Ever pondered taking a leap from a well-worn career path to the thrill of chasing a dream? That's precisely what Adam Rowland did, trading his corporate strategist hat for the intricate, frame-by-frame world of stop-motion animation. His narrative is not just a tale of career metamorphosis but a testament to the grit and artistry required to thrive in a realm where patience is paramount and every tiny movement matters.
He opens up about the balancing act of following a passion while navigating the unpredictability of freelance life, underscoring the importance of skill, strategy, and a bit of audacity. Adam's insights offer a blueprint for those yearning to switch gears.
This episode isn't just about Adam's personal odyssey; it's an ode to the magic of stop-motion animation. As we close, Adam leaves us with a peek behind the curtain of this captivating art form.
Check out Adams work at here. Connect with Adam via LinkedIn or at his studio Awkward Animations.
Ever pondered taking a leap from a well-worn career path to the thrill of chasing a dream? That's precisely what Adam Rowland did, trading his corporate strategist hat for the intricate, frame-by-frame world of stop-motion animation. His narrative is not just a tale of career metamorphosis but a testament to the grit and artistry required to thrive in a realm where patience is paramount and every tiny movement matters.
He opens up about the balancing act of following a passion while navigating the unpredictability of freelance life, underscoring the importance of skill, strategy, and a bit of audacity. Adam's insights offer a blueprint for those yearning to switch gears.
This episode isn't just about Adam's personal odyssey; it's an ode to the magic of stop-motion animation. As we close, Adam leaves us with a peek behind the curtain of this captivating art form.
Check out Adams work at here. Connect with Adam via LinkedIn or at his studio Awkward Animations.
If you do want to do something different, save up some money, because it's not easy when you start out. I went from a global corporate role to try and infiltrate the creative scene in New Zealand and be somebody, and I was nobody.
Speaker 2:What a guy. This is really quite an inspiring story. One of the motivations for me on the podcast is to interview people who've made some quite dramatic changes to their lives. Adam is a living example of that. He was a commercial strategy guy and these days is an award-winning director, producer of stop-motion content creation.
Speaker 1:Go do something that you absolutely love, but practice and practice, and practice and practice until you're really really good, because no one will care if you're not that good at it.
Speaker 2:You might love it, that's great, but if I wasn't very good at stop motion, nobody's going to employ me I love that and I I think you're right to talk about it's not just passion and hobby, but you have to be really good at it because that's what will make you a living out of it and be successful. But to get to that point you have to start and you have to be able to just get underway and get practising and improving.
Speaker 1:Just don't be afraid of making change when the going's good, and also listen to your gut and your heart more than maybe common sense sometimes, and take a risk, because what's the worst that can happen if you fail?
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. My guest today is Adam Rowland, and what a guy. This is really quite an inspiring story.
Speaker 2:One of the motivations for me on the podcast is to interview people who've made some quite dramatic changes to their lives, particularly their professional lives, and Adam is a living example of that. He was a commercial strategy guy with some really big brands the likes of Icebreaker, asics, polo, ralph Lauren, et cetera very successful, very senior roles around the world in these corporate roles, and these days is an award-winning director, producer of stop motion content creation. He's a puppet creator. He's into claymation, animatic creation, music videos, you name it. What a change, adam.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the podcast. Hello, greg, it's good to hear that out loud as well. It's so cool to have you. And look, just just thinking about this podcast today. I just had so many times where I had this sort of low level excitement around what we could talk about today, because I don't really know anything about the world of claymation and animatic design etc. So I guess I'm keen to start with where I typically start, which is a little bit of an origin story about you. Before you sort of got into this world, were you the type of kid that grew up always interested in this type of thing.
Speaker 1:There's so many films you can reference, like jason and the argonauts was probably the skeleton scenes, probably one of those ones that you just everyone remembers right, because it was so magical at the time. Yeah, I mean, that's king kong. There's all sorts of films I could probably reference. Was I particularly clear at the time when I was a kid that that was stop motion? No, because someone was trying to trick me to think it was real, so I probably hadn't really worked it out until a lot later.
Speaker 2:And what is stop motion For those people who and I would imagine the bulk of people listening will not really know what stop motion is and, as I said to you offline, I will include a link to some video content in the show notes for people to be able to watch Adam's work when they're finished listening to this podcast. But yeah, what is stop motion?
Speaker 1:There's so many ways you could explain it, but the simplest way to explain it is you move stuff that can't move, so you take a photograph, you then move the item and then take another photograph and then all those photographs linked together creates the film a moving image. So Wallace and Gromit is always my go-to reference for anything to do with stop motion, and most people have heard of that or seen it.
Speaker 2:And was Wallace and Gromit an inspiration for you when you were getting started?
Speaker 1:Oh hey, so if you live in the UK, stop motion is really big. It's a huge scene. It's probably, I'm going to guess, like 20-15% of the overall advertising spend goes into stop motion in the UK and filmmaking. So I lived in the south of England and Bristol is kind of the central hub for where Aardman are based. You hear a lot of stories, you grow up with the merchandise. So yeah, it's pretty big in the UK but obviously in New Zealand it's hardly even noticeable.
Speaker 2:But you then had a, you know, you kind of kicked off your working life into corporate roles and you've had a lot of time in and around strategy roles with some big brands, mostly in and around the world of apparel and brands like, I guess, apparel and footwear, because you have brands like Essex Icebreaker, Essex, Asics, Ralph Lauren big brands. How did you get involved and interested in areas like that in the corporate strategy area?
Speaker 1:How does anyone get involved in anything when you're my age? I wasn't very academic, so at school I wasn't the best. I did all right in maths and I did all right in art and we'll come to it. But later on in life I realized that creativity and maths go hand in hand. So if you're creative or you have a creative brain, it's very easy for you to spot trends and patterns in numbers. So I found a real affinity with numbers for the first half of my life. So up until now, I guess, and looking back on it, I made the switch into stock motion, which is obviously like hugely creative. But looking back I realized that I was always able to spot patterns and see things that other people couldn't see because I had this brain that was able to interpret the information differently.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I know with mathematics there's a lot of writing around mathematics, particularly things like calculus, where there is a lot of writing around mathematics, particularly things like calculus, where there is a sense of mathematically defining beauty. Or if we look at the universe and the way things are put together in in nature, they are mathematically perfect in so many ways. So it doesn't surprise me that those two can live, you know, nicely together, both the maths and the art. But it does feel rare that somebody would possess skills in both those areas.
Speaker 1:Oh hey, I keep pinching myself for where I've landed now. It's kind of crazy really, because if I'd have stayed at Ralph Lauren, by now I'd be a senior vice president of a department. If I'd have stayed at ASICS, I'd be in a role that was equivalent. So each role that I've moved out of I've been on a really good career path and I've enacted the change for various reasons, but just because I like change and I moved from Ralph to Essex that move my boss at Ralph Lauren. They did everything they could to keep me and I just knew I just had to move on and went to Essex. I stayed there for a few years. Honestly, looking back, I probably should have stayed for a few more years, but again, I just knew I had to move on. And one of the things that I really have enjoyed in my career and I think I'm wavering from your question, but no, go with it, let's run with it.
Speaker 1:We're going to bounce all over the place. Cool, okay, good, good. One of the things that I've noticed is I worked in Hong Kong for a year for Ralph Lauren and met the guy quite a few times and that was great fun. And what I realized is that when you're out of your home country, you have to listen so much more attentively to what people are saying and speak so much more clearly to be understood that for me, that personal development growth was next level. I loved every minute of that. So when I went back to the UK, I just felt comfortable again and I wanted to get uncomfortable. So, moving to Essex and living in Amsterdam, working for a brand that was Japanese run, the Netherlands, with lots of Dutch people and multicultural, it was a very big shift and I've lost my track. But there we go.
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting because you talk about change, yeah, and you talk about desiring being uncomfortable, and that's counter to the way most people like to think. Like, most people sort of drive their lives towards comfort, so it's almost everything they're doing. They're seeking comfort, whether it's the food they eat, the couch they lie on. Everything's about comfort and making life less risky and more comfortable. Why do you think you went the other way? What's driving that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very therapeutic preparing for something like that. One of the reasons, I think, is I'm an Air Force kid and so I was born in the south of the UK and if you don, if you don't know an air force family their dad or the mum gets posted every two years and you're moving. Posting means moving house, moving country, so we moved every two years literally. I went to 16 different schools in and around the uk, lived in scotland and even in an air force base in germany like post-war control of that country and each time you move, every two years, you say goodbye to everything you've got used to and you make new friends and you have a new bedroom and you put your posters up. It's just kind of you make a life where your parents have moved you and you're not in control of that. So I think a really big part of my life and my decision-making and always moving when the going's good, has been linked back to that childhood.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you're letting go just at a time where you're feeling comfortable, where you're feeling good, you've made friends, you've put some roots down, and then you're getting a sense of right, things are good. It's time to move, it's time to go and do something different. And so then you made the move to Icebreaker. So you came from the UK to New Zealand to do that role, or did you do that role in the UK?
Speaker 1:Oh no, I was in Amsterdam working for ASICS Again. My career was doing really well. Asics was on fire. I went to Lapland on holiday to stay in the Ice Hotel and I needed to buy some icebreaker base layers. I happened to look at the website to pick up the gear. I looked at the job section and the perfect roles there just a global head of planning and so I applied, spoke to Rob Fyfe and a few others of the leadership team and ended up here six months later.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool. So you're in New Zealand now and, as we do this podcast, adam is working out of a studio which looks like it might be in a garage but it's one heck. Yeah, it's in a double garage but it's one heck of a studio with all sorts of clay animations in the background and tools and cameras and all sorts of things. So you're working for Icebreaker. You've got this really cool corporate role there and I know a few of the Icebreaker people myself. We can talk about that offline. We might ball listeners with that now, but you're in this role. What possesses you to go and become a stop-motion content creator?
Speaker 1:the basic part of the decision is the vf court or icebreaker, and they moved the global head office to switzerland. So the leadership team there were given a few choices and one of the choices was redundancy right. So the end was a natural end for me, as in there was no choice there. There was a choice to go on and take another. I had a few options to go on and probably take some pretty cool roles for some nice brands, but there's a series of about five things that happened. So number one is icebreaker is a very, very good brand to work for. They are purpose-led, so they do great stuff for the planet. As you know, they are great in terms of people, so I was playing touch rugby twice a week with half the office, from CEO down to every level, and they're good for profit, so they're successful. So what a perfect brand to work for. I was getting quite picky, and so the other, the brands that were led in front of me after Icebreaker. They were okay, they lived up to that, but they were more shareholder listed brands than purpose led, if that makes sense. So it was going to be a tough choice to go and work for someone else. That's number one.
Speaker 1:Number two since I've moved to New Zealand, I stopped watching TV in the evenings and I just started practicing stop motion whilst I was doing my global corporate role. So in the evenings I'd say to my partner, I'm going into the garage and I sit there and play with plasticine and do these fun things. And the year that I got made redundant from Icebreaker from VF Corp, I'd won a few competitions. I won like five grand off of a seven shot TV remake the ad competition. I did a pack and save ad and, by the way, they've never contacted me to do more stuff for them. I won the 48 hour film competition as a solo entry, beating 450 other teams in Auckland, and so I had these certificates best director, best film and I was doing this in the evenings with very little time on my hands, and I was doing well, so I had a lot of confidence. That was number two.
Speaker 1:Number three is that I have a two-year-old son at the time and a daughter on the way, and I wanted to provide them with real life inspiration of something that shows that they can do what they want in life, because as a child I just followed opportunity and that opportunity led me down a corporate path and I'd like them to see that actually there are many different choices you can make in life. Like I said, I could be an SVP right now, or you know, but some crazy high level with a great house and a house full of Ralph Lauren, beautiful things, and that's not what I've ended up with. I'm sitting in a double carriage with the light blocks out, playing with plasticine. So that was the third piece. I had some safety, so I had some savings backed up so that I could give myself this opportunity, and my advice to anyone would be if you do want to do something different, save up some money, because it's not easy when you start out.
Speaker 1:I went from a global corporate role to try and infiltrate the creative scene in New Zealand and be somebody, and I was nobody, and so there were many different factors, and I guess the last factor is, if it didn't work, I could go back and just go into corporate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting advice there that you're giving people around, you know, having some sort of cash runway. I think there's a lot of people that are going to be listening to this who feel stuck in. Whatever it is they're doing, they feel unfulfilled. They might be in a corporate role, they might be working for a bank and they might be doing something that they feel is paying the bills and the family are happy because they're in a nice house and life is good, but they're feeling unsatisfied. So you obviously got to a point where you thought, okay, this is kind of being presented to me the icebreaker role and the opportunity I can take a redundancy. Was there still a whole lot of trepidation around making the jump into doing this full-time, doing the stop-motion content creation as a full-time gig?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, when I came home and said to my partner, megan, there is a really nice corporate role we can take, or I'm just going to try and make some stop-motion films and make money from it.
Speaker 1:And I bet that was met with just delight and hats on the back. Yeah, I guess you know I didn't financially sit there and make that decision at that point in time. It was more of a romantic thought. And then I started to validate the decision as I was walking through it. So I sat down with my partner and we kind of worked out what it would look like and what the go no go point would be. I, we kind of worked out what it would look like and what the go no-go point would be. I just wanted to go for it and, like I said, in life I've just made decisions that I felt were right at the time rather than worrying too much about some of the details. So many reasons not to do things, it's so true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so true. It's interesting. I was sharing your video of examples of your work with my wider family this morning and saying check this out, I'm interviewing Adam this morning. He's a guy who you know was a corporate strategy guy who decided to follow his passion and the things that he was really good at and, interestingly, the person who really jumped on the comment was my own father, who's nearing 80 now, and his comment was more people need to do that and the earlier they can do that, the better. You know, see, from somebody who's lived probably most of his life now. So I think that's an interesting thing. It's, it's a and no doubt you often reflect on the fact that you have made this jump and are there regrets or just you're like, no, I'm so pleased I've done this it might depend on who I'm talking to, but I mean internally I struggle all the time.
Speaker 1:So, like throughout the year there's dips and peaks in terms of cash flow yeah, where I'll start panicking like where's the next job coming from? Up until now I've had some really good fortune and I've worked hard for it. So I don't know how to market stock motion within New Zealand, but I know how to network generally, so I've been networking a lot with a lot of people. For instance, I sent out my showreel to every single agency in New Zealand and it wasn't that great at the time but it's improved and just nothing for at least a year. But planting those seeds meant that a year later I landed some really nice big TV campaigns for a German seed company, and it was just completely random. And then since then those things happen now and again.
Speaker 1:But anyway, come back to your question. I think probably the bank balance drives me to be more concerned. So as I see it coming down and I look ahead at what the cash flow looks like, when I see it getting to a point where I'm getting nervous I need to earn money right to make a life and yeah, so I start to panic then. So in that panic mode, I will do tons of marketing, tons of networking, and then what tends to happen is about four weeks later, I've got so much work on that, I have to start turning stuff down.
Speaker 2:It's a good problem.
Speaker 1:It's a great, great problem to have, though, yeah, I absolutely can't complain.
Speaker 2:I'm not complaining here at all that ebb and flow you don't have when you have that employment. Because they often say and I've used this phrase here on the podcast before that in life you need to impress your eight-year-old self and your 80-year-old self, and you are one of those guys who I feel is impressing his eight-year-old self, and when you get to 80, you can look back and go yeah, well done, adam. You didn't take the safe path. You didn't just do the corporate thing and earn the big money and have your wardrobe filled with your company's products. You actually got out there and made your own way and did your own thing in an area that you're passionate at and also really good at, and you know. Hats off to you for doing that, because that's very hard. So there'll be people out there who are thinking, ah, if only I could do this. Do you think that's an excuse that people put in front of themselves, or is it generally there's good reasons not to do it? What's your sort of view on that? Do we make excuses around this sort?
Speaker 1:of stuff? I think that the most logical way I can answer that question is when I was a child growing into an adult and a teenager growing up to a young adult. You are faced with choices in front of you. You don't sit there and think, oh, I want to be this, because life just doesn't work like that. You end up going for you I didn't do university. You don't sit there and think, oh, I want to be this, because life just doesn't work like that. You end up going for your I didn't do university. But you end up going for education thinking, oh, you have lots of choices when you leave and you might have an idea of what you want to do. But you tend to fall into something and people that fall into my world of merchandise planning with an apparel nobody wants to do that when they're growing up. But then you become good at it, perhaps, and you start to enjoy the reputation that you have.
Speaker 1:For me, I think the main thing for me is that I've really enjoyed my career and working for nice people, but I've also found a hobby that I really, really, really, really like. I'm so passionate about stop motion. If I didn't have this hobby, I'd still be in my corporate career. So if I was going to advise anyone, if they're feeling stuck in what they're doing, go and do something that you absolutely love, but practice and practice, and practice and practice until you're really really good, because no one will care if you're not that good at it. You might love it, that's great. But if I wasn't very good at stop motion, nobody's going to employ me. So I just put my heart and soul into this and there's so much passion, like every time when I walk from the house into my double garage. I'm in my world and this world is just pure love and passion to me, and when I heard you talking about the change and the fact my eight-year-old self will be happy, I can almost feel myself welling up. It's an emotional thing.
Speaker 2:I love that and I think you're right to talk about. It's not just passion and hobby, but you have to be really good at it because that's what will make you, you know, a living out of it and be successful. But to get to that point, you have to start and you have to be able to just, you know, get underway and get and get practicing and improving. Yeah, interestingly, you talked about reputation. So did have, or do you still have, any issues of almost an identity crisis. So I'm Adam Rowland and I'm a corporate strategy guy to well. Actually, I know you still could go back and do that, but now I'm a stop motion guy. How does that affect your psyche? Just that identity piece.
Speaker 1:I like to exercise that side of my brain because I've been doing it for 25 years and, as such, people contact me and I do work on the side for about one or two days a month to keep that brain, that side of me, exercised because I love it. So I do some consultancy and I didn't choose to. It just kind of worked out that way and I was worried about my bank balance. So all sorts of things happened that made that happen. Yeah, some connections at Icebreaker and some other people just said, hey, now you're doing your own thing, would you mind coming and do some stuff for us? So that actually helped my psyche a lot, because I think if I wasn't doing that and I was just sitting here trying to chase a stop-motion world that isn't quite adding up financially, then I think that would affect my psyche more. I think cash flow is one of the biggest things that makes me comfortable or uncomfortable, regardless of yeah, yeah, it seems to be a measure on our not just our success, but our levels of anxiety, perhaps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm keen for you to help us understand what a week in the studio looks like for you in the workshop. So what do you do? You work with puppets, you work with plasticine, et cetera. So take us through the kind of you know, some examples of some of the cool stuff you've done. As I said, I'll include a link through to your videos, but, yeah, take us through a little bit of what it looks like in the workshop.
Speaker 1:Being a stop motion animator, producer of films as a solo artist means you actually need to be an expert in about 14 different fields. So pre-production, which is set building, prop building, stage building, getting the lighting ready and everything else, that's normally about two-thirds of the project. So a lot of that I'll either outsource or do myself and like the stage that you can see behind me, greg is all handmade by me and everything's largely built in-house, because I'll just charge that money my day right now. Stop motion animating itself is obviously the real magic, but all of that is a lot of planning in advance, including being a DOP director of photography, having to learn how a camera works, lens options I mean I'm still mind-blowing to me, but I get through it Lighting, storyboarding, building an animatic. So in stop motion, if I'm working with a client, you don't do any editing at the end. All the editing is done up front. So I'll agree, frame by frame, exactly how it's going to flow to within reason and the client will sign that off, and then that's what I'll execute. So let's just rewind to answer your question.
Speaker 1:So a one minute segment of film at 24 frames per second is 1440 frames, well, which you tend to shoot on two. So half of those frames 720 or 740 frames are single photos that I'll sequence out. So yeah, it's a lot of planning. Sometimes if it's claymation, a lot of plasticine management and keeping it clean, keeping the air clean and working out what's going to happen next. There's a lot of detail. I mean I don't know where to start. Really, the fun part here here's the fun part. The fun part is live video references. So whenever you're animating a performance, specifically a character performance, I will video myself doing that activity and then I'll use that as a reference. So I have to be an actor as well, a physical actor as well.
Speaker 2:And we will see in the video that we share in the show notes around you engaging with a figure and getting close and coming up and looking at it. It's actually pretty impressive because even to do that, I don't even know how you do that, because you're in real time and obviously the animated figure is having to be, you know stop. You do that because you're in real time and obviously the animated figure is having to be, you know stop motion. So that's being done in a different way, very, very clever there's a guy in Canada called Kevin Parry.
Speaker 1:He's one of the most famous ex-Lyca stop motion artists that just started to create a name for himself online creating content. He run a series of. In the year before I was I moved into stop motion, he ran a series of. In the year before I moved into stop motion, he ran a series of challenges every month on video magic and stop motion, and so I used to answer all of his challenges. Part of stop motion magic is creating layers, and one of those layers can be live film blended in with something that you animated, and I particularly like doing that sort of stuff. That's a lot of fun. I'm trying to trick people. It's kind of just. That's fun in itself, right it's really impressive.
Speaker 2:And how do you go about making the plasticine characters? You're making those yourself. Yeah, for the listeners.
Speaker 1:I can't show you. So I'm making lots of plasticine characters and I use a combination of all sorts of ingredients, mostly plasticine. But in order for it to behave well, you blend it in with things like beeswax and then I put it through a pasta roller, a spaghetti machine, to blend the colors. There's a lot of management when it comes to dealing with plasticine. One of the coolest things you can do as an animator is do something called a sculpt-through animation. So you have a character like a wallace and gromit type character. You are cutting the mouth open each time, reshaping the next mouth shape to represent the phenome or the sound that you're trying to to speaking, get the mouth to imitate what the words are doing. That sculpt through process is just so much fun, so much fun and you'll see listeners.
Speaker 2:You will see in the video there's a character who is talking and actually talking about the jaw being taken off, and then that character sneezes midway through their conversation and I use, you know, air quotes. It's accidental the sneeze, and yet obviously you've scripted that so beautifully in the way it's done. It's incredibly clever.
Speaker 1:I was a bit naughty when I did the Aardman course. There's a lot of copyright laws, obviously, in this world, and so when I did the Aardman course, they have lots of prescriptive videos of Pete Lord, the guy who founded Aardman, doing some lessons and talking to you about what the right things to do and what not to do. So rather than take the coursework that I was told to do and what not to do, so, rather than take the coursework that I was told to do, I just took his videos, edited them together to make a bit of a mockery, but almost like a love letter to Aardman, and then, yeah, I put that coffin on purpose because it's it's nice in stop motion when something happens that's unexpected rather than something that's fully scripted and you kind of know where it's going. So, yeah, there's so much to learn in this world. Literally, I spent five years probably getting to 30% of the knowledge of all these different skills to make this project work. I'd say I'm probably halfway on my journey to being relatively good because there's so much to learn.
Speaker 2:What is the hardest part of the creative process in what you do? What would be the most challenging thing to do creatively In the stop motion?
Speaker 1:world, I would say that anything is possible. So finding something original is probably the hardest part. It's easy to copy other people's ideas and there's no such thing as an original idea, right? So trying to find something that's original is normally a mishmash of different ideas coming together, which I'm generally quite good at. So I'd say the hardest part is being creatively original.
Speaker 1:What I do have and you can see behind me, which is top secret at the moment is a client that's asked me to do something. We've come up with something original and that's going to get released in about three months time across the whole of Asia, so or the APAC region. So this, this is pretty cool. This is original. This took a few months to kind of come up with the idea, but sometimes things also just land.
Speaker 1:Greg, the most successful stuff that I've put on social media, like that facial placement thing you just talked about and referenced they took a few weeks and there's so much fun to make and because there's so much fun, you get on a roll, get in a rhythm and the output is generally way more interesting than anything you could create for any brand, because brands tend to put limitations on your creativity or they have their own idea, the big brands are probably easier to work with than small brands. If that makes sense, I'll probably stay away from any clients in the future that have very low budgets, because they tend to have really high expectations for that low budget, because it's so the brand's turning quite precious for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah is it more challenging in stop motion because digital animation is getting so good? Is it making it more challenging? Or, in a sense, is there more of a renaissance for things like stop motion because it is a craft and it is seen as I don't know, somewhat cooler than just digital animation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the latter. So there's so much cool stuff happening in stop motion. So when I started out and this was only 2016, so only eight years ago when I started out there were a few references online that were really really good for stop motion. There's obviously other films, like the Wallace and Blomit stuff and Leica, but then in the last eight years there's now so much more happening in this world. It's a very small world and I'll tell you about some of the people I've met here in New Zealand as well. It's a very small world and yet it's having a really big online presence as well. It's a very small world and yet it's having a really big online presence. So there's a lot of people out there that are learning the craft and getting good at it, because I think it's because once you start, there's no going back. It's really hard to just put everything down and go. I'm not going to do that anymore, especially when you created something. Let's just say that people have found viral online. So Netflix has been investing heavily into stop motion. So the Toros Pinocchio, which is on Netflix, that took 15 years to make, and recently they've also done the House and Wendell and Wilds. There's loads of stuff on Netflix happening in stop motion, which is also increasing its popularity.
Speaker 1:I constantly just think and this is one of my worries that you asked me about earlier Am I just in a world that's about to end and I've got excited too late in life and too late in the market because CGI is going to come and just take it all over and AI? I really don't think so. I think stop motion has got at least I think it will outlive quite a lot of the AI stuff in the next 10 to 20 years because it is so genuine. For sure AI is going to find a way to imitate it. Yeah, I turned down a gig last year because I didn't have the time to do it and someone else in Auckland picked it up and they put it out there and it looks like stop motion. But it wasn't. And I was like who's this other person doing stop motion? Because at the moment I'm the only one doing commercial character animation and it turns out it was just some really clever kids in a studio that had the tools to do it on a CGI level and it looked great.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I had a conversation with Rob Vickery, who's a venture capitalist, and I've referenced this example a couple of times now. He is a venture capitalist but invests into creative industries, gaming studios, etc. And he said that he believes that the human eye and almost soul can detect an AI driven creation versus something that was created by a human in a workshop, and that we prefer, yeah, the latter, we prefer the human created story. So, yes, we are living in a world of ai and tech and digital animation. It's just getting amazing. But the craft and the craftsman working in the workshop there's something about those that we just we we resonate with, we love, we feel this deeper connection with. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. So part of my job is to try and make the stop motion look as perfect as possible, but I really love it when it doesn't look perfect, exactly Because it tends to have a feeling to it and a uniqueness that you just can't get anywhere else. So let's say there are 100 stop motion artists around the world. They'll all ask to do the same task. Not one of them will produce. None of the output will look the same, and I think that in itself is really nice. I actually met Rob. He was giving away plasticine because he closed down his store in Devonport and I raced down there. But I managed to chat to him for 10 minutes. But yeah, he's just down the road, or was.
Speaker 2:Small, small world. So, in terms of you know the world, that this is opening up for you and you touched on, maybe, people that you've met has it created a completely different circle of people that you hang out with and that you get to meet these days?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a hundred percent. The creatives that were in Icebreaker, or some of them that came and went in Icebreaker, I've stayed in touch with and, as part of that, some of them do voice acting for me. You know people all lend a hand. It's really really nice. There's a guy down the road I think his name's or his company's called Justin Glass House. I'll need to check that, but he drops off materials for me when I need them. I met some guys that built the state, the sets for Lord of the Rings, that came and worked in this garage. We built a giant farmyard in here. Yeah, the list is endless. There's a huge creative community out there and I would say that largely they've opened me with welcome arms and I can't thank them enough for it.
Speaker 2:It's been really nice and I presume, given how much you love what you do, that there hasn't been a time where you've gone. I think I need to give this away and go back to corporate strategy. Have you ever had that moment? No, I'm picking. You haven't, because of how much you love it.
Speaker 1:It's just cashflow, craig. If it comes down to it, I'll have to, and sometimes I'll apply for a role if it's interesting creatively as well. Just to check my thought process, even when I'm in a job in the corporate world, I'll probably apply for one or two jobs a year or network with people that might have the roles to see if I'm in the right place still and whether there's an opportunity to move on. I do the same thing here and I just keep myself in check to make sure that I'm still relevant in the marketplace, because even moving from Europe to New Zealand has been tricky in terms of, like, readjusting my skill set for this, for this environment. So, yeah, there are times when I tweak and I go okay, yeah, I think I might need to go and get a job, but largely I won't give this up.
Speaker 1:If I can, I'll do everything I can to keep this going, not blindly, like if it just becomes a hobby in the future, then it just becomes a hobby, but for now it's becoming something else, and what I'd really like to do and I'd like to come back on this podcast in a year or so is talk to you in a year or so about how I've managed to turn this into a company and hire a team and have a greater output in terms of how much I can generate, because stop motion's time intensive, it doesn't necessarily need to be expensive. But if I do, how much I can generate Because stop motion's time intensive, it doesn't necessarily need to be expensive. But if I do the math, I can generate about seven minutes worth of stop motion a year Wow. I did a TV commercial last year which was a minute long and it took six months Wow.
Speaker 2:That's insane. Seven minutes of content takes you a year. So that's you working full time in this gig and you'll create seven minutes of content. That's with a team. That's with a team and that's you outsourcing. So if you were to do longer format production for the likes of a Netflix or another production house, you would need a bigger team or you would have to take years to produce yeah, either go and work on a bigger team or hire the team.
Speaker 1:You'd need a bigger team for sure just to do all the different roles. So my time at the moment as a solo artist is distracted by. There's no real value in me sitting here building a prop. The value for me is in directing and animating. If it comes to a point where I can hire a team of animators and the output explodes, then fantastic.
Speaker 2:So could we see you build essentially a stop motion studio. That is something that New Zealand looks at and goes. Look at what Adam has done here, Like he's built an industry essentially from here.
Speaker 1:That's the dream, right, that's the dream, yeah, and you're well-placed.
Speaker 2:Having corporate strategy is a skill to know how to build this thing when it starts to take off. So what gets in the way of that? Is it the clients? Is it winning the work? Is it capability of team around you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say there's two main factors. One is just I think the work is there. I think, based on the size of the industry in the UK and in Europe and America, the work is there because there's nothing here at the moment. So the opportunity to grab a percentage of that market and build a business is 100% there. There's no doubt in my mind about that. The cashflow and just building up the investment piece to make that work is probably one of the biggest boundaries. And then the second is if I want to hire other stop motion animators that can come in and do this, hiring people to build stages and props.
Speaker 1:New Zealand's full of that, so that's no problem. There's loads of skill and talent here. All the post-production, no problem, but the actual animation itself there's very little. So you probably just import that talent from the UK. So there's a studio down in Christchurch run by Anthony Ellsworthy and they make Kiri and Lou. And Kiri and Lou is a preschool amazing show about two dinosaurs. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's been running for about five seasons. So Anthony is ex-Lyca and he's come to New Zealand and they make that show and they fund it from here, but they don't go outside of that world. They've chosen to make the TV show. They don't do commercials and bigger things. So I guess that's the side of the market that's open for opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how do you get inspired? Like, what is it that you, that you listen to, that you you watch, that you read, that inspires you around this? Is it things that are directly adjacent to stop motion, or is it, you know, other things like music and those sorts of things? So how do you get a burst of energy and excitement to go and get into the workshop?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's a great question. I'd say there are definitely times when I sit here staring at a screen and for zero productivity and I hate that. I guess that's a creator's issue, it's the.
Speaker 2:Steven Pressfield. I don't know if you've ever read the book Turning Pro, and Steven Pressfield is a writer that talks about the creator's sort of dilemma, where a creator will sit down and have nothing and will actually seek distraction. They'll go to the fridge, they'll look for food, they'll put some music on, they'll go and, you know, mow the lawn or something, because they're they're actually not able to get into the creative process and that, presumably, is something that you have as well as a creator yeah.
Speaker 1:So to go back to the original question of how do I get inspired, I'd say the easiest thing to inspire someone like me I don't know, I haven't broken apart how I operate is to set me a challenge. So I'll go and find those challenges, and that might be. I did the Aardman course in the UK, which is an online course. I did it for six months and every week you get to speak to hugely influential people in the industry and then my output from that was hugely inspired by all my experience within that. So I think doing coursework and actually upskilling is probably one of the biggest inspirations for me, because then I'll take that new skill and blend it with something else that I can see an opportunity for. You know, just sitting here looking around I'm not going to inspire myself. I need to find out. I need to work with other people and chat to them and then say, hey, let's do that.
Speaker 1:So and that happened this morning just on text message with a guy around the corner that I bumped into while taking my kids for a walk he's really good at a specific skillset and we just started to do something for Christmas and he's got a 3d printer. So who knows, who knows? The opportunities come from all sorts of angles. I just try and hunt them down and I do a lot of proactive networking. So about three or four hours of my week is chatting to creatives or people in different roles within the industry, either trying to take them for a coffee or trying to learn stuff from them. So, yeah, inspiration comes from other people 99% of the time.
Speaker 2:Your proactive networking. Do you find that works? Because there'll be people out there that want to build their own businesses and they can learn from this particular aspect of the conversation. Do you find that productive?
Speaker 1:Yeah, hugely. It's worked my entire life. When I moved to New Zealand, the first thing I did is took a few CEOs out for coffee that weren't connected with what I was doing, and I've built relationships with them over the last six years and they're now I probably, call them good friends of mine. So, yeah, I mean it's hugely helpful.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. Would you say that you are extroverted by nature or not? Is networking something that comes easy to you? I like to practice it.
Speaker 1:Let's just say that I like to practice it to stay on top of it. Yes, I get incredibly nervous with doing new things. One of the things I'd say is I run. Have you heard of park run? Yes, yeah, so I run a park run every Saturday. So I'm one of the run event directors for the Western Springs one, and you just go and stand up on a Saturday morning when you just got out of bed, drag your kids there and I'll stand and talk to 300 people and talk to them about the day's activities A huge, loud, booming English accent and just try and make it as a great experience for them as possible. One of the lessons I've always learned in life is always make sure that the people walk away from you feeling good about themselves or feeling good about the experience. So, yeah, the active networking and practice keeps me on top of being slightly extroverted. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And interestingly, the leverage if that's the right word that you're able to get by just talking to people and connecting with other humans is it's quite profound. We don't need to overthink this. We just need to get out and have coffee with people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, hey, I'm a listener. I've had coffees with people where people just talk at me and ask me no questions, and I find that sometimes quite disappointing. I love listening and learning and that's in my psyche. So if I can listen and learn and find something new out in that day that that's going to help me advance, then that's exactly the behavior I'll do. I've learned so many times that that's a positive process and it's enhanced me in my life in some way or another that I now just ask more questions than I do and in terms of like trying to share this is uncomfortable for me because I'm talking about me and I'm very you know it's fun to to do, but I've never really over analyzed everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me it's actually a super interesting conversation with somebody doing something that is so cool and, as I said before we started the podcast, it's a shame we're not doing a video production of of this podcast, because they would get to see your workshop and perhaps we would upload some of the video content to show it. Is there something that you would want people listening to know that are contemplating making a big change in their career to do something that they've always had as a bit of a passion or something they've always wanted to do? So, aside from the cash flow and maybe making sure there's some money there, is there something else that you would want to share with them? From the the cash flow and maybe, you know, making sure there's some some money there, is there something else that you would want to share with them about the switch, because you have made quite the switch. Corporate strategy and stop motion creation are quite distinct fields. You know they're quite different. Is there something that you would you would want to share with them?
Speaker 1:oh, just don't be afraid of, yeah, making change when the going's good, and also listen to your gut and your heart more than maybe common sense sometimes and take a risk, because what's the worst that can happen if you fail? Yeah, that's a really easy thing to say when you put yourself in a position to be able to fail, but if you've got so many other pressures in life, that's hard to enact, isn't it? So it's really hard to take that advice. It's easy to give it but hard to understand from that person's point of view how they could actually enact on it. I mean, I made the change without knowing it eight years ago when I stopped watching telly and started practicing and I wasn't very good. So, yeah, I guess stick with it is another thing as well. I definitely just push and push for something you enjoy and don't necessarily listen to people around you. I mean, I was putting stuff out there six years ago that now I look back on it and I'm trying to delete those videos. I'm so embarrassed by them.
Speaker 2:But yeah, just stick with it and don't be afraid to make change, especially when the going's good, and I've said it several times, but I think that's so key yeah, look, you might have paused before you gave the answer, but I think the answer you gave is absolute gold for people, because, yeah, I think there's some real, there is genuine gold there. Like you need to be brave. I think that's probably the key trait be brave. Life is not, you know, dress rehearsal. You need to give this thing a shot and you need to keep practicing. You need to just start and if you are looking at doing a creative endeavor, start creating, even if the work is not perfect. But start. And I'll close, I guess, with a final question Is there something that you believe in that very few people do? That's very counterculture and it's not to not to paint you as a, as some sort of weirdo, but is there something that's a belief that you hold, or something that you that you quite strongly believe in, but actually it's not?
Speaker 1:it's not a commonly held belief from a corporate world, we've got lots of viewpoints in terms of how to behave around other people. I think there's loads. There's like be nice, be fair, listen as much as you can, because it's probably the best skill in the world, right? Speak up when it counts is probably one of my favourites, and I've been guilty of not speaking up and I've watched businesses go in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I will give you one, one other final question. Having said that, that was the final one. This is the. This will be the genuine final one. Yeah, is there somebody that you think I should have on the podcast, and if you can think of who that person might be, what should I ask them?
Speaker 1:Who have I enjoyed speaking to the most, I'd say? Or who's the most interesting? Or might ask yourself. I think there's a guy that I'm working with right now who is x like a head of puppets, head of parents, that's. Tell me about it and that's. That's no easy feat because like is the best in the world in terms of the stop motion industry. So I so I'm going to be stop-motion orientated.
Speaker 1:To answer your question, there's a really lovely guy he won't mind me mentioning his name called John Craney, and he moved back to New Zealand as part of COVID for his family and ended up relinquishing the role at some way or another eventually from Leica because he had to move back to New Zealand. So I think it's very interesting. I don't know if I'm even allowed to say some of the stuff that he's doing, so I'll let him talk to you about that if you do speak to him, but this guy is phenomenal and he's helping me, with the ex-Leica team, build an amazing puppet at the moment, and I'd love to hear what kind of things he has to say about his life, because he's been on an incredible journey.
Speaker 2:John, we're coming for you. Adam said it was okay, so we're coming for you. Adam, it has been such a thrill to talk to you. As I said when I was preparing for this earlier today, I actually I think the eight-year-old version of me got quite excited by this conversation and where we would go.
Speaker 2:So, look, you are doing such amazing work and I want to thank you for just some of the things you've shared, because there will be people, as I said, who are listening, who think I've always had this desire to go and do whatever it is that they want to go and do, and I need to go and do it, and just listening to you, hopefully, is the straw that breaks the camel's back for them, and they do go off and do it. You're an inspiration. Let's come back in a year's time and do another podcast and we'll talk about what you've been able to create. As I said before, I will include ways to not just see your creative work, but also ways that people can connect with you, and I'll put those into the show notes. Adam, it has been an absolute pleasure, so thanks so much for your time. Thanks, frank.