shipping stuff to an overseas animation studio to do? Or you mean like, like, or delivering it to like for TV broadcast?
Mack Garrison (29:30)
Yeah,
yeah, let's say delivering for TV broadcasts. Like, so this is like final step before this sucker is like playing to go live. Like, what does that process kind of look like? I'm just so curious.
Barry (29:32)
Yeah.
Yeah, so we call them take ones or take twos, like every time it's just like me, my art director, editor, producer, animation supervisor, where once we kind of get like a full cut of the show, they call it a take one, like when it's a first pass, where it's like every single shot is animated, you know, it's not 100 % there, but it's kind of the first time we're looking at it as a whole piece. We're literally just going shot by shot. Anything anybody sees, like you call it out, like just, we don't want to miss anything.
Mack Garrison (29:50)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (30:05)
I'm calling out probably the most, just being annoying. Lately we've been using Sync Sketch. I don't know if you use that. Yeah, yes. Just going frame by frame and just drawing notes, notes, notes, notes. Got to do this. This is for animation to fix. This is for background to fix. And then the editor on top of that is putting all this stuff together. But we also have a QC department. CBS has a QC department where they're calling us out on like...
Mack Garrison (30:28)
Sure.
Barry (30:31)
more technical errors, they're catching smaller things that we're missing, text errors, things like that. And it's kind of like we do a take one, take two, take three, you know, while we're locking, like where we're all just watching everything over and over again, excuse me, by the time it's come out, we've watched, I don't know, I feel like I've watched those shots all like a thousand times over, you know, like, yeah.
Mack Garrison (30:32)
Hmm.
believe it, because it's hard. Like you watch it for
the 10th, 11th time and you're still trying to like see if you catch anything, right?
Barry (30:56)
Yeah,
and it's like there's three to four hundred shots a show times ten, four thousand, five thousand shots sometimes. We're going through a season. It's like it's hard. there is just like a QC process. Like we also had to do one that was for I don't know if you've had an encounter before. It's called the Harding Test. It's like seizure, like checking to make sure no flashing frames and.
Mack Garrison (31:16)
Yeah, we've done
some stuff through some like ADA compliance with a lot of like websites and things. There's some various pieces that we look into, but that's interesting. So what's the process of that like?
Barry (31:25)
It's, I mean, it's also, I've been working with, worked with it since Disney. think, I forget if it was cause of Pokemon or some project, but it's software. It's essentially like Disney has licensed it or so, or so and so has licensed it. And when we submit it for the final piece, like they submit the whole episode and they kind of just run the whole episode through the software. And it kind of gives you a readout of like, this is red flashing frames. This is like white flashing frames and tents.
Mack Garrison (31:30)
Mm-hmm.
Barry (31:54)
We kind of have to go into After Effects and fix it. We're lucky that we can change it in shots, but there are times where they call it a... Sometimes it's like a post house that just does a blanket fix over everything. like, I don't know, if you ever notice... Yeah, if you never notice on like... You'll see it on like some Netflix shows or maybe a Prime or whatever, you you're streaming where all of a sudden like maybe something goes by fast and it gets weirdly gray. If you ever notice that, you'll be like, oh, that was like a post house. That was a post house seizure fix where they just...
Mack Garrison (31:59)
Yeah, right.
⁓ like a film over something basically.
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Barry (32:22)
kill the contrast until like it passes the test and then it goes back up again.
Mack Garrison (32:26)
Because
they're basically like, yeah, we can send it back to them or we just put this fix on just keep it moving forward and they do that.
Barry (32:31)
Yeah, because sometimes
they might be getting these licensed shows or whatever, like they might have been done a year from now. It could be something from 10 years ago that they're having to do that too. Yeah, yeah. But they could do it better.
Mack Garrison (32:39)
Right?
Right, crazy. ⁓ that's so interesting.
yeah, of course, of course it can, but yeah, that was really interesting. mean, like even on like a smaller level with what we do, I mean, there's similarities, but yeah, I mean, I imagine for broadcasts, especially big broadcast stuff, it's like you've got the whole, the whole like CBS team looking at stuff. You got y'all looking at it. It's just a million different eyes, which is really interesting. Well, we're coming up on time here. I got one more question for you. I'm always so intrigued on.
Barry (33:05)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mack Garrison (33:13)
who some of the people that I'm inspired by, who are they inspired by, right? I mean, there's so many folks coming to the Dash Bash who are gonna be pumped to hear from you what Titmouse has done, what you've been able to do. I'm really curious from your perspective, you know, who are some of the folks either today or even growing up that really inspired you and your work?
Barry (33:30)
The owner of the studio, Chris Pernaski, is a pretty big deal. His attitude, his overall vibe is really good, just as a person, just to try to learn how to be comfortable with people and make them feel comfortable. That's always hard. Like I said, we're all manic artists stuck in their caves and stuff, so it's like, how do I be a person again? So people who are good, you're pretty good at that, just making people feel comfortable. People like that are really inspiring to me.
Artist wise, the comic book greats, dude, it's like, I don't like, I say comic book names, I'm like, I don't know, do people know these people anymore? Arthur Adams, like, was a huge inspiration to me. He's a comic book artist from like, he's still around, he's amazing, but like the heyday was the 80s, 90s. Yeah, yeah, he pretty much like, there's like an X-Men image that's like, it's probably the most repeated.
Mack Garrison (34:13)
Arthur Adams, he was big on X-Men, right? Yeah.
Barry (34:21)
you know, put on t-shirts, put on lunchboxes, put whatever, it's his X-Men, like it's his, it's his X-Men, he's the best. I'm trying to think, I mean, there's the big guys like Jim Lee, all those 90s artists were super important to me. Joe Madiera was like a big X-Men artist for some reason, we're always the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try to think of, man, there's so many.
Mack Garrison (34:23)
Sure. Okay, nice.
Mm.
Well, X-Men was badass, dude. 100%. Like, that's why for sure.
Barry (34:51)
I mean, there's movies that like completely kind of rock my world and maybe like Paul Verhoeven is one of them, like RoboCop, Alien, Aliens. Like, yeah, like, so like, it's like, and those, yeah.
Mack Garrison (34:56)
Yeah. dude. All the aliens 100 % alien and aliens, dude. That was like I
was obsessed with that and like Predator as a kid like those two I was like sick.
Barry (35:07)
Yeah, Predator, yes.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is super inspiring to me, dude. He's the American dream because he's a guy who came from another country and became a freaking governor and is a movie star. Arnold Schwarzenegger is huge inspiration. But no, those movies like Paul Verhoeven, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, they're all like, I always look at them as directors that like, oh, they show me what I want to see on screen before I know it. Before I know that's what I want to see, there's like...
Mack Garrison (35:31)
Mm, yeah.
Barry (35:34)
There's something satisfying. There's always a lot of payoff in their movies that pays off really well. I think I'm always hoping at the moment to be able to make something as great as them.
Mack Garrison (35:36)
Yeah.
Dude, 100
% in their attention to detail in these pieces and you can tell it's their vision on what they want it to be, which is really good. I'm always so empowered by folks who have such clarity on what they want to make, because it's a really hard thing to do. Like, what is the right decision? What do want to do? Those directors can get in and like, no, it's this, this is the world, this is what's happening. I mean, that's really incredible.
Barry (35:46)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're just hoping for the chance to do that yourself, just to make that clear vision, like you're saying.
Mack Garrison (36:11)
Oh man, well I love it. Well everyone, we've been talking today with Barry Kelly. He's a nerd from Nebraska who also happens to be an Emmy award-winning artist working in animation for the past 18 years. Director at Titmouse makes phenomenal work. Barry, I enjoyed chatting with you so much today. If you want to come see Barry, you still have an opportunity. You can get your Dash Bash tickets June 11th through 13th, 2025. That's this year, believe it or not, it is 2025 in Raleigh, North Carolina. And if you've never been to Raleigh, let me tell you, it is great.
Barry (36:24)
Thanks, man.
you
Mack Garrison (36:36)
It's East Coast. We've got a little edge to ourselves, but we're still tucked in the South. So if you're from the West Coast, you know, we're friendly. It's easy. You've got great food. You'll have a blast. Barry cannot wait to hang with you later on this summer.
Barry (36:47)
Hey, thanks. Can't wait to see y'all. I'm excited. Let's do it.
Mack Garrison (36:49)
Thanks everyone.
Take care.
Hayley Morris Shape & Shadow Interview
In this engaging conversation, Mack Garrison speaks with Hayley Morris, an animation director and founder of Shape and Shadow, about her journey in stop motion animation. They discuss the creative process behind her workshops, the challenges of production, and the materials she uses. Hayley shares her early inspirations, the balance of motherhood and artistry, and the influence of nature on her creativity. She also offers valuable advice for aspiring animators and reflects on the significance of community in the animation field.
Takeaways
Stop motion animation is a time-consuming but rewarding process.
Workshops should focus on creative problem-solving and accessibility.
Finding inspiration in everyday materials is key to animation.
Early exposure to art can shape a creative career.
Clear communication with clients is essential in stop motion production.
Experimentation with different materials can lead to unique results.
Balancing motherhood and a creative career requires flexibility.
Nature can provide a refreshing break from the demands of animation.
Building a supportive community is vital for growth in the creative field.
Investing in the right tools can enhance the animation process.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Stop Motion Animation
03:07 Workshop Insights and Creative Problem Solving
06:00 Early Inspirations and Influences
10:07 The Challenges of Stop Motion Production
13:00 Materials and Experimentation in Animation
16:01 Balancing Art and Motherhood
20:02 The Journey of Shape and Shadow
24:02 Nature's Influence on Creativity
27:53 Advice for Aspiring Animators
Transcript:
Mack Garrison (00:00)
Hey, what's up y'all? Mack Garrison here with Dash Studio and so excited to be continuing our speaker series with a talented Hayley Morris from Shape and Shadow. If you don't know Hayley in Shape and Shadow, they're an animation studio of Hayley Morris, an artist and animation director based in Vermont. At Shape and Shadow, they specialize in mixed media and stop motion animation, creating stories that come to life through rich textures, handcrafted details, and thoughtful storytelling. Hayley, thanks so much for hanging out with me today.
Hayley (00:28)
Thanks so much for inviting me to do a workshop at the Dash Bash. I'm super excited to do this with all of you and to meet more people in the animation community. So it should be really fun.
Mack Garrison (00:41)
my gosh, it's gonna be so fun.
And I think on behalf of every creative out there, we're so jealous that you have like maybe the coolest job in animation. Like I feel like stop motion is like what everyone wants to do. And then they realize like how long it takes and they're like, okay, maybe it's not quite for me. Maybe you.
Hayley (00:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it definitely
is a time consuming process, but I love every minute of it. It's super fun.
Mack Garrison (01:04)
Well, you maybe that's a good place to start for a workshop in stop motion. You know, what do what should folks think about? Is there considering coming to take your workshop or what is the stop motion workshop going to be like? You think?
Hayley (01:17)
Yeah. so I was brainstorming a bunch of ideas and I think when, when coming up with ideas, I was like, okay, this is fairly short, like an hour and a half, I think. And so it made me think about, in animation and the pitching process of pitching your ideas and you don't have that much time to, you know, come up with stuff. So I was like, okay, there's a time limitation.
Mack Garrison (01:41)
Sure.
Hayley (01:43)
let's embrace that and just think about like creative problem solving. So I thought it would be fun to have kind of like an intro to stop motion animation and that you're working with physical materials and thinking on the spot and like coming up with something really fast. And in my own work, I do a lot of improvisational kind of stuff and thinking about how can I repurpose
Mack Garrison (01:48)
I like that.
Hayley (02:10)
materials and come up with creative solutions. So in this workshop, students will be animating on their phones, which everybody has. So it'll be very accessible for everybody to learn how to use phones to animate and learn how to animate frame by frame, which I imagine a lot of people coming to this workshop probably have more computer experience. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (02:38)
Sure, like cell animation or something like that.
Hayley (02:40)
So I think it'll be really cool to see how they translate those skills that they already have, or maybe they don't have any animation skills. don't know who's coming, but I wanted to make it accessible for people with experience and people without experience. So having materials they can work with and just work hands on in that hour.
Mack Garrison (02:51)
It's gonna be a mix. It'll be a mix.
Hayley (03:07)
and learn about the basics of stop motion frame by frame using a stop motion app in the phone and learning about how they can use like limited resources to make something really fun and playful.
Mack Garrison (03:22)
That's so rad
because I feel like there's always like kind of a little bit of friction to trying to get into anything new, right? It's like, well, I don't quite know how to do it. So it sounds like with this workshop, it'll be a digestible elemental take on stop motion to kind of get you started and hopefully inspire you to do more later on, which sounds really good.
Hayley (03:41)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I want people to come out of it feeling like excited and that they can do it on their own, you know, in their house or like animate something in the street, like just with their phone, like finding cool patterns and stuff. So yes.
Mack Garrison (03:49)
love that.
I'm so cool. I'm so cool. It's so cool. I do feel like I am cool sometimes. It's
so cool with stop motion. Even you alluded to there at the end, like keeping an eye out for patterns. I bet you're always kind of thinking through like, this would be like fun to play with or put in motion or this material could be really good. Do you find yourself like every time you're just out in the day to day real world, you're always looking at textures or patterns or some of those little pieces.
Hayley (04:23)
yeah, like every day I find something where I'm like, that would be a perfect material or I could turn that into a little film. Like, yeah, just going on walks. I live in Vermont in a pretty rural area. just like going on hikes and stuff, I'm like, I could animate like these textures in the forest here. Like, I feel like I'm always looking for stuff wherever I go.
Mack Garrison (04:46)
I love that. That's great.
I'm curious, Haley, from your perspective, you know, do you have any first initial memories of when you got into stop motion? Like anything come to mind is like, that was the first movie or TV show or first time I saw where I was like, this is interesting. What is this?
Hayley (05:02)
Yeah, I mean, I grew up watching so many movies. Like, I would just watch things over and over and over again. think a lot of the movies that I grew up with, you know, being born in the 80s, a lot of special effects were done in stop motion. like, everything prior to Jurassic Park, like all the special effects were stopped. Yeah,
Mack Garrison (05:22)
yeah.
That's right, was what, Phil Tippett, right? Who did all the stuff. Yeah, super cool.
Hayley (05:32)
So I think, yeah, I was just mesmerized by these worlds that were created on screen and that they were like real physical sets and, you know, whole worlds that were created by artists. So, yeah, I'm thinking about the movies I really liked, like all of Jim Henson's films, like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal and even Neverending Story. Those were all like puppet.
Mack Garrison (05:59)
yeah.
Hayley (06:00)
real puppets and interacting with live action stuff and I just loved those very fantastical worlds that were created. That's not necessarily stop motion but I think that was my first like glimpse of like creating a different world from what we are living in and like I just loved that magic of it.
Mack Garrison (06:21)
Well, I love that they
were like kind of like you said, it wasn't exclusively stop motion, but it was kind of cool how they could weave it into like live action or some of these pieces and how fluid that was, you know, especially as another eighties kid, you know, never ending story. I mean, that was like the peak of the eighties. I feel like a movie I was watching loved it so much.
Hayley (06:29)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, it's you watch it today still and you're just like this is so amazing like it doesn't seem dated like Everything is so beautiful. I love it
Mack Garrison (06:51)
When did you have like someone
in your life that kind of helped guide you a little bit on that? Or were you just kind of tinkering on your own when you first started and just like, let me just see what this looks like if I try this with my camera.
Hayley (07:01)
Um, well, my mom definitely like encouraged my art making. So as a kid, like I was always drawing with her. She was giving me like sculpey clay and I was sculpting little heads out of clay as a kid. Um, but yeah, in high school, um, I had a really great art teacher that really encouraged me and I wanted to experiment with stop motion. And he like,
made this little independent study for me where I made my first stop motion film just using like a camcorder and stopping and starting the record button over and over. Yeah. And I just, I just loved it. And yeah, it was a great first experience. And then in college, I went to RISD and majored in animation, actually film animation video. And you have to
Mack Garrison (07:38)
how funny.
Hayley (07:57)
do film as well, is really cool, like learning the whole language of filmmaking. And you get to like have a little taste of like everything. So, you know, 2D animation, video, filming with like real film on a Bolex, like all that stuff. Yeah. And it was really, it was a great program. But I took a stop motion class, which I knew was like something I really...
Mack Garrison (07:58)
Mmm.
wow.
Hayley (08:24)
was excited to learn about and I took that and I was just like, okay, yeah, this is it. This is what I love. Yeah. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (08:28)
Totally hooked, I love it so much. Well it feels
like there's always this kind of combination of art and design in the world that we operate in, Art is such a personal preference on things, design, we're trying to create stuff for other folks. And I feel like, especially with stop motion, there's just a lot of gray area right there where it is art, but you're still trying to solve a problem for the client. And I feel like that's gotta be so hard when there's such a lack of do-over opportunity in stop motion.
At a high level, what's some of the planning that kind of goes into some of the stop motion stuff to ensure the clients that you work with aren't going back and having to make tons of revisions later on?
Hayley (09:07)
Yeah, that's a great question and point. I think there's just a lot of pre-planning that goes into it before, you know, starting. I think being really clear with the client about the process, because a lot of people don't understand that you can't just like click a button and change it magically. Yeah. So I think it's, yeah, just being very clear about the process and, you know, having a really
Mack Garrison (09:27)
Right, like, no, that's like locked in.
Hayley (09:37)
Especially for commercial work, like a really tight animatic, you know, having your designs, you know, everything approved, the whole approval process, and then when animation starts, you're like, okay, so everything good once we start. Yeah, because once we start, it's going to be really hard to reshoot because it's all, yeah, straight ahead. It's not like you're doing keyframes and you can go back. It's like the straight of head process that
Mack Garrison (09:51)
Yeah, one last time, just wanna check in, make sure y'all are good with all this.
Hayley (10:07)
You just have to embrace and trust that it's gonna all go well, so.
Mack Garrison (10:11)
And I guess
it goes back to what you mentioned earlier and like improvising, like kind of on the fly. Cause like sometimes I bet you're on set. It's not quite going exactly like you want it to. It's like something struggling to land, right? And you're probably like, okay, we need to pivot from this and do X, Y, Z instead of ABC. Does that happen with regularity?
Hayley (10:30)
Yeah, I mean, I feel like you can plan as much as you can, there's something always comes up where maybe it doesn't go exactly where you're going and you kind of, have to embrace it and kind of like in the moment, like rethink where it could go. so I kind of like that challenge of it. I mean, you can, of course, like, you know, reshoot something, but it's going to add more time and money to a project. But
Mack Garrison (10:49)
Sure.
Hayley (11:00)
Yeah, feel like, yeah, it's fun, embracing the spontaneity of it.
Mack Garrison (11:07)
Well,
and like at the core of what we do, I so much of us are problem solvers, right? We kind of forget that we're caught up in like design and creative and aesthetic, which is great, but it is problem solving at its core. And so I think designers are always kind of on their toes and having to think through stuff, which is really neat. I'm sure with so much experience in stop motion, there are certain materials and tools that are like your go-to now. You know, I just think about, you know, stuff that you work on, whether it's, you know, clay or fibers, like, do you have
Like what are some of the different, I guess, materials you work with on regularity for projects that are kind of like your go-to materials?
Hayley (11:43)
Yeah, I mean in my work I just, I think with stop motion it's like such a tactile medium that you're using real physical materials and using real light to accentuate the textures and you know bring whatever you're trying to do on screen to life so I like working with everything. I think that's what's so fun about stop motion is that you know there aren't any rules you can
Mack Garrison (12:06)
Nice.
Hayley (12:12)
animate absolutely anything. So that's why I love just experimenting and seeing what makes the most sense for each project. lately I've been doing a lot of paper. It's a really versatile material. know, one flat sheet of paper you can fold, can sculpt, you can crumple it, you can turn it into anything and working with that like set range of colors and finding.
you know, sourcing those materials is really fun. But yeah, for each project, it's always like a big puzzle I'm trying to figure out. And usually for client work, they usually come to me with like, you know, a general idea or style that they're going for. So it's usually like, okay, we want, we see you do paper, can you do something within this style? And then I adapt it and make it fit whatever, you know.
Mack Garrison (12:51)
Mm.
Sure.
Hayley (13:11)
The feeling that they're going for is...
Mack Garrison (13:12)
Sure.
Have you ever had to work with some random material? Like, is there anything that sticks out? You're like, that was the weirdest thing. We did stop motion with like the inside of an orange or something. Yeah, I don't know what it is.
Hayley (13:22)
Yeah,
I did get asked to I did a music video for explosions in the sky, like a few years ago and I had a bunch of glass blowers, make these glass increments for me and I animated them and it was really really cool and then I got asked somebody somebody saw that and they wanted to do a pitch for something where I to like replicate water and they were like
Mack Garrison (13:51)
Whoa.
Hayley (13:51)
do
something similar like water in a plastic bottle but have the water bottle look like it's turning from a bottle into water and i was like okay i can i don't know if i can do glass again but what's similar to that and i was like they make like fake glass out of sugar so i like did this whole day my kitchen was crazy i
Mack Garrison (14:01)
Whoa.
Huh.
Yeah, you're
like, didn't know I was gonna be a chemist as well in this profession,
Hayley (14:18)
Yeah, so that was
a challenging one. I was like, okay, so yeah, there's always this challenge of figuring out how to do stuff. And the experimentation of that is super fun. So I made mold, like a mold of a water bottle in full form, and then the increments of it kind of like breaking apart. So I made like clay sculptures of that made them made mold, silicone molds. And then I made a bunch of sugar.
Mack Garrison (14:37)
Whoa.
Hayley (14:46)
melted sugar and poured them into the molds and let them dry and then animated them. So I think that was probably the hardest and weirdest material I've worked with probably.
Mack Garrison (14:51)
That's pretty wild.
Well, and I
bet like with food, there's like the added dilemma of stuff can spoil or go bad. like, I'm sure that affects like how quickly you need to move. Maybe not so much for sugar, but I'm sure some of the other projects you've worked on when you work with food, I'm sure there's like an expiry date on like having to get stuff done by a certain point. Otherwise stuff starts to rot. That's so.
Hayley (15:16)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're working
against time. So, yes.
Mack Garrison (15:21)
Time seems to be everything in your line of work, doesn't it? Well, I
love that when you were little, you were talking to me earlier about your mom kind of feeling like you were empowered to try creative, to explore all this stuff. know, ahead of this interview, I was doing a little research and I found the Nouns Fest on your Instagram, which talked about this, you know, shaping clay and how motherhood is shaping you. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about that. You know, your mom had such an impact.
on you and now you have this film, Blueberry Girl, how do you balance being an artist and a mom these days?
Hayley (15:57)
Yeah, so it's definitely a challenge, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, my daughter's four years old, and she's not in school full time, so it's definitely a balance of working and watching her, but it's so much fun and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I think being a freelance artist is great that I have these periods of time where I'm super, super busy.
Mack Garrison (16:00)
Sure.
Hayley (16:23)
And then I have some downtime where I can spend a lot of time with her. So I love that flexibility. But yeah, the film for NounsFest was really cool. I saw an ad on Instagram where was like, we fund independent animators. We'll give you a chunk of money to make whatever you want. We'll be super hands off. And I was like, that sounds amazing. I'll try. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (16:49)
You're like, that's like a dream job right there.
Hayley (16:52)
I was like, I'll try, I'll try sending an idea in. And at the time I had been doing these clay loops just for myself to, you know, I always have something going on on the side just to experiment. So I was making these clay loops of my daughter and I, like me as this large figure and her as this tiny figure, like jumping on me and adding her voice on top. And I was like, oh, this would be a perfect.
Mack Garrison (17:05)
Sure.
Hayley (17:20)
opportunity to expand this idea and turn it into something bigger. So I sent in some of those tests I had done with, you know, kind of an overview of what I wanted to accomplish and they picked me as one of the filmmakers. So yeah, it was a really cool, yeah, they, it's such a cool program. Any animator watching this, like, check out NounsFest and submit an idea next year.
Mack Garrison (17:35)
Cool.
Hayley (17:50)
But anyways, yeah, so for that film, only kind of restrictions are you need to use some of the- one or more of the characters, these nouns characters. You can look it up, Nouns Festival. They're these little characters with glasses. And so I had my daughter look at all of the characters that were created and she picked a bunch of them that she liked. Okay, we can work with that.
Mack Garrison (18:06)
Sure. Fine.
Nice.
Hayley (18:20)
And then at the time she, and even now she's really into pretending she's different characters. And she was really obsessed with Willy Wonka at that time. Yeah. And she would just go around the house like saying, I'm blueberry girl. And pretending she was, what's her name?
Mack Garrison (18:28)
haha
Excellent, who wasn't at some point in their life?
yeah,
on Willy Wonka the girl who turned into the blueberry. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
Hayley (18:44)
Yeah, Violet Beauregard, yes.
And so, yeah, I thought it'd be really fun to have her interact with me and have her head turn into these different characters and use her voice. So, yeah, in the clay animation, she turns into a blueberry, a whale, a tuba, and then I recorded her voice doing, saying all this really funny stuff.
Mack Garrison (19:06)
Bye.
Hayley (19:13)
And yeah, I just really wanted to capture our relationship during this time and also her voice, is just so cute right now. So it's a nice time capsule. But yeah, really, I just fell in love animating with Clay. I hadn't really done it very much before and now I'm obsessed with it. And I think...
Mack Garrison (19:23)
That's so sweet.
Mmm.
Sure.
Hayley (19:37)
Much like motherhood, there's like no manual. And with this play, it's very intuitive and you kind of just have to go with the flow. So, you know, I do the same thing with my daughter. It's just like every day, was just like going with the flow, figuring stuff out. So I liked, I really like that, like freedom of the material and just having it kind of lead the way for me.
Mack Garrison (19:41)
sure.
I love it. Well, I love the kind
of just the free flowing life perspective, you know, with your daughter, it's figuring it out, right? On a day to day basis, we'll get through it and same with the client work, something comes up, we'll figure it out. The clay, let's just let the clay move where it needs to. I think sometimes as designers and animators and creatives, there's sort of the sense of perfection that we're always chasing, you know, just because we wanna make stuff as good as it can be, but something I've really just.
Hayley (20:09)
Yeah.
Mack Garrison (20:29)
learned to grab from our conversation thus far is just how easy it seems to come to you to just keep things moving forward in a certain degree, right? know, one my favorite lines is perfection inhibits progress. And I feel like you're kind of that way too. It's like, let's just keep it moving. We can refine it if we can, but let's just go with the flow, right?
Hayley (20:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
Mack Garrison (20:48)
I love that so much. Well, let's speak to me
a little bit about shape and shadow. You how did that come to be initially and where does the name come from?
Hayley (20:56)
yeah, so yeah, I've been working in animation since out of college in different venues, but after working at different production companies and freelancing, I was like, I want to start my own thing. so I decided in 2015 to start Shape and Shadow and
Yeah, I mean, I work primarily by myself, but I bring in freelancers when I need to. if budget allows and I just love, you know, being able to collaborate with a bunch of bunch of people on artists that I love. I think one of your questions was like about the logo too. Okay. Yeah. When coming up with the name, I really wanted to incorporate
Mack Garrison (21:44)
Yeah, yeah, just all of it. Curious how it started, curious about the logo, how it all came to be.
Hayley (21:54)
like animation in it and specifically the kind of animation I do. So like I'm working with physical materials, the shape and then the shadow. I work with real light. So and I thought the alliteration of shape and shadow is like very musical. And I work with musicians a lot. I don't know, I just just really I went through a bunch of names, but that one specifically I was like, oh, this works. I love this.
Mack Garrison (22:21)
It's so funny, one of the harder things I feel like with the opening your own shop is just coming up with a name that you like. I'm sure you probably went through a million different names and you were like, all right, this one sounds good enough. It sounds good.
Hayley (22:23)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember like calling my grandfather, who was like a big influence on me too, and just telling him a bunch of the names I was going for and I told him shape and shadow and he was like, those are like the two most beautiful words ever put together. And I was like, okay, I'll go with that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mack Garrison (22:49)
Gosh, you're like soul granddad. Yeah, the nostalgia got you. I love that.
I feel like granddad's grandparents have good influence on pushing folks the right direction. I'm curious, who are some other folks that inspire you? It seems like family is really important. I could draw that from your mom or even just referencing your granddad or your daughter, but who are some other maybe creatives in the field that you just really look up to and you're like, oh, they're just doing some amazing work and I need to give them a shout out on how good their stuff is.
Hayley (23:08)
Yeah.
Yeah,
Well, going back to my grandfather, I feel like he was a really huge influence. He was a music composer for film. So like as a kid, I'd watch him on his piano with a little TV, like improvising music to the visuals he was seeing. And so I kind of do the opposite in that.
I like working with musicians and bands and visualizing their music. I think that was a huge influence just seeing the film world through him. But some artists that have inspired me in animation are Lotte Reiniger, who was a woman, stop motion paper artist in the early 1900s. And she made
Mack Garrison (24:02)
Hmm.
Ugh.
Hayley (24:12)
I actually made the first feature animated film like way before Disney. Yeah. And she worked on a multi-plane, was like what's behind me, layers of glass and doing a lot of paper cutout like fairy.
Mack Garrison (24:16)
Whoa, I had no idea.
Sure, okay.
Is multi-plane,
I'm remembering from like Disney where you can get like depth of field or maybe parallax because it's like different layers, is that essentially kind of the same thing?
Hayley (24:38)
Yeah, yeah, mean theirs was like super amazing with like... Yeah, yeah, like they could do all these crazy camera moves and yeah, like pretty much all of Disney's was done on a multiplane. But yeah, mine's kind of more basic, more like a lot of going in your head. But yeah, it's essentially like a...
Mack Garrison (24:42)
sure, right? The layers and how it could extrapolate and kind of pinch together, of course.
Wow, okay.
Hahaha
Hayley (25:05)
old school like after effects or photoshop if you think about it like layers that you can put you know your foreground middle ground background and i love that i can do you know it doesn't just have to be paper it could be any material so yeah
Mack Garrison (25:08)
Thanks
That's cool. I love that
flexibility and kind of goes back to like, you're always looking to tink around with different stuff anyway, right? Not beholden to just one material. It's literally whatever you can find. Something you mentioned earlier I thought was really interesting is, you go on a lot of walks, you're up in the Vermont area. It's so beautiful up that way. I'm sure nature has a big influence on you and being outside. Maybe you could talk a little bit on, you
why Vermont or like why is it so good to be in a place where you can go on these hikes and step away from work and how has that kind of helped you as a creator be better you think?
Hayley (25:53)
Yeah, I mean in my whole adult life I've lived in cities so I definitely I love cities and like I'm so inspired by cities and moving here was definitely an adjustment for me but I'm like loving it now after being here a few years but yeah my husband's family lives here so when we had a baby and pandemic and everything we're like let's give this a try.
Mack Garrison (26:19)
Let's get out of the city. Too many people around us.
Hayley (26:22)
Yeah, so we moved to Vermont and it's really cool. I mean, I love that I'm able to be like live in the middle of the woods and do what I do like that everything can be remote now and you know sending files like you know if I have to you know go to New York or Boston or North Carolina like I can jump on a plane it's fine but it's so cool that I'm able to you know live in a rural place and
Mack Garrison (26:44)
Yeah, right.
Hayley (26:53)
I found it very inspiring to be, you in the winter, now I'm embracing skiing. So it's like, can go out, get some fresh air doing that. And then in the summer, it's just like a magical fairy land with like waterfalls and stuff.
Mack Garrison (27:08)
beautiful.
I've gotten as close, I haven't been to Vermont, so I'm a less need to get there. I've gotten to like New Hampshire and the White Mountains, so kind of over by the border. So I imagine it's pretty similar. Yeah, so I got up close. Very similar.
Hayley (27:15)
yeah, that's close. Yeah, Very similar. But
yeah, I think it's nice. mean, especially with stop motion, like, you need to be in a dark room, like, by yourself. And so it can, you know, feel kind of stuffy, you know, after animating for like 10 hours, sometimes straight. So like being able to pop outside and go on a hike or like go for a swim in the river is like...
really nice and like good for mental health.
Mack Garrison (27:48)
Oh, I
bet. I mean, I'm just imagining you kind of hunched over making all these little movements for hours on end. You probably stand up and you're like, oh my gosh, my back. I believe it. That's really cool. I've always had an affinity for nature myself and I feel like the juxtaposition of our digital world and what we're doing and being able to get outside is always like that nice reprieve and nice, nice refresh. You you mentioned earlier that you started in 2015. Congratulations on 10 years this year. That's amazing.
Hayley (27:53)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Thanks.
Mack Garrison (28:17)
Does
it feel like it's been 10 years? Do you feel like it's gone quicker than that? Or you're like, I can't believe I'm still doing this.
Hayley (28:22)
I think
it went pretty fast, I mean, I started in 2008, like, working with, like I said, like, different production companies and stuff, but, yeah, it's really cool. It's been 10 years, like, doing this on my own now, and, I don't know. Pretty proud of myself, I guess, for, like, sticking with it.
Mack Garrison (28:39)
I love it. Yeah. Well,
I read this book one time, I think it was Michael Gerber. was like why most small business or the E-myth, why most small businesses fail. And there was this whole book basically talking about some missteps you don't wanna make when you're starting a company. Someone gave it to me when I first started Dash. And a surprising statistic that I learned is that 85 % of small businesses fail within the first year of starting. So the fact that you've been around for 10 years,
Hayley (29:05)
Thank
Mack Garrison (29:06)
deserves a round of applause and a testament to the good work you're making. Here's
Hayley (29:07)
you.
Mack Garrison (29:11)
a good question for you. So you got 10 years now of running Shape and Shadow. know, thinking to someone who's maybe interested in stop motion animation or even just starting their own company, their own creative shop themselves, you know, what's some of the things that stick out to you over these 10 years that would just be important things to keep in mind as you're kind of going off on your own creative adventure? Anything come top of mind that you would give advice on?
Hayley (29:35)
I think not be afraid to pick people's brains. I'm so grateful to all the mentors that I've had that were older than me and had more experience and took me under their wing and weren't trying to keep any secrets. They were willing to help and offer advice. And I try to do the same thing to younger people now.
So think, yeah, don't be afraid to reach out to artists that you are inspired by. And I feel like the animation community as a whole is pretty friendly. And so, yeah, don't be shy with that. And then, yeah, I'd say for specifically stop motion.
Mack Garrison (30:15)
Yeah, 100%.
Hayley (30:31)
think it just requires patience and time and dedication to experimentation. thinking about what you love about stop motion, if you really love the craft of it and making the physical stuff that goes into it, like puppets and sets and all of that, you could pursue just being a fabricator. And there's a whole field of artists that work on the tiniest details.
and if that's something you want to pursue, there's like schools you can go to to learn, learn that. and if you want to, you know, be an animator, think, yeah, just like experimenting and, I think, you know, you can start out animating on your phone, but I would definitely advise getting Dragonframe software. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (31:27)
yeah, that's like the go-to for stop motion, right?
Hayley (31:30)
And it's like very, it's a very affordable program that I think they just want, you know, to support the community and yeah, it's, it's amazing. It's like changed everything being able to like see what you're doing instantly. so yeah, yeah. Cause when I was learning, we animated on bolexes like and developed our film. Like we didn't, yeah, we didn't know like what.
Mack Garrison (31:46)
Not know you're going down a mistake route or whatever, right? Get it earlier. No, that's good.
my gosh.
Hayley (32:00)
We were supposed to be in the same Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think, like when I first started going out on my own, like after I worked at production companies, I was like, okay, I'm going to rack up a credit card and buy myself a DSLR camera, a tripod and some lights. And I'm just going to set up a studio in my house and like make stuff.
Mack Garrison (32:00)
You're like getting this, you're like, shoot, that's not gonna work.
guys.
Hayley (32:29)
And I am I Was I was like I really want to do music videos I'm gonna email some Artists I really like and see if they might want to do something and one that I emailed was like yeah sure that would be awesome um and They gave me like a little bit of money, and I made my first music video and from there it kind of just snowballs where you put your work out and people see it and then kind of just goes from there, so I think just like if you're into stop-motion like
setting up a studio with just the essential things if you can and just start working. Yeah, exactly.
Mack Garrison (33:05)
Go with the flow, kind of the trend of the conversation
today. I love that so much. Well, we've been speaking with Haley Morris with Shape and Shadow, an animation studio run by Haley Morris, an arts and animation director based in Vermont. And Shape and Shadow, they specialize in mixed media and stop motion animation, creating stories that come to life through rich textures, handcrafted details, and thoughtful storytelling. And thank you for the thoughtful conversation today, Haley. And if you want to see Haley, you want to learn more about stop motion, this is your cue.
Hayley (33:30)
Thank you.
Mack Garrison (33:34)
to go out and buy a Dash Bash ticket. We actually are doing workshops this year, which Haley will be leading an optional third day of workshops, June 11th through 13th, 2025 here in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you've never been to the Dash Bash, it's an inclusive motion design vessel that's built around bringing great people together for some great conversations. And especially as Haley is in Vermont, we're in Raleigh and all of you are spread across in the nooks and crannies around the world. It's a great opportunity to come out behind our computers,
Behind the layout where we're doing some stop-motion animation and come hang out for a few days So it's gonna be a lot of fun and Haley can't wait to hang with you this summer
Hayley (34:11)
Yeah, me too. I'm so excited to hang out with you and meet, you know, aspiring stop motion animators or, you know, just animators that want to like add this to their toolbox. yeah. Thank you.
Mack Garrison (34:23)
I love it, I love it. Thanks everyone, have a good one.
Lasso Studio Interview
In this conversation, Mack Garrison interviews Lindsay and Alan Lasseter, co-founders of Lasso Studio, about their journey in motion design and branding. They discuss their early experiences in the field, the challenges and joys of running a creative studio as a married couple, and the importance of authenticity in client relationships. The Lasseters share insights on their unique creative process, memorable projects, and the significance of trust and community in their work. They also reflect on their experiences with major clients like Apple and the lessons learned along the way, emphasizing the value of connection and collaboration in the creative industry.
Takeaways
Lasso Studios was founded in 2020 by Lindsay and Alan Lasseter.
Their early experiences in motion design shaped their creative journey.
Balancing work and family life is a priority for the Lasseters.
Authenticity is key in building client relationships.
Trust between clients and studios enhances project outcomes.
Memorable projects often stem from strong client connections.
The creative process is unique to each project and client.
Community and connection are vital in the creative industry.
Lessons from working with major clients can reshape studio practices.
Events like Dash Bash foster learning and collaboration among creatives.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Lasso Studios
02:02 Early Experiences in Motion Design
05:02 The Birth of Lasso Studios
07:07 Navigating Work-Life Balance as Partners
09:07 The Unique Style and Process of Lasso Studios
11:59 Authenticity in Client Relationships
15:09 Memorable Projects and Client Connections
19:47 The Importance of Trust in Client Partnerships
24:00 Lessons from Working with Major Clients
29:01 The Value of Community and Connection at Events
Transcript:
Mack Garrison (00:00)
Hey, what's up everyone? This is Mack Garrison, co-founder, director of content over at Dash, and we've got another speaker series interview with the talented studio, Lasso Studios, a husband and wife partners, Lindsey and Allen Laseter. They are co-founders and co-creative directors of Lasso Studio. I'm sure that doesn't get complicated. Co-creative directors, no butting heads there. Out of Nashville, Tennessee, since 2020, they've worked together to merge their passions and branding, design, and animation.
serving clients ranging from local clients and nonprofits they believe in to powerhouse brands, including Apple and more. As partners in both business and life, they are building their studio intentionally to balance raising a family, building the life they desire and creating a foundation that can hold steady when life shifts in major and unexpected ways. Ooh, I'm excited. Allen, Lindsey, so good to see you all. I know you both. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today and introducing yourself to the dash bash.
Audience.
Lasso (00:58)
Absolutely. Thanks for having us, Mack, and inviting us to the Dash Bash. This will be our first time. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (01:02)
Is this really your first time? my gosh. One,
disappointed you haven't been before. But two, incredibly excited that y'all are gonna be joining us this year. I think folks are really in for a treat. I've known you both now for a long time. Lindsey, you and I are in the producers channel. We talk regularly. And Allen, I swear Allen, I tried to hire you for like years. You're the most booked up freelance contractor I've ever met in my life. I think literally for five years Dash tried to hire you and we were never able to do it because you're always booked up.
Lasso (01:31)
Yeah.
Mack Garrison (01:32)
Well, let's hop into it. I'd be curious from y'all's perspective. It's always interesting to me in motion design because it's such an eclectic mix of people from different backgrounds who kind of find their way into this space. I'd be curious from y'all's perspective, what are some of those earliest moments of motion design? When did you kind of realize, this is a cool field to be in? And I could toss that. We'll start off with you, Allen, and then we can go over to you, Lindsey.
Lasso (01:58)
Yeah, think my first, my truly first experience with motion was actually, I was just kind of thinking about this earlier, was working with a company I used to work for full time. That's right. Red Pepper, here in Nashville, and I didn't really know what I was doing, but I had a friend who knew After Effects and he had shown me a little bit of stuff and Red Pepper needed someone to just like make some little graphics move for like a...
Mack Garrison (02:13)
nice.
Lasso (02:28)
type video for some company and so I like jumped into like some really kind of simple what is it kinetic type kind of stuff so that was kind of like yes totally yeah and so I kind of that was like kind of my first kind of dipping my toe into the waters kind of memory and then my
Mack Garrison (02:38)
yeah, classic, classic. It's the gateway animation to animation is kinetic type.
Lasso (02:55)
My first full-on motion experience was doing some intro titles for a Google conference in Nashville in, what was that, 2013 or something like that, That was another thing where I had just a little bit of experience. The project fell into my lap and I was just thrown to the deep end. That was like it.
Mack Garrison (03:05)
wow.
Was your background always
design, Allen? Did it start kind of with design and creative and then there was this kind of like moment or two that you got into the motion side of it?
Lasso (03:26)
I was more like specifically like live-action like I really wanted to like be a director like for like live-action like film that kind of thing and I just kind of yeah stumbled into motion through that.
Mack Garrison (03:28)
Mmm, okay.
super cool. And I feel like I feel like everyone's got that friend. It's like, hey, look at this cool thing I made. You want to do something similar? You're like, yeah, that sounds kind of fun. How about how about you, Lindsey? What was kind of your early experience with the animation space?
Lasso (03:43)
Total it. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, it came through Allen. We met at art school and we literally lived across the hall from each other. And that's how we got introduced. And Allen was studying film and I was studying graphic design. We both had transferred into college. This was kind of like our second go around, right? Of like the first thing we were both studying. Allen originally studied graphic design, though, too. So I think it's interesting all the overlapping. And so, yeah, really for motion.
Mack Garrison (03:54)
nice.
Okay
Lasso (04:17)
And I think what I remember most was like recognizing how much power that could have. Like he mentioned the agency job that I had more in the advertising realm. But what was really cool for me in experiencing it was seeing Allen's shift and discovering it was something that he really loved and recognizing like it was a direction that he could take because.
Mack Garrison (04:34)
Mm.
Lasso (04:39)
Just being able to watch him develop his skills for it was really my real introduction. And yeah, like to your point of like someone sharing what's inspiring them, I feel like that was a really special way to be introduced to it and to get really inspired by a world that was definitely not my own.
Mack Garrison (04:53)
I love that.
What was the college that y'all met at?
Lasso (04:57)
It's called Watkins College of Art and Design and Film. Yeah, yeah.
Mack Garrison (04:59)
How cool. Nice. Do they still
have the art design program and all that stuff still run strong? Cool.
Lasso (05:05)
They do. I'm actually teaching
my first class there. They're part of Belmont University now and so yeah it feels fun to be kind of back into yeah college world.
Mack Garrison (05:14)
That's super fun. That's great. You go find a major that you love and you find a life partner. I feel like that's a, that's a huge win from going to school. So that's great. So y'all are, y'all are dating, you're creative, you're doing all this stuff. When was kind of this moment that was like, maybe, maybe we should start a studio. Maybe we make this more. Cause if I'm not mistaken, you were both kind of independent contractors for a bit, or maybe Lindsey, you were in house for full time. Like when was it this idea of like, let's, let's pull together a studio.
Lasso (05:22)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean it was 2020 and I think for most people that was when like life, like oh life could be different kind of revelations came up and so for us I think a big reason was we had had our daughter at that point and I did have like worked in agency, boutique studio, in-house as a creative director and
was working freelance for probably about six months before that. And it was like proof to us of like, we can work in the same space, like, and know that we could still have a good relationship. And so really an opportunity came to us very beginning of 2020 for rebranding Nashville Design Week. And yeah, it was really a casual, I was telling Allen about it and it was like, wow, it would be really fun to take like what we just genuinely love.
Mack Garrison (06:25)
Fun.
Lasso (06:34)
being like branding and identity systems and motion and illustration. And there was so much freedom with that project. It really was a dream in that way of like a lot of trust. We are getting to create something that is for the creative community itself. And so there was so much freedom. And I think that was honestly the best way that it could have started out for us.
Mack Garrison (06:52)
Nice. It's
always good when it starts on like a project that you really love, right? And when it goes smoothly, you're really proud of it. You're like, dang, could I just do this more? Like, how do I do this more? You know, I find it so interesting, just being partners and working together. You know, how do y'all navigate that work life balance? Is it one of those things where like you kind of leave work at work and when you're off, it's like, look, we can't talk about the same work because we always talk about work. Or is it just part of life that that is just always around and y'all kind of just lean into that?
Lasso (07:01)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, we kind of, think it's just kind of a juggle and we go in, you know, ups and downs of like being really good at the, you know, leaving work at work thing. And then we get into times where it becomes all consuming, you know, just kind of depending on how busy things are and what any given project requires. But the ideal is, we keep our work to pretty specific work hours. And, you know, we try to like be pretty intentional about hanging out as a family.
as much time as we possibly can and in those times work just doesn't come up naturally and then by the time we put our kids to bed we're like we can't we don't have any bandwidth to talk about work. it kind of lends itself to having a natural separation there.
Mack Garrison (07:51)
Sure
That's good. I'm glad
y'all aren't like that super, super couple that's just like on point all the time. Cause like I get home and I have to disconnect. just talk all day, do stuff all day. I'll just like, you know, veg out on the couch with my phone. So glad to know that y'all are human as well and doing that too.
Lasso (08:15)
Yeah, it's been interesting just like over the years learning how to communicate with each other in that way and like even helping each other of like remembering like hey this is not the time for this like we can move this to tomorrow and and supporting each other too of like we really did start the studio so that we could have like this balance that wasn't existing previously and so it's nice to be able to support each other in that.
Mack Garrison (08:24)
Yeah.
I love that. Well, I got y'all's website pulled up and I'm try to do my best to describe what I'm looking at on y'all's work to audiences listening to this. But you you have such like a funky style and I don't know how to describe this other than it one is incredibly unique. It feels old but modern, right? You're tapping into this kind of retro feel but it also feels really progressive and forward focus. It's such a good unique mixture of like compositions but there's such a sense of brand.
and branding that comes into it, of course, as being a brand studio and emotion studio. You know, how do you all I'm so curious about y'all's process, you know, because I think there's a lot of typical motion studios out there that might feel a little bit similar on their process. But for a group that has such keen insight on branding, maybe you could walk me through just like what does it look like on a project when you get something and it may be a high level.
Lasso (09:34)
I mean, it really depends on the client and on the end result. And that puts us into like, okay, who's owning since we're both creative directors and deciding like how that should go about. really, I think.
There is so much behind the scenes of like the years that both of us have been like honing in and especially for Allen as like the illustration that he brings and just his unique approach to motion. It feels like there's a lot of beauty of the work that's been building to that so that it can come more naturally in our process now. And we definitely like whether it's like a brand forward or a motion forward project, like we're like, okay, this is essentially the steps that we're gonna start moving in towards. But really, I think one of the big
things is connecting to the intent of the project, connecting deeply to the clients and creating a good flow with them. then, I mean really for the creative, I think one of the most important things is trying to get into the mindset and the flow where we can actually trust our own instincts.
Mack Garrison (10:30)
Mm-mm.
I love that. Anything you wanna add to that, Allen?
Lasso (10:34)
Yeah, I feel like one of the other things that kind of makes our process unique is that like, think, and this is something we're still kind of trying to figure out is...
Because when we first started, really saw ourselves, what was exciting to us was being able to not be a studio that does motion and also branding, but have those things integrated from the very beginning. And we've had a few projects like that, but obviously it's a little bit more of a niche kind of, you know.
market I guess for that. So that kind of makes things interesting. like when we don't have a project like that, like how do we keep like, how do we keep it like collaborative and working together as opposed to like, well you go do this, I'll go do this kind of thing. So that is something that we're kind of constantly having to think about a lot. Sure.
Mack Garrison (11:02)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Honestly, I think everyone is to a certain degree on like systems and process
type stuff. It's one of those things like you're like, you find something, it works super well, you keep doing it then you're kind of at this new place where you're doing new work and you're like, man, maybe we need to tweak this a little bit, right? I think something that I get from both of y'all just immediately is just so much authenticity, just even in our conversation today, I've met both of you in person, you are who you say you are, I can just get the vibe of how it's like working with you.
You know, how much do you feel like that aspect of it plays in, you know, to the work you do? Like if someone's out there thinking about starting their own studio, like, do you feel like it's pretty important to kind of understand just like your vibe and how you work and kind of your personality equally as as important as the work that you do?
Lasso (12:07)
Absolutely. I think that is one of the key components of like when people are hiring you like they're not just hiring your studio they're hiring like the essence of what you're bringing and what the relationship while you're working together can be like so I think that is such a key component.
And yeah, I remember like early days of my career and you know, places that I dreamed of working and eventually did get to work where they were just like, really, I want, you know, ideally we're not working together late at night on a project. Those times come sometimes and I want to work with someone that I'm going to have like just really good feelings about. Like we get to make that choice. So yeah, absolutely.
Mack Garrison (12:38)
Right.
I love that. go ahead, Allen.
Lasso (12:51)
Well, no, no, yeah, I don't have much to add other than for me it just kind of comes down to I think I think of it, try to keep it simple and just try to be honest in every part of life. And this mode where you start feeling like you have to perform or project a certain image, it just puts so much pressure on you. And so for me, it's like, yeah, just...
It's like hard sometimes because even when you're trying to like there's like a trap you can fall into where it's like well I want to be seen as authentic and so then you're like Doing a little dance to like make people think wow. I'm so honest I just try to like and I think we've kind of built this into our city like just try to be honest like in everything whether we're talking to a client whether we're talking to other
studio owners or whatever. A lot of the stuff kind of falls into its place itself if you just kind of approach it.
Mack Garrison (13:44)
falls into his place
or falls flat. feel like I've made some jokes on some like corporate client calls and they're nothing there. I'm like, okay. It's a test.
Lasso (13:49)
Yeah, there you go. There is always that. But even that, I
mean, I would rather that than like have to, again, like uphold this like kind of image, kind of project. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (13:57)
Right, man, that's so accurate, that's so honest and
so much truth to that. here's a good question for y'all. You we talked about the Nashville Design Week and just how that felt like such a good project and a perfect fit for y'all and really was a jumping point into becoming Lasso. I'm curious, looking back at your career thus far, if there's any other projects you're really proud of, either from a creative standpoint or just that.
client relationship we're talking about where the work looked good. Maybe it wasn't the best out there, but there was such a good relationship that was really enjoyable. Anything else stick out to you all besides the Nashville Design Week project.
Lasso (14:30)
Yeah, I've got my answer. I'm curious what yours would be. The thing that's come into mind is it's funny because it's one of the projects that we had a little bit lighter kind of involvement in.
at least in proportion to all the work that was done with it because it was kind of a collaboration of different creative studios in Nashville but really cool little wine bar restaurant in Nashville called Bad Idea. got to collaborate with some super amazing creative people here in town and like a lot of our work and before we started our studio like the...
huge majority of my work as a freelancer was with people outside of Nashville, which is awesome. And I still am so thankful for the ability to be able to work with people all over the world. But there's something really cool about doing some work for a place in town that's trying to do something cool in and of itself and like seeing the work come to life, like in brick and mortar and seeing people that you live close to like interact with in that kind of way. So that's been, that's been a really cool one for me. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (15:23)
I love that.
Lasso (15:24)
Yeah, honestly, like the first time that we went and like actually had a date and ate there. Because from the first time we had the conversation with the owner, Alex, he actually reached out to us because of Nashville Design Week. That's how he found out about us.
Mack Garrison (15:36)
cool, nice.
Lasso (15:37)
It was just a perfect example of someone who is like, we want what you do. I want what you do and I'm just going to trust you to do it. And it was really encouraging too, just to witness him as a client doing that with so many other people that are a big part of the Nashville creative community and people that we consider good friends. So yeah, I would definitely agree with that one.
Mack Garrison (15:57)
I feel like it's one of those things and I'm sure you all have been asked this question as well. I think every creative kind of gets asked it at certain point. What is, who's your dream client? Who is the ideal client you want to work with? And my answer, and it sounds like I would echo the same sentiment is always like, it's less about like the industry or the client. It's like, is there trust?
Do we have a good working relationship? Because you can make anything exciting and fun if there's that partnership of like, let's get into it. I love your style. This is what I know about it. This is what I our customers want. And you have that back and forth. That trust is so key.
Lasso (16:29)
Yeah.
100%. And I think it's been fascinating, like all the different types of clients that we've been fortunate to work with and being able to channel in to that element. And I think that you can, as we've been doing this over the years, it's like we can like tell, you know, even from like very first conversation of, you know, is that there, knowing what questions to ask, and then if it's not a good fit, like sending them to someone who we think it would be like really great for what they need. And so yeah, it's.
that's so important and it's such a gift when you have it.
Mack Garrison (17:02)
There's such a vibe on that initial conversation and I love that. I wanna pull that thread a little bit. What are some of the questions that you ask right up front that you feel like kind of sets the tone on like whether this could be a good relationship or not? Is there any that come to mind? It's like a go-to question y'all ask over and over.
Lasso (17:18)
Yeah, I think it really is more like getting a personal connection to them of, know, we've tested and I handle like new business development and connecting to our clients and potential clients. So letting it be like less formal, honestly, is where I feel like it helps a lot. And just really just asking questions and letting them speak and not controlling the conversation so much and, you know, letting it...
letting them dive into like, why do you want to do this? Why does it matter? Like being able to connect to them personally as a human, I think is really important of again, kind of that vibe check of like, hey, if we're going to be working together for like months on end, like what's it going to be like for us to talk each day? And oftentimes you really can get a sense of that right away. And even just knowing like confidence level and clarity for them. And is it a space where like we can support them and just really getting that like energy along?
which I think really helps because yeah, we would we've definitely had projects where we've started to move forward in the conversations of working together and that there's essentially just a series of flags of like hey I don't know that that we are really the best partner for this and even just protecting our our time and energy more to know like sometimes even the largest budgets are not worth it if it's gonna spend our lives and our days into chaos
Mack Garrison (18:35)
Yes.
It's also, think
this like scarcity mindset that unfortunately exists for a lot of us or people who are just starting their own studio or freelance career that are listening to this. It's like, is that next one there? If I say no to this one, is that okay? And I think all three of us would agree that you have to recognize those flags and act on it. And our regrets that we have from our careers, I would surmise come from the one we didn't react to those red flags that we saw.
Lasso (19:04)
Yes,
absolutely. Yeah, and like you said something a minute ago about thinking, because I think it's so easy to when there's like a prospective project coming in, you think about the point of signing the contract and locking in the project and you never think about like, yeah, day after day for a long time working on it. Like it took me forever to actually start remembering that that's most of what we're doing is like working with other people. It's not about just winning the project.
Mack Garrison (19:31)
Yes.
Lasso (19:32)
So yeah, that's definitely cool.
Mack Garrison (19:32)
Makes you a little bit more, critical is not the word, but just focused on the right partnerships. Because again, like you said, Allen, like you're gonna be working with them for a couple of months at a time, potentially. It's like you wanna make sure you enjoy that relationship. You know, one thing I didn't ask y'all earlier, I meant to ask about LASA, where does the name come from? I'm so curious. And you got to put y'all on the spot here, because I know some names sometimes just sound fun, and that's totally reasonable.
Lasso (19:38)
own.
Yeah.
Mack Garrison (19:56)
but I'm really curious if there is any, y'all are a brand studio. I feel like it last though has to come from someone.
Lasso (20:01)
Yeah, it definitely does. Yeah, it sounds so silly. Yeah, my friends kind of used to jokingly call me Lasso because my last name was Laseter in high school.
Mack Garrison (20:12)
sick. I was hoping like, I was like, I used to be a cowboy and totally was just gonna
live out less be a cowboy.
Lasso (20:19)
Yeah, that would be cooler. yeah, I think, yeah, I don't remember. I think I maybe started...
I don't know, it was always kind like in the back of my mind. I don't actually remember when we said we should use that as our studio name. Well, it's funny because yeah, like as a branding studio, it's like we even support brands who are considering like, what should we name our company or our product or things like that? And so I think there was kind of a beauty to the fact that like we didn't, we didn't overthink it to that nth degree. Like it felt fun where we did worry or overthink it was like there was another Lasso Studio
in a country that I can't pronounce, but it looked like they had not been operating for a really long time. So for a period, we even just considered, we were like, all right, we're husband and wife, what if we were just the Lasseters? Which I'm so glad that we didn't move forward with that. And honestly, we give credit to one of our friends because they just started calling us Lasso as a duo. Yeah, because Lasso was always there, but it's like, we actually did, so we spent a lot of time like...
Mack Garrison (21:08)
haha
fine.
Lasso (21:21)
trying to go through like a real naming process. There's something about coming up with a new name. It just feels like too, it feels like overthought and like too random. then you're like, just not that Lasso is like inherently any better than any of the other names we came up with, but just the fact that it's kind of has a history. It's like, it just feels more natural. And yeah, like our friends saying, just go with Lasso. It's like hearing it from the outside. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (21:23)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Honestly, I feel like it's kind of that push you need to
have a friend to like take you out of your bubble and be like, look, it's a great name. Just roll with it. Even for us, we had a late great friend, Andrew, who was like, we told him we were flirting with these different names. We were like, all right, we're thinking about Dash. And he's like, oh, there's the day you're born, the day you die. Dash is what happens in between. I'm like, yeah, well, that. But the reality was my business partner Cory and I, couldn't agree on a damn name.
Lasso (21:53)
Yeah.
Love that.
Mack Garrison (22:15)
we kicked around like 300 and we got to that point, we're like sick, know, dash works. So sometimes you need that, that friend to give you that little sidekick of like, you're in the right place.
Lasso (22:18)
Yeah. Yes.
Yeah, it's like the same as like when you're trying to name your kid. And so I'm glad that ultimately it was like, it just feels good. And yeah, I think that that could even just connect back to like how we want like our work to feel and how we want our clients to feel even like, yes, that feels right. It feels good.
Mack Garrison (22:28)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Well, I love that you're like tying it
together, right? We're bringing everyone around on this project. Last one it up. I love it. I love it. Although I would have loved it more if you, one of you was a cowboy. I will say that going back to it, but yeah, that's true.
Lasso (22:51)
We at least live in Nashville, so it's like the automatic connection that
most people outside of the city have, so we've got that in a way.
Mack Garrison (22:59)
So I'm, to change the subject a little bit, I'm really curious. One question I've been asking on these interviews is just about some stories in our industry. Both of you all have been working in this space for a long time. And one of my favorite things about attending conferences like the bash and others is just connecting with other creatives, finding out some stories that they have, like you'll never believe this client one time or we worked on this crazy thing.
Good, bad, or anything in between, I'm curious if you have a story you could share about a project that was either like crazy hard to get done or something just unheard of that you're working on. Any stories kind of bubble up to the top that maybe you could share on here, even if you disguise some names.
Lasso (23:39)
Yeah, mean, absolutely. I think one that comes to mind is the first time we ever worked with Apple. And it was, you know, one interesting thing in starting the studio and that I think that we continue to work through is even just our own mindset of like, we are a studio and we're capable of like doing all that we dream of doing. And even just...
you know, hoping that we could have opportunities with clients at like a larger scale who really value creativity, especially in the way that they do. Like those are ideal clients for us. And so it was interesting timing because I was pregnant with our second child and that that year, you know, we really, it was the first time that we were going to like create our own maternity leave as a company and knowing like, okay, this is, this is a big thing. This is something that we really want.
And so something that was really beautiful about that timing was, you we had created the plan and the vision for what we wanted that to look like. And we needed like a solid project to land within a certain time period and experiencing the fear of like, what is going to land? When is it going to come? And then the beauty of like it, the way that the email and the inquiry came in and the relationship, and then even the beauty of how that team worked with us, because the truth was I was
pregnant and our son was going to come, clearly in pregnancy, it's very hard to say it's going to happen on this date. So from the producer side being like, we just need to be like super clear with you of like, we're planning to shut the studio down for two weeks whenever the baby does come, but we can't tell you, you know, when that is going to happen. And so just like laying that all out at the beginning and experiencing that fear for ourselves, right? Of like, what if us kind of taking away what a studio would typically offer?
Mack Garrison (25:20)
Hmm.
Lasso (25:24)
which is like we're gonna get this project done by X-State.
Mack Garrison (25:24)
Mm-hmm.
Lasso (25:27)
And the beauty of that project was how just human and joyful they all were for us. Like they were thrilled for us. And that was just one beautiful example of how those partnerships can really support like the life that we actually wanted and allowing that project to flow. And it's one that like we're super proud of, but that, you know, just based on the nature of the project and white labels and all those, like it's not one that we've gotten to share before. But that was like a really, I think a much
Mack Garrison (25:51)
Hmm.
Lasso (25:54)
more personal but like really special project that we've experienced.
Mack Garrison (25:58)
I love that so much. I feel like there's always a fear. I think we all navigate this as creatives, because whether it's you have a boss in your in-house, you're a freelancer working for a client, you're running a studio, dealing with clients, there's always this fear as if we don't do something that we might not get the opportunity to do it again, or it has to be handled a certain way.
You know, it's such a refreshing conversation to hear that story and that Apple treated you all that way. I'm sure that it probably shifted your perspective on what is a purple. Like have you guys gone from that conversation? Has it shifted your mentality even on other projects? It's like, wow, if Apple is doing XYZ, we should have the standard with everyone. If that standard was different before. Have you felt a change since that project on how you treat other projects and handle other clients?
Lasso (26:48)
I I think even we were trying to do that beforehand, but I think there was something unique about how big that project and even just like the opportunity with a more well-known client name was, but that that really was getting to practice, like being honest about who we are. Like we are a husband and wife team and we scale up based on the scale of the project that we have.
And so I think just knowing, like we can be honest about who we are. We can set really clear boundaries too of like this is what we're doing or this is what needs to happen. And so continuing to like build that confidence and to know that we can do it for other clients too.
Mack Garrison (27:25)
I love that, love that so much. If anyone's listening to this podcast, which we hope people are, I don't even know, is this a podcast? Is it a vidcast? It's all of the above, check D, right? I'd love to get y'all's pitch on someone who's maybe on the fence of buying a bash ticket, thinking about coming to see y'all. Why should someone come see Lasso? Why should they come hang with Allen and Lindsey? What are you guys gonna talk about at the event, you think?
Lasso (27:33)
It's all these things.
I think it kind of did again kind of go back to what we talking about earlier. I mean the goal is just to be as honest as possible and to try because you know this is really fun. think this is what's so interesting about this event is that we're kind of trying to focus on and my understanding is that in general like we're kind of trying to focus more on you know the true like authentic part of you know what doing this work is like.
And you know, as a studio, like, you know, it's like we have kind of a mixed, it's okay if we're get this honest here, but there's kind of a mixed like motivation where it's like we want to come and be totally honest. But also, yeah, it's like we want just in general, not just at this event, but more people to know our name.
to get more work and form more relationships and stuff. So it's like going to be a really interesting balance, I think, of like being totally honest, but also like, I don't know, like how honest do you want to be and not like scare people off, you know, because we're messy. It's messy humans.
Mack Garrison (28:48)
We want the field
to continue. People need to continue to start studios and stuff. We don't want to be, you know, tell them how hard it is sometimes.
Lasso (28:53)
Yeah. But it's
like to me, I don't know, to me that's the most interesting thing. Like meeting anyone, hearing anyone talk is just like hearing the truest thing they can say about themselves. So I don't know. To me, I think that's the reason of self to come and hear not only us, but hopefully a bunch of other people talk about the real, the real part of all this stuff. Yeah.
Mack Garrison (29:13)
And it is the real
part about all this. Go ahead, Lindsey.
Lasso (29:15)
Yeah, I just going to add, I think the beauty of these types of events is, you know, clearly you're drawn to it for a certain reason and the people who are speaking are essentially like an expander for things that are possible. you know, our goal, like Allen said, is like, it is messy. It is messy to do the work. It's messy to be a parent. It's messy to work with other human beings in your own studio and other like just clients. And so I think like we were honored to be asked and I think that it felt
It felt like a level up moment of like, like we have been working really hard and getting the chance to like share the real behind the scenes, I think is a real gift. And just allowing people to see here's how they handled it. Here is what I'm drawn to. Here's what I know I want to do in my life right now. Like I've been thinking about that so much lately, especially teaching like these students that are about to graduate and like go out into the world and just being able to really zero in on what matters to you and connecting to people who are.
gonna like you know kind of help you step into that next version even when it feels scary and so I hope in a small way like we can do that just by sharing what what's happened for us so far.
Mack Garrison (30:22)
I love it so much. Community, connection, reconnecting, learning from one another. It's what's so important and what keeps our relationships with other peers so strong in this industry. Thanks everyone for tuning in today. Been chatting with Lindsey and Allen Laseter who are the co-founders and Creative Directors at Lasso Studio, an amazing brand and animation shop based out of Nashville. We cannot wait to have you at the Dash Bash. If you have not got your ticket yet, it's June 11th through 13th, 2025.
We're having an optional third day of workshops this year, two full day of speakers and hangouts. There'll be parties, there'll be plenty of time to network and really just learn a thing or two from one another, which is what it's all about. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today, y'all. Great chatting and can't wait to see you all this summer.
Lasso (31:05)
See you soon!
Mack Garrison (31:07)
See
ya.