Good speakers, cool people, inspiration everywhere and the bars only a few steps away. What’s not to love at F5.
The common love for process and creation that the speakers were sharing was really refreshing.
The interstitial bumpers between speakers were these cool CG spots created by Albert Omoss and the awesome graphic titlecards were created by the awesome talent at Block & Tackle.
Justin Cone, the organizer of F5 Fest and who I knew from the Psyop talks he used to organize was there and I got to chat with him. It’s awesome that a guy like Justin always has the time to chat (at least he always has a few minutes to chat with me. :p )
There were a few other legit people I got to to meet: Adam Gault (Block & Tackle) and JR Canest (Giant Ant Studios).
I wasn’t sure how F5 was going to work because I always thought Terminal 5 as a venue was a bit cramped and narrow, but it felt right and it wasn’t as cramped as I thought. Legit creatives who I got to soak up knowledge & wisdom bombs from included: Adam Gault, Ted Kotsaftis, GMUNK, Patrick Clair, Erin Sarafosky, Julia Pott, Rama Allen, and JR Canest.
A few takeaways from these people:
Giant Ant –
- Never miss deadlines.
- Dont be a jerk.
- Put love into your work.
Rama Allen (The Mill: Vikings, True Blood)
- Don’t be afraid to try new things and improvise.
- Embrace fears and imperfections. If you fail, move on.
Patrick Clair (AntiBody: The Division, Stuxnet, True Detective)
- Use your hands and brain.
- Having an idea and executing it to match your vision is the essence of a successful designer/animator.
The key take-away is that successful studios and agencies do NOT separate the role of idea-generators and the creative talent. That is to say that people executing ideas should not be separated from the role of developing an idea. In order to stay relative in a very competitive market, buffing & giving greater voices to the internal design/creative teams are essential to success.
Any studio or agency that relegates work/creative to be farmed out to vendors is not going to stay competitive for long. I work at a cable network so I can understand this idea from both perspectives. Our creative teams don’t have the resources to handle all the creative so work will get farmed out, it’s the nature of the industry. In the end though, most of these key take-aways apply to the work being done across all-industries, TV included.
