Barton Damer, founder and owner of Already Been Chewed, reveals his process on hiring 3D artists and building a culture that helps creativity thrive.
In this episode, Chad Ashley talks to 3D artist and studio owner Barton Damer. The two chat about Barton’s history, winning awards like Digital Artist of the Year, to building his own studio that works with the likes of Vans, Nike, Disney, Marvel, and LucasFilm.
You’ll hear about what Barton finds important in an artists skill set, why he tends to prefer generalists over specialists, and how he works with major international brands from a small remote location in Texas.
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Show Notes:
- A Skater Turned Designer For NIKE, VANS, MARVEL and More
- Celebrating 90 Years of Mickey Mouse When You Can’t Show the Mouse
- Do you really need a producer?
- Building your own studio.
- What do you want artists to know?
- Freelancer Must-Have Traits
- Attitude, reliability, communication, able to follow directions
- There is a skills gap between really talented 2D explainer motion graphic artists and high end macro-shot Houdini artists.
- It’s getting harder to find a good generalist that can do animation and compositing
- The siloing of styles is great for specialists, but they are not as employable as generalists
- MoGraph Meetup at NAB
Episode Transcript:
Chad Ashley: 00:00:00 Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome to another Greyscalegorilla podcast. I am your host for this episode. Chad Ashley and with me is a very special guest. I’m super excited to have, have this person on the podcast. Somebody I’ve been trying to get on the podcast for quite some time. I think you all probably know his work, but hopefully today we’re going to get to know him and, and his studio a little bit better. Barton Damer welcome to the show.
Barton Damer: 00:00:25 Hey, thank you very much for having me on Chad.
Chad Ashley: 00:00:29 Yeah, man. I mean it’s been something, um, I’ve been trying to get this together for a while and we’re both sort of busy doing a lot of different things and I’m just stoked that we finally were able to carve out some time and talk.
Barton Damer: 00:00:43 Absolutely. Yeah. I’m real excited to talk with you and, uh, while we’re at it, just super thankful for all the training and teaching that both you and Nick have done over the years. I’m definitely a student.
Chad Ashley: 00:00:57 Oh man. Thanks buddy. That means a lot.
Barton Damer: 00:01:00 Yeah. Big time.
Chad Ashley: 00:01:01 Well, let’s start off, uh, for those of you out there that maybe aren’t familiar with, with Barton Damer’s work and his studio and, uh, all that sort of thing. Uh, I’m going to give you the brief history I guess, or actually, you know what, I’ll probably have, I’ll have you, you tell the story, it’s probably way better to hear it directly from your mouth, but the cliff notes version is what makes Barton I think really interesting. And his company really interesting to me beside the fact that they do incredible work. They’re doing it all from a very small town, not a very small town, a small town in Texas of all places. And that’s a real unique thing. I think that in our industry, you tend to think of studios that are doing really high end, big brand work as somebody, uh, maybe they’re in LA, maybe they’re in New York, Chicago, like these big markets. But what Barton has done is he’s carved out this really cool niche, uh, of really incredible work all doing it through, doing it his way really, which is really, I think, cool to be able to say, I’m not going to go into these big markets. I’m going to stay in the area that, that I love and really try to build something from the ground up. So give, give us a little brief, little brief history of Already Been Chewed.
Barton Damer: 00:02:20 Sure.
New Speaker: 00:02:20 And how you came up.
Barton Damer: 00:02:23 For sure. Um, first let me start out, uh, by giving a big shout out to the rest of the team. Uh, we’ve got an amazing team that’s been strategically assembled and put together. Um so super thankful for them. And, uh, as you probably noticed over the years, the work continues to elevate and we continue to push ourselves, uh, and really are just having a good time doing it. And, uh, enjoying all the advancements in technology that are allowing to push ourselves as a creative people. Um, so just super thankful for Already Been Chewed. And where are, uh, currently, uh, we have 10 of us on staff here and uh, we will be 10 years.
Chad Ashley: 00:03:07 Wow ten. I had no idea that you were up to 10 already.
Barton Damer: 00:03:09 Yeah. Uh, we’re 10. Um, we have actually two people joining us, uh, after the new year. One person’s on contract right. Actually both are on contract right now remotely. Uh, but will be joining our team after the new year. Uh, we were, we were hovering around nine for the most part of this year. Um, uh, that we lost one person and are picking up two people, uh, going into 2020.
Chad Ashley: 00:03:37 Nice.
Barton Damer: 00:03:38 Um, so uh, yeah, so we are, you know, kind of like you mentioned, we’re doing all types of uh, interesting and fun work and we’re, we’re doing it from Wiley, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas.
Chad Ashley: 00:03:52 I love that name by the way. It’s a great name for a city.
Barton Damer: 00:03:54 We are wiling out at Wylie, Texas.
Chad Ashley: 00:03:57 Oh boy. There’s a shirt in there somewhere. I’m sure.
Barton Damer: 00:04:00 Right? You probably get it at the creepy coffee shop right next door to us.
Chad Ashley: 00:04:06 Yeah. Just for those at home. Their studio is next to this insanely creepy, uh, sort of like a touristy coffee shop with, you know, those places that have like scented candles and strange like mannequins everywhere. Like that’s, that’s what they, where they get their coffee anyway. Sorry. Keep going.
Barton Damer: 00:04:24 Totally. And on the other side, you can’t leave out the Wylie Opry, which is pretty awesome because every Friday and Saturday there’s about 80, 80 year olds that are lined up to get in that door.
Chad Ashley: 00:04:35 Oh my God. What do they put? What kind of show are they putting on at the Wylie Opry?
Barton Damer: 00:04:38 Yeah, it’s a country and gospel music, uh respectively on Saturday and, and uh, I believe Friday nights as well. So it’s, uh, it’s so awful, but it’s amazing.
Chad Ashley: 00:04:54 That sounds hilarious and I kind of want to see that.
Barton Damer: 00:04:57 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, so anyway, um, yeah, so a little bit of the backstory, we’ll be 10 years old, uh, this coming March. Um, and so I actually started Already Been Chewed a little bit over 10 years ago and it started out as a blog back when blogs were huge and pretty much everybody had a blog and some of them were more popular than others. Um, and so alreadybeenchewed.net is how it started. And, uh, I was doing everything from posting my own work, to posting the work of other artists that were inspiring me and was basically trying to become kind of like a curated blog for what’s the latest, greatest, you know, inspiration, uh, within the creative community. Um, and so that blog did, did relatively well, um, back in that day. And, um, when it came time to start Already Been Chewed as a business, the Google ratings were already so good, um, because of the amount of linking. Incoming, outcoming links and interaction on the website, uh, that it didn’t make sense to try to launch something with a different name because nobody would agree what it was.
Chad Ashley: 00:06:17 Right. Yeah, yeah.
Barton Damer: 00:06:17 Uh, so I transitioned it, kept alreadybeenchewed.net, but we go by alreadybeenchewed.tv. Um, so yeah, so started a little bit over 10 years ago and in the last 10 years, um, we’ve just been on this wild ride of kind of slowly and organically growing all for the sake of creativity and just kind of looking around and saying to myself, okay, who can I hire next that would either one relieve me of a responsibility or number two, add something to the team that, um, that we either don’t currently have or, uh, things like that. And so, you know, over the years, uh, we’ve been really blessed to be able to follow some of my passions, which have been sneakers. Uh, hip hop is definitely a part of my backstory. Um, skateboarding of course is huge.
Chad Ashley: 00:07:14 Yeah. Let’s, let’s rewind that for a bit. So you started off as a blog.
Barton Damer: 00:07:18 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:07:19 And, um, see, I think our listeners are curious how you go from working on a blog, sort of a passion project, blogging and maybe showing your work. Maybe you know, some things that you’re into. How do you go from that to working on direct to client project jobs with pretty outstanding brands? I mean you guys have done stuff for Casio, for Under Armour. Um, I mean, just like a slew of brands that I would kill to work on. And how does that happen? Does it, was it a quick thing? Was it a slow thing?
Barton Damer: 00:07:58 Yeah. So, you know, the, the sneaker and like kind of skateboarding and hip hop, um, I guess, uh, inspiration from my past has kind of yielded itself into the brands as you mentioned. Um, so we’ve literally worked with every single major footwear brand. Um, except for I think Reebok. But we’ve, you know, we’ve worked with Nike, we worked with Vans, we’ve worked with uh Under Armour, New Balance, DC shoes, a variety of shoe brands. Um, and so anyway, to, to kind of go back to your question. It, it started, you know, years ago, um, uh, a lot of, a lot of my connections have come from skateboarding and from the skateboarding industry. Um, and so there was a time period before I actually started, uh, making the transition into full time where I was freelancing nights and weekends.
Chad Ashley: 00:09:00 Freelancing at a studio or an agency or where?
Barton Damer: 00:09:03 So I was, uh, I was working at a place called RT media group here in Dallas for about three years. I had moved from Washington DC, uh, and during the three years there, uh, the company was creating basically like stock, uh, imagery and, um, short films for church organizations. Uh, and so I was working literally like 40 hours a week, really no overtime to speak of, no weekends or anything involved with that. And so, uh, I was able to freelance and not have it be like a conflict of interest with, with what the company I was working for was doing. Uh, so nights and weekends I just started freelancing on just kinda random stuff. Um, you know, anything from freelancing with other churches to freelancing doing skateboard graphics for local skate shops. Uh, it didn’t really matter. Uh, and eventually it got to a point where I could fill my schedule and I was making good extra money for the family.
Barton Damer: 00:10:10 Uh, but now I needed to see, okay, that’s cool that I’m making extra money, but can I actually fill my schedule with anything that I care about or that I’m excited about. Uh, and so by having like the steady paycheck during the day, I was able to start being more selective. And so, uh, eventually I was working with different shoe brands, nights and weekends and, uh, working with different hip hop artists, uh, different, you know, rock bands doing concert visuals or posters, things like that. Um, and it got to a point where the work that I was creating on nights and weekends was, you know, getting features in magazines or other blog posts, or it was winning awards and things like that. Uh, and so actually in 2009, I won digital artist of the year, um, named by Computer Arts Magazine, which at that time, uh, Computer Arts Magazine was, at least in my book, it was the most amazing and inspirational, uh, publication.
Chad Ashley: 00:11:16 Yeah, yeah. That was, that was the, when those came out, it was like you had to buy those and like get the whole thing and look at ’em. I mean that was like a great way to look at new design and things that have sort of like precursor to, well, the internet was around, but it was like, that was the compo, what do you call it? A compendium or a when you assemble a bunch of good crap together.
Barton Damer: 00:11:39 Yeah, yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:11:40 It was like always inspirational to see that stuff.
Barton Damer: 00:11:42 Yeah. And so, uh, you know, this was 10 years ago, um, and I won digital artist of the year and at that time I was still, you know, working my day job and, uh, I thought to myself, okay, this is kind of weird, like my dream publication in the industry that I would love to be more part of, just gave me this award and tomorrow I’m going back to work and no one really knows or cares what I do on nights and weekends, you know what I mean? And, uh, it did a couple of things. It allowed me to, um, to get confident, I think, because I started realizing, okay, well someone’s interested in what I’m doing and someone thinks it’s decent, you know?
Chad Ashley: 00:12:31 Yeah.
Barton Damer: 00:12:31 Um, and that’s, I think a big part of being a creative is you’re just always seeking and searching for validation.
Chad Ashley: 00:12:42 Hmm.
New Speaker: 00:12:42 And as an artist, I do feel like there’s almost two extremes with artists, and maybe this is just me, so maybe I’m exposing myself here. Um, but I feel like as an artist, I’m either really confident and really stoked on the latest piece that I just worked on, or I’m like, I’m no good. I don’t like, I stalk like look at all the people on Art Station, like,
Chad Ashley: 00:13:09 Right, right.
Barton Damer: 00:13:10 And I feel like there’s, it’s really hard to control the emotions between the two. Um, and so anyway, I think in winning the award,
Chad Ashley: 00:13:20 I think some of it comes from skateboarding too. I feel like that there’s that a very similar sort of vibe in skating where you want to make a trick and your friend maybe pulls it before you or you wish you saw some trick in a video and you just, you’re just down on yourself until you can learn it. And then once you learn it, you sort of are like, okay, I did that. I need to find the next thing.
Barton Damer: 00:13:47 Yeah. Yeah. I mean that, that could very well, uh, part of that. Uh, so, uh, it got to a point, we’re working nights and weekends. I was now having to turn down what I consider some, some dream gigs and some inquiries. Um, and so I was working, I got into a point where I was working about 15 hours a week, uh, freelancing, um, and I was making over 75% of my income at that time.
Chad Ashley: 00:14:18 Wow.
Barton Damer: 00:14:18 So it started to make sense that, okay, if I could do this more than 15 hours a week, um, I would easily be able to, to far exceed, you know, what I’m doing in 40 hours a week at the day job. So it was big.
Chad Ashley: 00:14:33 Yeah. Yeah. So you had to make that, that wasn’t a very hard decision, I imagine, to just decide to go this other route.
Barton Damer: 00:14:40 Well, the, the interesting thing about that is I actually loved my job and I loved my boss. Like to this day, he’s a mentor of mine. Uh, and, um, just the way he ran that company was fantastic. The way he treated us as employees. And, uh, I tried to carry that over to what I do at ABC. So leaving that was actually very difficult because it’s not like I was, you know, hated my job and wanted out. It’s not like I was a bad employee and just needed to be my own boss. It was actually a, a pretty, pretty hard decision. And it was one that my wife, uh, was kind of like, are you gonna do this? Are you not? Because she had, so she was like super supportive of it.
Chad Ashley: 00:15:27 That’s great.
New Speaker: 00:15:27 But I, I was freaked out though because I was the, you know, the sole income with five mouths to feed.
Chad Ashley: 00:15:36 Wait rewind that.
Barton Damer: 00:15:37 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:15:37 Five mouths to feed?
Barton Damer: 00:15:39 I mean myself, my wife, and three kids.
Chad Ashley: 00:15:41 Oh God, you scared me. I thought you had five kids. What? That’s insanity. All right, well that, that’s, I mean, that’s still pretty wild. Like three, I mean, okay. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just like, Whoa, dude. That’s insane. So you had to make a tough call. You loved your job. You didn’t necessarily want to leave, but you knew this was the best route.
Barton Damer: 00:16:04 Yeah, for sure. Uh, and so, you know, I’ve proven over three years or so of basically burning the midnight oil, uh, freelancing that the work was there. There was a demand for the work and I was having to turn down projects that I would’ve considered dream gigs. Um, so that was part of the motivation. And I think one thing that really drives me and that, uh, made me not go out on my own for quite a while was I didn’t want to launch out and just freelance and be working on random crap.
Barton Damer: 00:16:42 Like, to me that wasn’t interesting. Um, the idea of freedom and freelancing or choosing to be your own boss, like none of that was super appealing. It was all really like, okay, what’s the creative going to be? Because I don’t want to just launch out on my own and be like designing for real estate agents and you know,
Chad Ashley: 00:17:02 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:17:02 Whatever else, uh, could be out there. Uh, so I definitely didn’t want to do this unless I could see that it was going to be creatively fulfilling. Um, and even to this day, I will definitely, um, tell people that I’m more passionate about what I don’t want ABC to become then
Chad Ashley: 00:17:26 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:17:26 what I do want ABC to become. And the reason I say that is because 10 years ago, launching out on my own, if you had told me that we would become a studio of 10 people working with, you know, the shoe brands that we talked about, the, you know, worked with the NHL, the NBA, Tiffany and Co., which is a super iconic brand. We’ve got a chance to work directly with Disney and animate Mickey Mouse, which was pretty wild.
Barton Damer: 00:17:55 Yeah that’s cool spot.
Barton Damer: 00:17:57 Yeah, we got to work with Lucasfilms on a bunch of different Star Wars watch releases for Nixon. So if you had told me 10 years ago that Already Been Chewed was going to turn into this type of a studio or this type of a brand, I’d never would’ve believed you. And I don’t, I think if I had told somebody that was my goal, they would have told me I’m crazy to try and do it in Wylie, Texas you know?
Chad Ashley: 00:18:22 Yeah. I mean, dude, like that’s, I remember, um, sort of first hearing about you and hearing about the studio and being shocked that you guys were doing this and working with these brands all the way out in Texas. And then I, um, we had been friends for a while and I ended up going to, to Texas to do a, um, I think it was a back when the Brograph guys were Brograph. They invited me out to do uh, one of the meetups there in Dallas and I got to spend the afternoon with you and your team at ABC. And it was pretty amazing. The fact that you guys
Barton Damer: 00:19:05 Thanks.
Chad Ashley: 00:19:05 have your own building
New Speaker: 00:19:07 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:19:07 with ample parking, I might add, which is not something to take lightly if you ever work in LA or New York, whatever.
Barton Damer: 00:19:17 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:19:17 Um, but yeah, your group was like so tight and they were so nice and just, everybody was just so cool and very inviting, very warm. And I imagine that must start with you, right? Like you must set the tone for the studio.
Barton Damer: 00:19:32 I mean, whether you mean to or not, but the saying the speed of the leader is the speed of the team is true. I mean, the, we’ve worked with clients and you know, we’ve kind of experienced how they have toxic environments, but we felt like the CEO was just the nicest dude. It’s just the people in the marketing department that are toxic. And you know, after working with them over years and years and years, we realized, okay, the marketing team has come and gone, but the environment is still toxic. It’s coming from somewhere, you know? Uh, and so whether, whether I like it or not, um, I think it does, you know, it starts with me. It ends with me. Uh, and which is kind of a scary thought. So I’m glad that you felt that way at night. I hope that our employees feel the same way, which I think they do.
Chad Ashley: 00:20:29 Yeah. I think it was like pretty, um, it was just a cool day. Cool, cool to actually, uh, see somebody doing that from, from that part of the country or working with those brands. But for me personally, it was also interesting because I have a history in skate culture as do you. So I sort of felt like a kinship to what you were doing there and I’ve always appreciated your aesthetic. If you haven’t checked out Barton’s work and ABC and the fine team over there, I highly recommend checking out the link that’ll be in the show notes and get yourself versed in there. But, um, I got a specific question for you. So you’re in this part of the country, um, that I imagine there’s not too many other companies like yours in, in the immediate area. When, does that ever come up with a client? Do they ever ask and say, wait, where are you guys again? Are you, I thought you were in LA? Is has it ever come up and has it ever been an issue?
Barton Damer: 00:21:31 Uh, it has never been an issue. In fact, uh, we will go and take trips to LA, Portland and New York, and there was a stretch of about three or four years where we did it once or twice a year. And you know, you email clients and you’re already working with them anyway. And then you plan your trip to, you know, New York or whatever and you’re, you’ve got a meeting, you’re expected to meet up in person and you get to New York. And the next thing you know, they email you and they say, Hey, sorry, I’m going to be in London now. I just found out. But you’re in New York City, you know, and you expected to meet up with them. And so now you’re just a tourist. Uh, and so, you know, we continue to work with them and the end person, um, it happens and it’s happened, uh, you know, with some of our clients. But for the most part, we’ve never even met them in person.
Chad Ashley: 00:22:29 How often are these clients ever requesting to come work out of your space?
Barton Damer: 00:22:34 Never. About, we did have one time a client that wanted to just meet up for coffee and this is
Chad Ashley: 00:22:41 Your like let’s book some flights. We gotta coffee,
Barton Damer: 00:22:45 I can be there in about three and a half hours.
Chad Ashley: 00:22:48 See you in two days.
Barton Damer: 00:22:49 Yeah. Um, but it is interesting and it’s strategic. Um, you know, me saying we’re located in Wylie, Texas on this podcast. It’s probably the first time our location’s ever been discussed on the internet. We don’t put our location on the internet anywhere. It’s not on our website. Like you won’t find it.
Chad Ashley: 00:23:09 So is that, is that, that’s intentional or is that just because, is it intentional because you’re afraid they’re gonna look at your address and be like, Oh, that, that, that won’t work? Or are you just trying to not even make that part of the conversation?
Barton Damer: 00:23:23 It’s both, right. So we don’t have it on there. And so we will have clients that automatically based off of either our body of work, our style, our client lists, they will just automatically assume that we are in LA.
Chad Ashley: 00:23:40 I love it.
Barton Damer: 00:23:41 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:23:41 It’s so great.
Barton Damer: 00:23:42 And we just kinda ride that and don’t correct them if we don’t have to.
Chad Ashley: 00:23:47 Yeah. I was a, I was a CD at a company called Somersault in Chicago. We did something very similar. We rebranded and, and cut a new reel and did a bunch of stuff and we deliberately tried to minimize the Chicago address on any thing that we put out. And we got so many people thinking that we were from Switzerland.
Barton Damer: 00:24:08 Oh wow.
Chad Ashley: 00:24:08 or we were from Europe or something. And it’s funny how the work sort of feels like it’s from a specific part of the country and people will just like assume that, Oh, they must be in LA or they must be New York or Switzerland or whatever. But it is interesting. Um, Oh that’s really fascinating. So you sort of don’t call attention to it. Um, but I think I want to rewind back a minute because I think something you said there was really interesting and I think that, I think this is important for people to, to hear, which is you really do take the personal in face, uh face to face sort of communication seriously. It sounds like if a client wants to meet you don’t make that an issue, you go meet with them.
Barton Damer: 00:24:56 Yeah. Well I, we definitely will. Uh, it’s been a very rare, every once in a while if we’re about to agree to, uh, a relatively large contract, a client may say, Hey, is it cool if you guys fly out here to kind of finalize you know, the details and meet each other? Uh, but to be honest, in 10 years, I think that’s happened twice.
Chad Ashley: 00:25:21 Wow. But you are, it’s, it’s not like you were doing like you’re going to these cities to, to what the look for business? I, you mentioned that you, you’ll go to uh Portland, you’ll go to Los Angeles and uh, uh, I forget what the last one you said, but is it, are you going there specifically to drum up business or like how often are you making these like excursions to go look for work?
Barton Damer: 00:25:45 Yeah. Um, there was a stretch about, about three or four years straight where we would go, uh, once or twice a year to, um, all three locations. So I would say LA, maybe twice a year. And then Portland and New York, maybe once a year. And, and it was kind of just a roll the dice and gamble and give an excuse to hit up people and say, Hey, we’re in town, can we meet up? And while we’re in town, are there any other art directors while we’re here that you recommend we talk to?
Chad Ashley: 00:26:22 That’s great.
Barton Damer: 00:26:22 And so that’s definitely something that we’ve done. And they, um, they, they, they come and go, um, you know, one, one story that kind of indicative of, of how we are, I guess, uh, doing things via the internet is, you know, we a, we had a meeting planned in person at, uh, Nike headquarters in Portland and that was a scenario where we flew in town for that meeting. So of course we, we ended up emailing everybody else at Nike that we know saying, Hey, guess what, we’ve got a meeting with so and so while we’re there, can we meet up with you? Right. And so we’re just trying to book like any and all meetings of anybody that’ll just give us the time of day and we’ll, you know, catch them up. Hey, guess what, we’ve got more people, we’ve got more render power, we’ve got more processing and we just wanted to share with you some more of our capabilities. So that’s kind of the, the goal for, for going to some of those cities. Um, but to give you an example, we got there. The meeting got canceled the day that we were supposed to have the meeting. Um, and so I, you know, called back to, uh, to Donny who was not with me in Portland and I just let them know, Hey, I’m here and right now I’ve got no meetings whatsoever.
Chad Ashley: 00:27:49 So pause there. Tell, tell everybody what Donnie does at ABC.
Barton Damer: 00:27:54 Sure. Yeah so Donnie is a good friend of mine from years ago that used to run a skate shop, uh, here in the Dallas area. And I would go out to where his skate shop was, meet up with all the guys that are sponsored for his skate shop, um, who I used to skate with, but I was older and not as good as them. Uh, and we used to all go skate and then we’d go out and have buffalo wings after we skated. Uh, and, uh, and that’s how I know
Chad Ashley: 00:28:20 That sounds like a nice day.
Barton Damer: 00:28:22 Yeah. Right. Uh, and uh, and so we used to, that’s how I know Donnie. And, um, Donnie approached me a little over five years ago, uh, when the skateboard industry and skate shops were taking a financial crisis, uh, turn, if you will. And, uh, and he could see the writing on the wall and wanted to get out of the skate shop that he owned. And so he hit me up and asked me, he’s like, you know, I’m a huge fan of your work. I’m a huge fan of the brands that you’re working with. Uh, can I do sales for you, essentially.
Chad Ashley: 00:28:56 Wow.
Barton Damer: 00:28:57 And so, um, Donnie is online kind of scouring the internet going after either brands that I tell him like, Hey, I would love to work with these people. I would love to work with these people. And then of course he has his own ideas as well and is going after things. Uh, and then um, we also have another person that’s doing that with us and her name is Arielle.
Chad Ashley: 00:29:21 Is she working out of the office? Or is she remote?
Barton Damer: 00:29:23 She is working out of the office. Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:29:25 Oh nice. So Donnie and Ariel or Arielle?
Barton Damer: 00:29:29 Arielle. Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:29:31 Arielle. So you’re, you’re out there getting back to the story, you’re out there without, your meeting just canceled. You’re trying to figure out how do I make this trip worth it? Cause you can’t just go home like that. You got to do something while you’re out there.
Barton Damer: 00:29:47 Right.
Chad Ashley: 00:29:47 So you call in for reinforcements. In this case, Donnie and everybody sounds like they need a Donnie. They need a Donnie to go out there and like get the leads and get the names and like, here’s who you gotta like reach out to.
Barton Damer: 00:29:59 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:29:59 So you reach out to Donnie and what happens next?
Barton Damer: 00:30:04 He started scouring the internet and LinkedIn and telling, you know, hitting up everybody from either Nike or Adidas. Um, and letting them know that we’re in town and we would love to meet up. And uh, next thing you know, that afternoon I had a meeting at, uh, brand Jordan, the Nike headquarters.
Chad Ashley: 00:30:25 Wow. That’s crazy, man.
Barton Damer: 00:30:26 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:30:27 Nice job Donnie.
Barton Damer: 00:30:28 Yeah, I mean, where the internet comes in clutch, right? Like it’s harder to get something done in person.
Chad Ashley: 00:30:35 Yeah dude. Yeah. So, that’s, see, that’s, that’s what I think a lot of places, um, that hustle, man, it’s about that. Like, you’re, you’re not, I think a lot of companies would probably to say, Oh, my meeting canceled. I’m going to go be a tourist for a day.
Barton Damer: 00:30:50 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:30:50 But that drive and that hustle and that not resting and not taking it easy, but saying, okay, I’m gonna make the most of this opportunity. Who can I get? Who can we get a, get a meeting with to talk about what we can do.
Barton Damer: 00:31:05 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:31:05 And who we are and what we’re about. And I think that’s, that’s super, that’s super powerful. And, and yeah, I want you and I have talked a little bit about, uh, work and just how studios are organized. I came from a studio, I never was freelance and, and sounds like you sort of came from that same world. You’re not really into the idea of like being a gun for hire. You want to build something, a place, a brand, a team. And I, and I really respect that and I think that that’s, I feel the same way. It’s something that I’ve always felt really strongly about and it’s been a part of, of, of my life, uh, my professional life too. But you and I, um, you and I came to a bit of a disagreement not that long ago on the subject of producers.
Barton Damer: 00:31:54 Mhmm.
Chad Ashley: 00:31:54 Now I find, I think this is a fascinating argument and I really wanted to pick your brain about that and to bring people up to speed, uh, and tell, you know, interrupt me if I’m, if I’m speaking out of turn here Barton. But like, so I come from a world where you have a, a fairly medium to large team, you have a producer working with me, the creative director and then the team of motion designers, 3d artists, editors, whoever, uh, working in that hierarchy and uh, me and the producer work in tandem, hand in hand throughout the entire project and make sure everything is going right and yada, yada, yada.
Chad Ashley: 00:32:35 That’s pretty typical sort of workflow. But that’s not what you do, right? Barton like Barton, I think from what you’ve told me, and I’m going to let you like explain it cause I, I I not going to get it right, but the way that you sort of run is a bit more, uh, I guess DIY or run and gun and you tend to take on a lot of these responsibilities yourself in addition to being the creative director. So tell me a bit about that, how that happened and why you think that’s a good way to work.
Barton Damer: 00:33:07 Sure. Yeah. I mean, as a, I guess as a disclaimer, um, I’ve never worked for another studio. Uh, you know, the place I worked before was creating stock media for churches. Um, so, uh, I don’t know what it’s like to work for a digital kitchen or, uh, you know, insert your favorite studio name here. Uh, I, I haven’t worked at, uh, at a large organization that has executive producers, producers, you know, creative directors, executive creative directors, assistant art directors. Uh, I don’t know that world and I don’t fully understand what each of those, uh, positions do. And so.
Chad Ashley: 00:33:51 I don’t either. And I was in that.
Barton Damer: 00:33:54 Well and you know, and to that point, there is a lot of doom and gloom being cried upon our industry. Um, you know, from some of the OG studio owners and I can understand why, you know, they were doing $1 million, 30 second spots. And so they probably had all of those top heavy positions to pull off the projects and um, to speaking quite transparently, no one’s paying ABC a million dollars for a 30 second spot. Uh, that would be pretty awesome.
Chad Ashley: 00:34:34 Need to get Donnie on that.
Barton Damer: 00:34:37 Right? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so, uh, with that disclaimer being out there, the other thing to keep in mind is no one that works at ABC has ever worked in that hierarchy either.
Chad Ashley: 00:34:54 Oh wow. Yeah. So I guess they don’t really know any different.
Barton Damer: 00:34:57 No, don’t really know different and also are very fearful of what we hear about that hierarchy.
Chad Ashley: 00:35:08 Ahh interesting.
Barton Damer: 00:35:08 So none of us are super interested in that, which is why, um, you know, I think we all have kind of bonded and have that common interest at ABC, uh, none of us really want to be part of that, that world. Um, and so as, as I have made decisions to grow, um. I would say some of the positions that I have chosen to hire played a semi producer role, but it was kind of like assistant slash do sales role. Um, so I don’t know if that was technically a producer or not, but all of that being said, the position we’re in right now is this. Um, I am operating as you know, business owner and founder of the studio as well as creative director. So I’m heavily involved with projects at the very beginning and sometimes that’s either me developing a creative brief and pitching it to the client and getting sign off on that.
Barton Damer: 00:36:20 Sometimes it’s the client coming to ABC with a very rough creative brief for this kind of a lot of gaps to fill in. And so I will work with them to figure out the creative, uh, figure out the process and the contract and the budgeting and all of that. Uh, and then, um, once that is, is in place, you know, sometimes I am actually fully in the pipeline and I’m doing look development or concept animations as part of the initial exploration. Um, and then of course I have a team, like I said, it’s just kind of strategically chosen based off of, uh, various strengths and weaknesses of knowing what this person can accomplish, pull off, what this person can pull off. And so the position we’re in now is, I’m kind of playing that role, but then instead of either like an executive producer or producer, um, I have what I call a head of production.
Barton Damer: 00:37:26 Uh, and that’s Aaron Smock. And so Aaron is a senior motion graphics artist. Um, but he’s been doing this for over 15 years and he’s at a point of his career where, you know, he’s been through the ringer. He knows how to receive feedback from a client without, uh, you know, getting sassy with the client.
Chad Ashley: 00:37:46 Sassy (laughs).
Barton Damer: 00:37:46 He, he also is not coming to ABC to add a bunch of logos to his reel and then dip out and try to do his own thing. Um, so he is able to not only be on the phone with a client and know exactly what that client is talking about and asking for, but he’s then able to go to the artists and he’s able to realistically know what’s involved in order to pull this off for the client.
Chad Ashley: 00:38:19 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:38:19 And so between myself and Aaron, we have a built-in ability to expand and contract our pipeline before we ever have to go to freelancers. So as soon as we get slammed, Aaron’s in the pipeline, as soon as we’re like super slammed, I’m in the pipeline.
Chad Ashley: 00:38:37 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:38:38 And if you know. And that allows us to keep our working hours from pretty much 40 to 45 hours worth of work per week and not print out our artists because at any given moment, you know, he could be in the pipeline doing 30 hours and then his management is only 10 hours for the week. Um, you know, there’s other weeks where maybe his management, uh, is going to be 20 hours a week. But it’s, it’s very rare that, you know, he’s quote unquote producing a project 40 hours a week. And so he’s billable hours. I’m billable hours. Uh, and then of course our team is billable hours, which keeps things really lean and mean. Um, but more importantly we don’t have this awkward role of someone not understanding what’s involved and then just saying, well, we just need to do it.
Chad Ashley: 00:39:36 Yeah. See, I’m going to stop there because I think I’m going to make the argument that you have a producer, but it is just happens to be spread across two or three or four people. And I think that that person is there. They’re just, it’s you, it’s a little bit of you. It’s a little bit of the person that you just talked about and you know, it’s sort of spread out like, and also I think that um, a good producer is not what is not what you just described as somebody that’s like telling somebody to just do it because the client wants it. Like that’s not a good producer. Anybody can do that. Anybody can forward an email and be like, here’s what they want. Go do it.
Barton Damer: 00:40:18 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:40:19 A good producer is, understands the feedback, is able to disseminate it to the creative director of the team. Uh, keep it on budget, keep it on track, keep it on top of, uh, of the creative brief and making it look good. So everybody’s happy with it. And I think that, um, you know, you work with one bad producer and it can just like ruin you because you’re just like, Oh man, we don’t want a producer. We don’t, that, that person’s going to tell us what to do and make us work crazy hours. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a handful of like top notch producers and every single one of them share a certain quality, uh, in common, which is their ability to keep their heads on straight and not lose their cool in situations where feedback or something’s gone wrong, renders didn’t come out right, whatever. Never throw the team under the bus, never throw the creative under the bus, but do a good job of balancing all this stuff and that person exists. There’s lots of these people actually, but it sounds to me like you guys in my opinion, are sort of doing that. Each one, each person may be taking on slightly different parts of that role.
Barton Damer: 00:41:37 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:41:38 But I would,
Barton Damer: 00:41:38 We’re definitely sharing it. Um, and you know, we, we talk about it and we kind of look at each other and say, do we need a producer? Should we do that?
Chad Ashley: 00:41:47 You will. I guarantee you will.
Barton Damer: 00:41:50 Yeah, yeah. And I, I’m not, I’m not saying that I’m anti-producer, it’s just that, that person has not, uh, made themselves known.
Chad Ashley: 00:42:00 Yeah. They’re hard to find. I’m not gonna lie. They are, when you find a good one, um, you tend to try to like keep ’em around. Just kinda like, uh, like your sales team, you know
Barton Damer: 00:42:10 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:42:10 If you don’t, you don’t want to lose ’em. And you know, the other thing that I think the reason that you sort of came into this workflow is because you’re a business owner and you started this company from the ground up. So I never did that. Like, so for me, I wasn’t familiar with contracts. I wasn’t the owner of the company, I didn’t really know anything about the, I don’t know, like, you know, hiring, um, crew to, to shoot some live action and making sure everything’s taken care of. I didn’t come from that world, so I needed a producer. You just had to have a producer in a situation like that.
Barton Damer: 00:42:46 Totally.
Chad Ashley: 00:42:46 So you coming from a situation where you know, you kind of, this was born and raised on, on you and your, uh, your instincts and your ability to get things done and all that sort of thing. So I can, I totally can see why you guys would be apprehensive or slow to kind of take on that, that role, especially if you’re expanding and contracting, like you said, like that’s, that’s really cool because I can imagine it must be pretty hard to find freelancers in Wylie, Texas.
Barton Damer: 00:43:17 Correct. Like if we’re using freelances it’s remote. And I mean, for that matter, uh, everybody except for one person at ABC has moved to Texas. Uh, we only have one person that’s from Texas.
Chad Ashley: 00:43:31 So let me get that straight. 9 out of the 10 employees that you say you have all lived somewhere else, you recruited them and said, come move to this part of the country and help me build something.
Barton Damer: 00:43:47 Uh, yes. Uh, there’s some, there’s backstory. Donnie and Arielle, uh, are not, they moved into the area, but yeah for the most part, everybody else like moved into the area specifically for the job.
Chad Ashley: 00:44:01 Wow, that’s great man. So I mean, are they all living within, are the live pretty close to the studio or how does that work? Do they live? Do they go more towards, you guys aren’t that far from Dallas, right?
Barton Damer: 00:44:15 Yeah, we’re, we’re in a great area I think for being able to recruit people because you can really choose your lifestyle. So if you are younger or you just prefer the city vibe, you could easily live downtown in a very cool industrial loft and have a typical 35 to 45 minute commute going against traffic to get to our studio. Um, if you wanted more of like a suburbia lifestyle and you literally wanted to walk to the studio, you could buy a mansion in Texas two blocks away from the studio that was built two years ago.
Chad Ashley: 00:44:59 Wow that’s crazy.
Barton Damer: 00:44:59 So you can take your pick, you don’t have to commute if you don’t want to. Um, but our, our team is coming from all over the place. Uh, some of the guys chose to live literally within a mile or two from the studio and they go home for lunch every day. They see their kids, uh, at lunch. Uh, and then some of our guys don’t necessarily even live in the city, but they live 40 minutes away just because they liked a particular town, um, here or there.
Chad Ashley: 00:45:29 Wow, that’s great man. That’s, see that’s the thing. Like I never, I, I, there was no studios that I could do that with cause all the studios in Chicago are obviously downtown. A lot of the ones that I admired in New York or in, you know, proper Manhattan area and then the LA studios, LA. So for me, there was no way I was going to be able to afford a house in LA or New York and Chicago not even. I had to move way out into the burbs.
Barton Damer: 00:46:00 Right.
Chad Ashley: 00:46:00 So the fact that there’s like opportunities like that out there for artists that, you know, maybe they want to be able to afford a nice house. Like that’s not, that’s pretty rare in this business actually, unless you’ve been freelancing for a good number of years and built up, you know, some, some monies.
Barton Damer: 00:46:19 Right.
Chad Ashley: 00:46:19 Um, that’s, that’s really, that’s really dope man. Like the idea, it was always a dream of mine to be able to live really close to my office and be able to like walk in and not have to drive.
Barton Damer: 00:46:30 Yeah, yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:46:30 And I had that for a bit when I lived in Chicago and um, you know, I would ride my bike and I have it now cause I work from home. But I think there’s, that’s pretty rad especially. And there’s also, I bet a lot of comradery in the office because you’ve got this group of guys and girls who are just there because of the studio. And so what I imagine that ends up being is like a lot of people hanging out outside of work. And a lot of people just, you know, it’s more of like a family vibe.
Barton Damer: 00:47:00 Yeah. We’ve definitely kept it that way. And um, you know, like I mentioned before, I kinda run ABC off of what I don’t want it to become. My, my biggest fear in life is becoming the owner of a studio that I wouldn’t want to work for. And then everything from the clients to the projects to the company culture. And I just have zero tolerance for drama among the staff. So pretty much everybody has similar as far as personalities in the sense that there’s nobody high strung, no one’s yelling at each other. Uh, everyone’s pretty cool, calm and collected that we all just really enjoy pop culture and being able to create, uh, stories around pop culture products. Um, and you know, a lot of similar interests, whether it’s movies or video games or, uh, you know, things like that.
Chad Ashley: 00:47:55 Yeah.
Barton Damer: 00:47:55 It is doing well and we have had people come in and the culture wasn’t quite the right vibe. We had to, you know, kind of move on.
Chad Ashley: 00:48:05 Now, I mean, you gotta be pretty certain that it’s going to be a good fit for having somebody move out there.
Barton Damer: 00:48:12 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:48:12 Are you doing a lot of, for the, before the come in full time, are you doing a lot of contract work or how do you vet people before you know they’re, they’re a good fit?
Barton Damer: 00:48:21 Yeah, it’s, it’s not easy and I haven’t always done it properly. Um, I think that, uh, as far as artists go on, honestly we haven’t had any issues hiring artists that didn’t fit the culture. Uh, we were able to kind of weed that out pretty quickly. Um, I think it’s in some of the other roles, um, that were not artists roles, uh, where, where the company culture started to shift a little bit. But with the artists. Um, there’s several things, you know, I go to, I go to these conferences. I was at Half Rez recently and got to hang out with you again. Um, I was just at Camp MoGraph. Uh, I went to LA Motion Plus earlier this year. And so the great news about, you know, being at those events is I am getting a chance to kind of meet people. And, uh, it was Half Rez two years ago that I met Mark Fancher. Uh, and Mark Fancher. It was love at first sight. I mean, let’s be honest, he walked in.
Chad Ashley: 00:49:26 So who? Tell me about Mark Fancher.
Barton Damer: 00:49:27 Yeah. Uh, well Mark Fancher just super talented guy. I’m super fun to work with and literally knew nothing about him, uh, but got to, got to know him a little bit at that Half Rez event. And he just looked and seemed like he’d be fun to work with. And then later connected with him on the internet and, uh, ended up, uh, you know, offering him a job. And, but yes, to answer your question specifically, we do contract with people, uh, before we would ever consider like moving them across the country. And when we’re contracting with them, we’re looking for a variety of things. Like one, obviously the talent has to be there, but then two, uh, the speed, um, you know, can somebody create something that looks amazing and posting on their Instagram feed? Sure. But how long did it take them?
Chad Ashley: 00:50:17 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:50:17 Um, and then are they diverse in what they can create or is it like, no, this is like a one trick pony. They’re able to do this thing and this thing they do daily and they post it. Um, and so I think finding out someone’s range, it’s an expensive process because obviously I’m not going to be the guy that asks someone to do free work just to prove that they are who they say they are. So I ended up paying a lot of people and then we get two, three days into a project with them and it’s like, Hmm.
Chad Ashley: 00:50:50 Yeah it’s a gamble.
Barton Damer: 00:50:51 Yeah. And it’s, and it’s better than moving them across country, but you know, it’s not cheap to, to vet people. Um, and, uh, you know, the other thing too is like, okay, sure, you, you might be insanely talented, but are you, are you good to work with? Like attitude wise, you know.
Chad Ashley: 00:51:11 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:51:11 Am I going to be cringing and stressed out anytime I have to ask you to change something? Because like.
Chad Ashley: 00:51:20 Yeah, that would not fly with me at all.
Barton Damer: 00:51:22 I can’t deal with that. Like sometimes, sometimes the feedback’s coming from the client, sometimes it’s coming from me and you might not know. So.
Chad Ashley: 00:51:30 Yeah. Yeah. No, I, we ran the same way dude. Like I would have more sometimes more notes than the client would have and that they have to be okay with that.
Barton Damer: 00:51:40 Yeah. And it’s like, um, I just think that my own challenge is I have to be so good at what I do that even if the client has this seemingly lame request, I’m going to find a way to do it in a cool way or an awesome way and make it amazing. And then the client feels like their idea was awesome. You know what I mean? But that’s, that’s the challenge, right?
Chad Ashley: 00:52:11 That’s some serious magic right there.
Barton Damer: 00:52:13 It’s like but it happens, right? How many times have, have you received a request that you think is going to be awful and it’s probably gonna ruin the project, but you do it anyway just to see if you know, to show the client and then you’re hoping that, you know, once you show the client, they’ll be like, Oh yeah, that was a bad idea, but as you do it, it has surprised us and we’re like, Oh wow, that actually was a good idea. Cool.
Chad Ashley: 00:52:40 Oh yeah. That’s rare though. You know, I feel like more often than not, you just wanna like talk them out of the bad idea.
Barton Damer: 00:52:47 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:52:47 Or show it to them quickly so that you’re not wasting a bunch of time
Barton Damer: 00:52:53 Yes.
Chad Ashley: 00:52:53 trying to explore this idea that’s going to ruin everything. And then, yeah, you’re right. There’s the rare occasion where you look at it from a slightly different perspective and you can kind of find a way to make it work. Uh, and then ultimately everybody wins. But yeah, I mean, as we start to wrap, uh, wind up here, I wanted to ask you specifically, um, for all the people out there that are looking for work or maybe thinking about a change or what not, what kind of, what are you looking for in an artist that you hire full time, uh, at your studio? Like what are the qualities, what software, what do you, what are you wishing they came in with?
Barton Damer: 00:53:32 Yeah. Um, Whoa. We mentioned, you know, kind of the, the good employee, uh, qualities regard aside from being an artist, like attitude.
Chad Ashley: 00:53:44 Yeah don’t be a jerk.
Barton Damer: 00:53:45 Attitude, reliability, dependability, communication, you know, um, nobody likes to lose sleep or stress out, wondering if you’re going to hit a deadline. So just knowing you know, where the project is and just being able to follow directions. Like it seems like it’s obvious, but it’s shockingly not. Um, those things will get you very far. Uh, obviously you gotta be talented, but, uh, if you have those things, we can be a lot more lenient with a person if, you know, if they’ve got an amazing attitude. And they followed directions and things like that. Uh, you can give them a whole lot more grace than somebody that, uh, just has a pretty big ego and is challenging to work with. So those may seem like they’re very obvious things, but shockingly, they, they are not to many people.
Chad Ashley: 00:54:41 Right.
Barton Damer: 00:54:41 Um, from a skills standpoint. Um, I think, I’d be curious if you agree with this, but I feel like there’s a gap in our industry right now and that gap is this. If you started doing motion graphics within the last, say five to seven years or less, I feel like there’s two types of MoGraph artists right now within that last five to seven years. You’ve either got really talented 2d type of explainer video motion graphics artists, or you’ve got really talented like simulation, macro shot, Houdini type of artists. And in the last five to seven years, at least in freelancing with people, it seems harder and harder to find good generalists that can do just good key framing in 3d, uh, whether it’s camera moves, whether it’s, you know, animating things with anticipation. Uh, it, to me it feels like there’s a gap of that generalist that can also, you know, animate by hand and not just with simulations, but then also that generalist is able to do compositing and after effects. And I feel like a little bit before the explainer video trend blew up, um, there were more motion graphics artists that could kind of do a little bit of all of that.
Chad Ashley: 00:56:14 Yeah, I see it too. And, and I sort of attribute that to a bunch of different factors, but I also think that, um, 5 to 10 years ago, the type of work that you would be doing out of studio or freelancing was so varied. You might have to do a live action composite job, green-screen augmenting with graphics or whatever one week. And then the next week it might be like a photo real product thing and then the next week it would be this or that. And I feel like now we’re seeing, um, a bit more of like a, a siloing of styles. And so artists aren’t really getting to cut their teeth on a bunch of different stuff and have to like learn all these different things and, and sort of get good at everything. And they start, they start to fall into these silos and only sort of perpetuate the same sort of work, which is great for a specialist.
Barton Damer: 00:57:10 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:57:10 But like to your point, like specialists are great but they’re not as employable as a generalist. And I agree. I’m, I’m really stoked about, you know, what we’re doing and, and what we’re going to be doing at Greyscalegorilla Plus and hopefully starting to round out our, uh, what we’re offering in terms of, of training and all that sort of thing to hopefully bring a little bit more of that variety back into, um, artist’s work. But I mean, ultimately it’s up to them and the kind of work that they want to do. But yeah, I totally agree man. I feel like, um, when I was coming up, you had to know how to do it all. You had to know how to do.
Barton Damer: 00:57:50 Right.
Chad Ashley: 00:57:50 You had to know how to model. You had to know how to UV, you had to know how to rig, you had to know how to animate. You had to know how to do After Effects.
Barton Damer: 00:57:56 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:57:56 Uh title work, Christmas spots where you had to like figure out, okay, how do we, the lower third, you know, what’s the type going to be like, what size? You know, you had to know typography, you had to know cameras.
Barton Damer: 00:58:07 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:58:07 And it’s just like, that was part of the job.
Barton Damer: 00:58:11 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 00:58:11 You know, like that was just the gig.
Barton Damer: 00:58:15 Yeah for sure.
Chad Ashley: 00:58:15 But I’m afraid if we go too much longer, we’re going to sound like old men shaking our fists in the yard like these damn kids today.
Barton Damer: 00:58:24 Yep.
Chad Ashley: 00:58:24 But I mean like, seriously, if you’re listening and you’re, and you’re wanting to be more employable, you want to get a job at a killer studio like Barton’s. I think what we’re trying to say is that don’t be a jerk. Be really easy to work with. Be willing to learn a bunch of different things and try to get good at all of them. Uh, and you will always have work. You will always be employed.
Barton Damer: 00:58:52 Yeah, for sure.
Chad Ashley: 00:58:54 But anyway. Well this is a good time to wrap up I think. Barton, I just want to say thanks so much for being on the show. I’m really stoked that you were able to get on. Uh, and I think, I think we, we talked a lot about really interesting stuff. I think we, I learned a lot about what, what you guys are doing and I’m stoked for what you guys are doing and um, I’m just really, really happy that we got to do this.
Barton Damer: 00:59:18 Thanks man. I appreciate you having me. Like I said, I’m a long time fan and student of what you guys are doing a Greyscalegorilla.
Chad Ashley: 00:59:29 I appreciate that man. Totally. All right. So, um, be sure to check out Barton’s work and everybody over at, uh, Already Been Chewed. Talented folks over there. Uh, their links will be in the show notes. I highly recommend checking them out. Barton’s often doing speaking engagements at all the different various events. So if you look for him on, uh, online, I’m sure he can find his next event. Uh, is there any events that you want to plug that you have coming up?
Barton Damer: 00:59:54 Man, I don’t have any events going on man.
Chad Ashley: 00:59:59 The one time. You’re always at events and like the one time I call you out and you’re not well you’ll be at NAB probably. Right?
Barton Damer: 01:00:06 You know I had to cancel NAB East and then New York.
Chad Ashley: 01:00:11 Oh really?
Barton Damer: 01:00:12 Because we just have so much going on this month, so.
Chad Ashley: 01:00:15 Those are good problems to have though. Are you going to be at NAB proper in Vegas?
Barton Damer: 01:00:19 I will. If nothing. If nothing else, uh, I will be there for the beer house event.
Chad Ashley: 01:00:25 Yes. You have to. So, um, for those of you who don’t know, there’s an event happening, um, at the beginning of NAB every year, um, what was the name of it? I can’t got, I’m completely drawn a blank on the name of it now.
Barton Damer: 01:00:38 Oh, like the actual name of the event?
New Speaker: 01:00:41 Oh my God. I’m um, this is horrible. Anyway, look for it. I’ll put it in the show notes. Uh, I’m spacing on in it right now, but if you can get to NAB and get to this event, it’s sort of the must go to party. Um, I think of the entire conference.
Barton Damer: 01:00:55 Yeah.
Chad Ashley: 01:00:55 And for sure you’ll meet Barton and talk to him, ask them questions, see what they’re up to. Um, thanks again, Barton and everybody out there. I will see you in the next podcast.
The post Building the Studio You Want to Work For — Interview with Barton Damer appeared first on Greyscalegorilla.
“There’s never been a more exciting time to be in gaming, as an economic developer and father of four children. Professionally and personally, I recognize that the work American Esports is doing will transform the industry and the players within, to not just entertain, but to educate and inspire the growing minds in our country. It’s about competition. It’s about community. It’s about connecting. I’m ready to serve in a leadership role, to complement the immense talents of the organization as we revolutionise the industry.” stated David Petr.
Back after six years as a sequel of the cult blockbuster, 
Hungama TV is all set to take fun, laughter and mischief up a notch this festive season, with the ‘Tyohaar ka Upahaar’ offer at only one rupee per month.
For the first time this season, Ubisoft Entrepreneurs Lab includes start-ups from the Asia region. The program will focus on the development of Planetarium’s gaming blockchain technology Libplanet, and the marketing of its upcoming game Nine Chronicles. It also includes a dedicated office space at the Ubisoft Entrepreneur Lab newly established at Pixel’ start-up hub in Singapore. Ubisoft will provide a close mentorship to the start-ups, including from Ubisoft’s Chief Creative Officer Serge Hascoët as this season’s sponsor.
Studio Durga, 