Business Talk
Welcome to Business Talk, where we dive deep into the stories behind the businesses that shape our communities. We bring you conversations with inspiring entrepreneurs who share their journeys, challenges, and the unique value they bring to their customers.
In this podcast, we explore the passion and vision behind successful businesses, uncovering the secrets to their success and learning about the innovative products and services they offer. Whether you're a fellow entrepreneur looking for insights or simply curious about the businesses in your area, this podcast is your go-to source for inspiration and practical advice.
So, sit back, relax, and join us as we explore the dynamic world of business, one story at a time."
Business Talk
Crafting stunning visual content for industry giants like Disney, DreamWorks, Hulu, and Netflix.
Discover the incredible journey of David Campiti, the mastermind behind Glass House Studios and Glass House Graphics, as he shares his inspiring story from Wheeling, West Virginia to becoming a leader in the animation and print industry in Orlando. Tune in to hear about his fascinating career path, from his beginnings in radio and as a copy chief at LG Balfour, to his pivotal role at Innovation Publishing where he worked alongside literary legends such as Anne Rice and Stephen King. David's unique experiences and sheer talent offer a glimpse into the creative processes that catapulted his companies to success, crafting stunning visual content for industry giants like Disney, DreamWorks, Hulu, and Netflix.
Join us for an illuminating conversation with David, where he provides a behind-the-scenes look at his studios' impressive portfolio that spans from cyberpunk commercials to complex visual effects for feature films and TV shows. We'll explore the breadth of services offered by Glass House Graphics, ranging from corporate logos to children's books, and how they seamlessly cater to a global clientele. Whether you're a budding creative or an industry veteran, this episode brims with inspiration and insights on shaping captivating visual narratives that leave a lasting impact. Get ready to be inspired by the creative force that is David Campiti!
Welcome back everybody to the podcast, where we uncover the stories behind thriving businesses and bring you expert insights straight from the source. I'm so excited we got a great show for you today. I am actually having the pleasure of speaking with David. He's the founder of Glass House Studios. How are you doing, david, this morning?
Speaker 2:Doing well. Thanks for bringing me in as part of this.
Speaker 1:You're very, very welcome. So for our listeners, this show is all about behind the scenes experiences to gain valuable advice. This podcast is your go-to resource for learning about the businesses that shape our communities and discovering how to make the most of their services. If you enjoy this content and you want to hear more, please like, subscribe or even give us a comment. Let us know how we're doing on our end as well. So, with that being said, we're going to jump right in and talk to David and get to know a little bit about his background. I'm telling you, guys, we have a great show here, so please stay tuned.
Speaker 2:Hi there, I am David Campetti. I own two related businesses here in the Orlando area Glasshouse Studios, which is an animation company, and Glasshouse Graphics, that handles everything for print. You wanted some background, so I started out in Wheeling, west Virginia. You wanted some background so, uh, uh, I started out in uh, wheeling, west Virginia, of all places. Um, I had worked, uh in radio.
Speaker 2:I then moved to Massachusetts where I was uh a copy chief of LG Balfour company where they did class rings and Superbowl rings and stuff like that. Uh wrote every word that came out of that company for four years, worked for the United Way for a while and then I got into publishing Ran innovation publishing for five years where I worked with some best-selling authors Anne Rice, stephen King, larry Niven, jerry Purnell, folks like that Then went on to start Glasshouse Graphics, where I've been packaging artwork, corporate logos, any kind of design print publishing work for over 30 years, and about midway into that I started Glasshouse Studios, an animation studio. So we've done bits and pieces of things like Horton Hears, a who and Ice Age 4 and Gnomeo and Juliet and a few other big animations. Plus we have packaged full animated features for Hulu and for Netflix, and so a lot of people don't even realize we're here doing work for Disney and DreamWorks and Simon and Schuster and all these other big companies, right under everybody's noses.
Speaker 1:Well, I was looking at your website, ghsanimationcom, and I was looking at some of your work, David. It's wow in terms of quality. It's awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you. If anybody goes to that website, ghsanimationcom, the first thing they will see is we start an automatic video roll so it shows six or seven different animation styles we've done. There's like a cyberpunk animation style, which was a Nescafe commercial that we did for the international market, and there's just examples of CG and hand-drawn animation for six or seven other things that we've done both domestically and internationally. If you go further into the website you'll see that we do live-action visual effects.
Speaker 2:You know we've worked on TV shows and uh and feature films, doing uh, uh digital effects, whether it's someone driving in a car or explosions or any of a variety of other things. We show all kinds of examples of that uh. Plus, we do uh, all sorts of related graphics. So if somebody does uh, uh licensed uh work for go bugs or Scooby-Doo or anything like that, we can do that work for children's books or comic books or the actual animation, if that division is needed. If you go to our glasshousegraphicscom website, which is exclusively our print end, you'll see we've done everything from comic books, children's books, coloring books, corporate design. So people need logos for their local or even national or international businesses. We'll create those. We'll do all the work that's needed for business cards and stationery. All that small stuff, but we also do the big stuff, including website design and so forth. So quite a bit of that.
Speaker 1:I must. Yes, I got to say you have so much to offer and it's. Can you provide our listeners a story? Tell us some story that you would like to share with our listeners. That's that. Aha, wow, this is. You know, your clients were happy. Anything that comes to mind off the top of your head, oh, wow, um, and I know you have a lot of them, but just one in particular it's what's.
Speaker 2:What's nice is uh, I don't have to advertise.
Speaker 2:Most of our work is from word of mouth for example, we work for um DreamWorks, the publishing division, for years and I was trying to get publishing work with Simon Schuster, you know one of the big book publishers, because they have several divisions that do comics, graphic novels, that sort of thing and I really couldn't get a word in edgewise, so to speak, with them, although we'd worked with some of their competitors Random House and so on. And I get this call out of the blue from the art director of Simon Schuster oh, we have a big problem we need to solve and I was talking with the art director over at DreamWorks and they recommended you guys.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And that ended up with Simon Schuster becoming our biggest print client for years.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations, and you know you can tell there's passion in the way you've expressed that story right and it's something that you will always reflect back on. Am I right In terms of how that whole process went?
Speaker 2:Let me do a little bit of show and tell here absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:so the reason they came to us was they had kids books like this is a a group of uh, what is? Four graphic novels here for goddess girls and uh, another kids project here, um, uh, heroes in training there we Heroes in Training, which is also for graphic novels. And what would happen is Simon Schuster said we have a problem that we can't solve. Our publishing schedule is pretty aggressive. We want to do like six graphic novels a year, each one of them 160 pages, and doing basically a thousand pages of artwork in a year is impossible for one or two or three artists working in a consistent style across all these books. Well, there's no way this can be done. But DreamWorks said you could do it. So of course we can, because we we know how to make a bunch of artists work in the same style, because we work with the animation. So we we'd set up a team for these things and could do thousands of pages for Simon Schuster, we did 8,000 pages of artwork for them last year.
Speaker 2:Wow and uh, goddess Girls and Heroes in Training are two that are near and dear to my heart, because the art director said wait a minute, don't I know your name from writing a book called Hero Alliance. I used to read that years ago. Wow yeah, you know, I wrote Hero Alliance. I wrote Superman Stories for DC Comics. I did all this other writing across the decades. Oh, would you be able to write these books for us? Sure, so you know, at my age I became a children's graphic novel writer, so that was pretty cool, and so we did the writing, the art, the lettering, the coloring, everything for it.
Speaker 1:I like that a lot. You know, looking back, what's a major lesson that you learned from that? You, if you had to start over that, you could share with our listeners Anything come to mind that you could share with our listeners.
Speaker 2:Anything come to mind. Yeah, despite how great an opportunity seems, don't sink a ton of money into it. The case in point a few years ago, we had the opportunity to meet Boxer Floyd Mayweather, and he loved the idea of creating a sanitized version of his life as an animated film for kids. Well, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:And we met with him and he told us what he'd like to see. And we went back and spent a ton of time and money developing a story outline storyboards, Developing a story outline storyboards, just all kinds of stuff for them, including an entire marketing plan, All these things what's the perfect kid's drink from Floyd Mayweather, Mayweather Punch, Coming up with things like that, All sorts of product examples. And then we took it one step further and even did an upscale adult version for him, creating a fancy logo like you'd see on Prada or Louis Vuitton or whatever, and created all these upscale things for bespoken suits with the logo and the lining, and shoes and belts and a smart watch and all that. So a ton of time and effort into this. And it was like, oh, you're my guys, You're my guys, we're doing this movie, all this handshaking and so forth.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, I guess five minutes after we were out of the room, he was distracted by something shiny and it never happened. So months of work and hopes built up that just never occurred. But there are enough good things that do happen that you know. Something like that doesn't kill us, but you know it is a disappointment.
Speaker 2:And were I to do it over again. I wouldn't have gone to those lengths.
Speaker 1:No, it makes a lot of sense. And that kind of leads me into asking you, you know as a business owner, can you give some advice to our listeners of what to look for? You know in business. Some of the things you've learned, maybe a couple things to take away. Some of the things you've learned, maybe a couple things to take away.
Speaker 2:My biggest thing is and I find this on the end of working with the artists, so I have to make sure that I don't do this outgoing to our clients Never over promise, because you'll always end up under delivering. Be the opposite under promise and over deliver, as I tell the artists that we work with. If a client wants a book in 30 days and you know you can do it in 30 days or faster, don't tell them you can do it faster. If you deliver in 30 days, you're on the money. You deliver two days ahead of time. You're a hero. You're a day or two late. You're that lying son of a gun that can't be professional about it.
Speaker 1:That's great advice.
Speaker 2:We always need to make sure that we can do more or better than we say we will. And the word of mouth is enough to show everybody we deserve and can get the job. And then, once people are working with us, it turns out even better than they thought.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's inspiring advice. And again, I appreciate and I know you've said so much here in terms of what you do with your business, how you're helping your customers. You know, go through that whole process of getting that final product, you know out the door, and kudos to you for that and having that vision. As we wrap up here, can you provide a phone number as well as maybe a website? I think we did earlier in the episode. If you can just go ahead and say that again, how people can get a hold of you, go ahead and and say that again how people can get a hold of you I?
Speaker 2:I did want to say that. Yes, part of what we do, because we deal with print clients and so forth. We handle coordinating printing out of china and so forth and other products which you see behind me this, this comic rack we make those too. We discovered a whole group of collectors, comic shop owners, just folks like that that really wanted this old-fashioned comic rack. So we manufacture those and make them available so we can do all kinds of graphic services beyond just print and animation. We can be reached. My name, as I said, is David Campetti. We're located in Claremont. My phone number is 304-551-1283. That's my cell, the easiest way to reach me, and our websites are wwwglasshousegraphicscom and the animation website is ghsanimationcom. I also have a blog for anybody interested in creating comics or working in that kind of comic or animation business. My blog is simply davidcampetticom.
Speaker 1:Well, David, it's been such a pleasure, you know, getting to know you. You know, I know we spoke a little bit before we went on this podcast and it's just been a pleasure to talk to you and for you to share your information, what you do with your business, to our listeners, and hopefully we can have you back again in the near future as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'd love it. Happy to help. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to first media consulting podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, subscribe today to To nominate a business you would like to recommend to be on our show. Go to firstmediaconsultingcom or call. Thank you for.