024 - Production - Concepts - A Visual Sales Tool

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00;00;00;07 - 00;00;07;11
Speaker 1
In today's episode we are going to talk about all things concepts. Concepts, yeah. Perhaps the concepts of life concepts.

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Speaker 2
Meaning of concepts.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Concept shows. Concept, concept cars.

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Speaker 2
Oh, I just remembered.

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Kitchen concepts.

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Speaker 3
Yes. I think it does as well.

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Speaker 2
And so much less.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Because we're actually not talking about any of those.

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Speaker 2
You know, concepts. So concepts comes from the word, a Latin word concept. Hmm. Oh, really? Yes. I forgot what that means.

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Speaker 3
Oh, well.

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Speaker 2
I had it in my head, but I forgot what it means. Yeah. Look at how.

00;00;33;07 - 00;01;03;10
Speaker 1
You came prepared. But only half. 50%. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. That's fine. So instead today, because we don't know much about other concepts, we are talking about the concept stage of animation. So stick around and we'll see soon. Hello there. Hey, welcome back.

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Speaker 2
Welcome back.

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Speaker 1
My name is Kathryn.

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Speaker 2
My name is Will.

00;01;05;14 - 00;01;14;17
Speaker 1
And if you're listening to this for the first time, we are Open Pixel Studios. That is an animation studio based in Massachusetts co-founders.

00;01;14;17 - 00;01;19;21
Speaker 2
We are executive producers, directors, creative writers. We do all of the above.

00;01;19;21 - 00;01;20;20
Speaker 1
We were a lot of hats.

00;01;20;21 - 00;01;22;26
Speaker 2
We were a lot of hats. Yeah. We also hire a lot of people.

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Speaker 1
That that's.

00;01;23;10 - 00;01;24;15
Speaker 2
True. So they wear.

00;01;24;15 - 00;01;25;12
Speaker 1
Better hats, shout.

00;01;25;12 - 00;01;27;27
Speaker 2
Out to our freelancers and yes, other.

00;01;27;27 - 00;01;31;28
Speaker 1
Helpers and interns and interns between us. Yeah. Just as a quick.

00;01;32;03 - 00;01;37;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, quick reminder. Quick reminder. Pod questions, pod question.

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Speaker 1
What is that in relation to.

00;01;38;18 - 00;01;59;01
Speaker 2
Correct. That's that it's I'm, I'm getting there. Oh you're building. Give me a second. If you have a question either throughout this episode or throughout any of the episodes, write us a note. You can do it anonymously. It's openpixelstudios.com/podquestion. Very simple. There is a space for your name but is not required and you can throw it in there and submit your question.

00;01;59;01 - 00;02;04;21
Speaker 2
We'll answer them. We're basically collecting all the questions and we'll answer them all in a special episode.

00;02;04;22 - 00;02;15;04
Speaker 1
Yeah, it can be really cool. I'm excited for that. This is Behind The Pixel. It's an Open Pixel Podcast where we try to bridge the knowledge gap between those who buy creative content and those who make it. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
What kind of other podcasts are you listening to? You know, we're not the only people out there.

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Speaker 1
That's true. It's not just one podcast.

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Speaker 2
There's many there's.

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Speaker 1
Only about 12 in the.

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Speaker 2
World called Million. And it's so many.

00;02;26;13 - 00;02;27;10
Speaker 1
There's so many.

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Speaker 2
Who doesn't have a podcast. I think.

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Speaker 1
You have. Right.

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Speaker 2
Who are you listening to these days?

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Speaker 1
So legitimately, I as a business owner who is a very anxious person, I am listening to The Anxious Achiever, okay, which has been really good. It talks a lot about different levels of anxiety, different types of anxiety and how that fits into an entrepreneur's day to day and sort of our ecosystem of how we live with it and how we grow with it.

00;02;54;12 - 00;03;09;29
Speaker 2
So, yes. All right. I'm going to put you on to a couple of different things. If you're a podcast listener, you're Masters of Scale. Oh, that's the LinkedIn. Yeah. Owner of LinkedIn runs a podcast, has been running it for a while. Really good. Smartless if you haven’t heard it’s...

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Speaker 1
Fantastic.

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Speaker 2
Fantastic. It's a it's a humorous podcast.

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Speaker 1
I think it's a stretch goal for me to one day be on that show.

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Speaker 2
You know what the funny thing about that one is, is that you actually learn a lot about the behind the scenes of live action productions that do film and video like the actors. Yeah, because they talk about their experiences on there. And if you're a person like us who kind of understands the background, like, Oh, that's what happens.

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Speaker 2
Like, you know, they just they'll say something kind of casually and all of a sudden you're like, Oh.

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Speaker 1
That makes sense.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1
So that's why the, the background management wasn't working in this way. Yeah.

00;03;44;05 - 00;03;51;09
Speaker 2
Well, there was something that Jason Bateman said at one point anyway. It doesn't matter. It's Smartless. Then there's Crime Junkies if you're into.

00;03;52;03 - 00;03;52;14
Speaker 1
Murder.

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Speaker 2
Murder, mystery type stuff, love Crime Junkies shout out to those ladies and Brit. And, um, what else am I listening to? Oh, Spellcaster.

00;04;02;29 - 00;04;03;12
Speaker 1
I don't know what.

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Speaker 2
Spellcaster is a fantastic journey of Sam Bankman-Fried.

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Speaker 1
Okay.

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Speaker 2
Going from kid in high school to guy in jail, I think.

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Speaker 1
Oh, interesting.

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Speaker 3
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
He's the FTX guy. Oh, the rise and

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Speaker 1
fall. Yeah. I was like, oh, interesting. And then it, like.

00;04;20;10 - 00;04;21;17
Speaker 3
Slowly fell.

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Speaker 2
Into finance.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, that's fair. And it's.

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Speaker 2
There. Those are.

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Speaker 1
My. Yeah. So those are some quick recs for you. But today.

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Speaker 2
Total sides we've.

00;04;29;19 - 00;04;52;24
Speaker 1
We've side tangent a lot. We are ready to get into today's topic. Yes. Which is concepts, concepts or the concept stage as we call it, an animation production. So this is a production stage in our workflow for what we call exploratory design development. So essentially we're trying to figure out in that moment what the video is going to look and feel like overall from right from the beginning.

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Speaker 2
Visually, yes, very important.

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Speaker 1
Right. Because when we say exploratory, I don't want you to take it as like we're going on some kind of like experimental journey, man. You know, we're we're like we're feeling it out and we get the vibes and the.

00;05;10;01 - 00;05;17;18
Speaker 2
Speak for yourself, bro. Oh, I'm taking acid. And that's how I'm coming up with the visual design topic.

00;05;17;23 - 00;05;19;04
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that's going to get got. I don't.

00;05;19;04 - 00;05;19;19
Speaker 3
Know. We know.

00;05;19;26 - 00;05;23;21
Speaker 2
We could totally say that. Yeah it totally.

00;05;23;21 - 00;05;27;18
Speaker 1
Said oh we're getting YouTube stoked already. Well so what are concepts.

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Speaker 2
Don't do drugs, kids.

00;05;29;03 - 00;05;37;05
Speaker 1
Don't do drugs. So essentially concepts is really about the next production stage after audio visual scripts.

00;05;37;05 - 00;05;37;23
Speaker 2
Maybe scripts.

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Speaker 1
AV scripts, as we call them.

00;05;39;13 - 00;05;57;03
Speaker 2
Just a reminder, a script is the script for your video, which includes visual descriptions of what happens in each part of your story. It's usually breaking down into shots, depends on which template you're using, but we have a template on our website down at the bottom for resources. Click on it. You'll get to the AP script template. Sure.

00;05;57;14 - 00;05;58;21
Speaker 1
Great. Thanks for that plug.

00;05;58;21 - 00;06;05;19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Putting it in there really quickly, Eric. Yeah. Go, go, go, go, go.

00;06;05;19 - 00;06;06;18
Speaker 3
Another word going.

00;06;07;02 - 00;06;18;05
Speaker 1
Okay, so one thing we want to talk about with concepts is what is actually happening on the internal side, right? What's happening on our side of the production as we're making concepts and designing things.

00;06;18;05 - 00;06;38;12
Speaker 2
So yeah, so let's go a little bit behind the scenes. So concepts think we've mentioned this before, but they're done differently depending on where you go, who you're working with, obviously. So we're speaking from our workflow here, right? For us, the first step is gathering visual ideas to see where and what the creative boundaries are and what the possibilities are within your budget at that particular moment.

00;06;38;12 - 00;06;59;17
Speaker 2
So we would have, you know, a creative director, someone who's familiar with the project already has done a kickoff for the project. They will gather references based on the project goals and the intended audience. So you're looking at goals. You're looking at audience, and even if there's an established style, a lot of companies will have something like brand guidelines or brand guides, brand storybooks.

00;06;59;17 - 00;07;17;19
Speaker 2
I mean, they get pretty big. Even if you have one of those, we're still gathering reference because references provide direction both for the artists, right? Not just for the creative director, for the people who are going to be working on it. Right. So that they know what the design rules are and really defining those before we get we get started.

00;07;17;23 - 00;07;45;04
Speaker 2
Yeah. So in our workflow, we produce concepts that look like final frames that might not be the same everywhere you go, but final frames at specific moments in the script. So we're using this strip as sort of a guide saying which lines are the right lines to pick apart? And you can think of it as like snapping a picture from a video at a very particularly crucial moment in the story and then asking, Well, what does that picture look like?

00;07;45;10 - 00;07;56;00
Speaker 2
That's what we internally call a concept frame. What is going on? What listeners you just dropped, are you doing like an Instagram?

00;07;56;26 - 00;08;02;03
Speaker 1
I'm taking a cool picture. Okay. Yeah. If you if you hear that click on the picture. I see.

00;08;02;08 - 00;08;22;16
Speaker 2
It's cool. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Moving on. So we design about 3 to 5 frames. That's really all you need during this stage to get a real sense of what's going to happen. Now, if you're working on a larger production, you maybe want 3 to 5 frames per scene or three or five frames per section or however you splitting it up.

00;08;22;29 - 00;08;33;20
Speaker 2
But the key, I think, for us is not to overwhelm anyone with too much information. Yeah, right. We want to ensure that each frame is is there for a specific reason.

00;08;33;21 - 00;08;55;18
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I can think of a couple different examples kind of related to that. So like if you have a hero character, right, the character that's supposed to stand out and needs to be seen perhaps in their environment to know what the settings are going to be like. If the whole video was taking place in one setting, the whole way through might be helpful to see both the character and the environment upfront, right?

00;08;55;19 - 00;09;09;04
Speaker 1
So you get a sense of how it's going to flow. Another example could be maybe there's a shot that describes like a very specific visual in the written form that's actually really conceptually difficult to visualize.

00;09;09;04 - 00;09;13;25
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. That happens a lot with our clients. It's like, how do we show that?

00;09;13;28 - 00;09;20;24
Speaker 1
Right, right. We're writing something that sounds really complex and it's like, Well, how does that get seen in video format, in visuals? So yeah.

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Speaker 2
We usually pick those frames to be.

00;09;22;05 - 00;09;39;09
Speaker 1
Yes, to show more clearly. But so whatever the case might be for what you're using it for, we're carefully selecting those frames and presenting them in the context with the script line from the script. Yep. And visual description so that it's all easily digestible within one page.

00;09;39;09 - 00;09;41;23
Speaker 2
Right. That's key. Digestible is key.

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Speaker 1
Yes. Yeah. Unlike digesting things like bleach.

00;09;45;07 - 00;09;49;13
Speaker 2
Perhaps I heard about that. Yeah, I heard about people drinking bleach.

00;09;49;13 - 00;09;55;04
Speaker 1
Like our whole thing. We, we cannot stress enough in our podcast advocacy work.

00;09;55;04 - 00;09;56;15
Speaker 2
I don't drink bleach.

00;09;56;24 - 00;09;58;28
Speaker 1
I'm not just just don't. Yeah. Or like the.

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Speaker 2
Tired parts, the type.

00;10;00;16 - 00;10;00;25
Speaker 1
Doing.

00;10;00;25 - 00;10;02;24
Speaker 2
That I take a tide pod every morning.

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Speaker 1
Don't say.

00;10;03;10 - 00;10;03;23
Speaker 3
That. Oh.

00;10;04;07 - 00;10;07;12
Speaker 2
Just so that my bowels are ready, you know.

00;10;07;12 - 00;10;08;13
Speaker 1
Yeah. We're going to cut that.

00;10;08;13 - 00;10;11;17
Speaker 3
That's right. That's disgusting. Oh.

00;10;11;28 - 00;10;20;23
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Diapers. Don't, don't do them. You know, it's just I can't believe as a society that we have to say this like on microphone.

00;10;20;27 - 00;10;21;06
Speaker 2
Or.

00;10;21;28 - 00;10;40;18
Speaker 1
Who knows. But regardless, thinking about things that are digestible, if at our initial kickoff process, right, we have a call, you might have a definitive style already that you wanted to work with in, and we would create concept images based on that style. Right, right. But if you haven't selected a style yet.

00;10;41;07 - 00;10;46;15
Speaker 2
Sometimes that was, that is me pretending I don't have a style.

00;10;46;15 - 00;11;06;09
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's not a no. No you can have. Yeah. It's okay if you don't know we will make concepts that are uniquely different styles to try to explore the possibilities. There. Yeah. So then we can work together through a meeting or however that might be, to choose options that would work best for your target audience as a whole.

00;11;06;10 - 00;11;28;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. So we're choosing styles that are based on a combination of both your goals and our creative expertize, on which styles tend to resonate more closely with that target audience. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's a good thing to keep in mind, but so that's what happens internally on our side. But maybe you can go through what's happening externally on the client side.

00;11;28;11 - 00;12;02;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. So a client's job in this particular stage is basically to review these frames and approve or obviously ask for revisions to the design. Right. And a concept is very much another kind of sales tool. This is how we think about it. It's like what happens when you're working with like an agency or a PR firm when they were pitched a creative idea before you get to the project these days, marketing teams are doing a lot more work in house, and so we're starting to do this kind of creative exploration together as part of that internal team, as part of that workflow, as part of our workflow.

00;12;02;02 - 00;12;15;23
Speaker 2
So we're getting on everyone on the project, we're giving them a place to basically take our work, pull it apart, destroy it, chop it up, slice it, dice it, it does everything.

00;12;15;24 - 00;12;18;15
Speaker 3
It like thinks.

00;12;19;22 - 00;12;26;17
Speaker 2
Does it blend? I don't know. But yeah, you could you can imagine Gordon Ramsay coming in and giving you some feedback, right.

00;12;26;17 - 00;12;28;18
Speaker 1
In speaking of slicing and dicing.

00;12;28;21 - 00;12;29;07
Speaker 3
In.

00;12;29;07 - 00;12;36;29
Speaker 1
Those, that is like, yeah, well imagine if he gave you feedback before you had even started.

00;12;36;29 - 00;12;37;09
Speaker 2
The meal.

00;12;37;09 - 00;12;42;22
Speaker 1
Of animation. Start the meal. Yeah. Yeah. Gordon Ramsay came in at the concept stage. Oh, chef's kiss.

00;12;42;22 - 00;12;55;29
Speaker 2
Now, I don't know Mr. Ramsay very well, but I feel like he would come in if you came in at the ingredients stage. He would be like, Those are not organic, right? You know, he would like he would be very upset about the the things that you've.

00;12;55;29 - 00;12;57;16
Speaker 1
Already taken, things to use.

00;12;58;01 - 00;12;58;27
Speaker 2
Very particular.

00;12;58;27 - 00;13;02;03
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. But that would give you a lot of clarity throughout the.

00;13;02;05 - 00;13;07;26
Speaker 2
That's true. I should probably use better ingredients. Let me switch these out. That's basically what's happening at the concept stage.

00;13;07;26 - 00;13;14;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm surprised at how well that analogy works.

00;13;14;12 - 00;13;15;01
Speaker 2
So am I.

00;13;15;02 - 00;13;34;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Look at that. The more you know, there are a few things that we feel are important to remember when you're reviewing concepts so that the conversation even that you're having can go a little bit smoother overall. Yeah. So first thing to keep in mind is that remember that the motion will be applied to the animation later.

00;13;34;08 - 00;13;34;20
Speaker 3
Later.

00;13;35;04 - 00;13;37;17
Speaker 1
Much later. Yeah. In the future in a different stage.

00;13;37;25 - 00;13;39;18
Speaker 2
So Alpha Studio.

00;13;39;28 - 00;14;04;24
Speaker 1
Oh, nice look at you. So it's good to ask how do you imagine that this will actually move, right? You as a client can ask that to the animators and if there's an animator in that room, they'll love to chat with you about what they're thinking, what they're seeing, how they're transitioning from one place to another. And to give you hopefully enough descriptive words to say, okay, well, it's going to do this, and then you can fly around in this way.

00;14;05;03 - 00;14;25;10
Speaker 2
And this part is actually a lot more helpful these days with AI being generative when they're coming up with generative images, a lot of the times you can't really tell how it's going to move because it was generated in a way that's flat. It doesn't like having an animator that understands what kind of motion will be applied and what tool is back there is very important.

00;14;25;13 - 00;14;53;17
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's fair. Yeah. And you know, because a visual description, having that thing written from the AVI script is a great place to start. But when you have an artist that understands the workflow ahead of time, you're going to have opportunities to talk through specific motion choices as well, right? Because then you might see something that says, oh, well, we really want to emphasize this part of the script through this visual, like, can we make sure we get there sooner and hold on it, right?

00;14;53;18 - 00;14;55;15
Speaker 1
Yeah, we can do that, like, right.

00;14;55;15 - 00;14;58;19
Speaker 2
So if that's necessary, you might not care. You might not care at all.

00;14;58;19 - 00;15;07;15
Speaker 1
I would be I'd be really shocked if a client didn't care about, like, the motion side of things, but. Yeah, but you live your best life. YOLO.

00;15;07;16 - 00;15;10;04
Speaker 2
YOLO. Are people saying that any more? No, nothing.

00;15;10;06 - 00;15;11;22
Speaker 1
No, I really.

00;15;11;22 - 00;15;13;25
Speaker 2
I don't even think Drake says it anymore, as.

00;15;14;18 - 00;15;15;18
Speaker 1
I guess.

00;15;15;24 - 00;15;16;17
Speaker 2
It's his word.

00;15;17;15 - 00;15;18;25
Speaker 1
He invented YOLO.

00;15;18;25 - 00;15;19;11
Speaker 2
I think.

00;15;19;11 - 00;15;20;05
Speaker 1
So. No.

00;15;20;22 - 00;15;21;18
Speaker 2
He has that song.

00;15;22;12 - 00;15;23;16
Speaker 1
He has a song. Sure.

00;15;23;16 - 00;15;29;04
Speaker 2
But that whole song was I mean, I'm under the impression that Drake invented YOLO. I'm going to.

00;15;29;04 - 00;15;36;29
Speaker 1
Go. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go on to open Pixel Studios dot com slash pod question and I'm going to ask this question back to us in the pod.

00;15;37;09 - 00;15;38;12
Speaker 2
Who invented YOLO.

00;15;39;02 - 00;15;39;19
Speaker 1
IPA?

00;15;39;20 - 00;15;56;06
Speaker 2
If you're selecting a style from a few different options, right, maybe you're in that boat where maybe you don't have brand guidelines, maybe you don't have a brand book or anything like that. When you're reviewing those options, which you want to do is think about color and design separately. I know that sounds a little weird, but yeah, think about it this way.

00;15;56;14 - 00;16;14;28
Speaker 2
Yeah. So for color, you want to kind of ask yourself, do the colors align with my brand, right? You don't. I mean, brand guidelines, do they align at least visually with what we have already or do the colors resonate with the tone of the project? And, you know, if it's a serious project, maybe you have a palette that's limited in colors or maybe you have colors that are desaturated.

00;16;14;28 - 00;16;42;14
Speaker 2
Maybe for a more professional look, it depends on what you're going for. But think about color is that separate thing? And then for design, is there a clear fit for your audience? Does the design element look as if it fits the audience right? Is this is this meant for these people that you're targeting? Yeah. An example might be bubbly characters, very specific types of characters that are designed for children rather than for adults, that kind of thing.

00;16;42;23 - 00;16;50;26
Speaker 2
So this is a place to be honest with yourself and really honest with us because you want to make sure that, okay, maybe that's not quite the right thing for this audience.

00;16;50;26 - 00;17;15;00
Speaker 1
Right. And kind of keeping to the sort of audience theme here, there's there's something about making sure that you're keeping the audience always at the forefront of your stylistic criticism, as we might it. Because you have to remember and we have to remember that art is subjective right there. And so sometimes too many people in the room might want to guide the art in a specific direction.

00;17;15;01 - 00;17;30;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, that resonates with themselves because it feels good to them rather than the actual target audience and what's best for them. Right? So that's, that's something to really think about of like having to let go a little bit of like this feels good to me, but does that mean it's right?

00;17;30;25 - 00;17;35;09
Speaker 2
For I always say to myself, this is not for me. Like, remind yourself.

00;17;35;14 - 00;17;44;18
Speaker 1
Movies, not for me. Yeah. There's times where we might really appreciate a movie and like the work that went into it, right? But the movie wasn't targeted for me. So it's this.

00;17;44;27 - 00;17;46;21
Speaker 2
Is the Barbie movie for me. I don't know.

00;17;46;25 - 00;17;48;01
Speaker 1
Could be. I don't know. You have to.

00;17;48;01 - 00;17;48;16
Speaker 3
Go see it.

00;17;49;07 - 00;17;50;06
Speaker 2
I don't know.

00;17;50;08 - 00;17;51;03
Speaker 1
Barb and Heimer.

00;17;51;17 - 00;17;54;00
Speaker 2
So if Barb and Hammer was a real movie, I would watch it.

00;17;55;00 - 00;17;56;03
Speaker 1
Somebody's going to do. I was like.

00;17;56;03 - 00;17;56;16
Speaker 2
I'd like.

00;17;56;16 - 00;17;58;29
Speaker 1
I will put it together like like slice.

00;17;58;29 - 00;18;03;02
Speaker 2
The moon. Is, is, is Army Barbie a thing? Like, can you get an Army Barbie?

00;18;03;10 - 00;18;04;14
Speaker 1
And I that's a good question.

00;18;04;14 - 00;18;05;17
Speaker 2
And I'm going to.

00;18;05;17 - 00;18;07;19
Speaker 1
Go to open pizza studios dot com slash pod.

00;18;07;19 - 00;18;10;29
Speaker 3
Question and find out we.

00;18;10;29 - 00;18;12;01
Speaker 2
Will answer you.

00;18;12;16 - 00;18;13;05
Speaker 1
Good glad.

00;18;14;14 - 00;18;31;13
Speaker 2
We should mention a special case here. Okay concepts is a stage as a whole is great if you are working with characters you'd have a separate concept stage for those characters. Yeah. Just for those and what they look like and what they represent. You want to go through that because it's important to, you know, get your characters in line with your audience.

00;18;31;23 - 00;18;37;07
Speaker 2
We won't get too much into that here, but basically it's the same type of stage, just it's just four characters, right?

00;18;37;07 - 00;18;41;02
Speaker 1
We talked about character design in a previous episode about character. Yeah.

00;18;41;12 - 00;18;41;28
Speaker 2
Go check that.

00;18;41;28 - 00;18;44;29
Speaker 1
One. Yeah, definitely pretty informative. So a lot of plugs here.

00;18;44;29 - 00;18;45;13
Speaker 2
A lot of plugs.

00;18;45;16 - 00;18;50;15
Speaker 1
I know. And yeah, well, it's Friday I guess.

00;18;50;15 - 00;18;50;28
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;18;51;12 - 00;19;15;09
Speaker 1
So overall, this was kind of short and sweet. Short and sweet story concepts are really designed to set the creative direction overall. Yeah, right. So it's a really important stage and you're looking at still frames or those still images and you're deciding if visually the direction is correct, fitting your brand, your audience, your message, all of the things, the tone.

00;19;15;10 - 00;19;35;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so when you're reviewing concepts, you want to make sure again, separate color and design to make it easier on yourself to kind of look at those things a little bit differently. So you're not overwhelmed by the process. Remember, that motion will come later. It's an exciting stage. I know we want to get into it as soon as possible because that's a lot of the fun.

00;19;35;10 - 00;19;55;16
Speaker 1
I mean, as an animator, I can tell you that. But we have to remember that art is subjective. And so even as creative directors, as artists ourselves, we're looking at a piece trying to make sure that we remember that that kind of fine balance between putting in our own artistic vision, our own artistic style, and remembering what's best for the audience overall.

00;19;55;28 - 00;19;57;07
Speaker 1
So, yeah, yeah.

00;19;57;09 - 00;20;08;10
Speaker 2
So let's do, let's do a little bit of a tease here for the next episode. The next episode is another hack and it's, it's how to best use AI to write your scripts. Yeah. Which is interesting.

00;20;08;10 - 00;20;09;17
Speaker 1
Going back to the A.I. thing.

00;20;09;21 - 00;20;14;08
Speaker 2
Well, we got to embrace the changes. Well.

00;20;14;25 - 00;20;15;28
Speaker 3
In a way.

00;20;16;24 - 00;20;18;16
Speaker 1
It's going to be a hot debate.

00;20;19;10 - 00;20;24;07
Speaker 2
We're going to go in, we're going to go in and we're going to change. We're going to do a little bit of air. It's not.

00;20;24;07 - 00;20;25;00
Speaker 3
Crazy.

00;20;25;09 - 00;20;27;23
Speaker 1
It's not it's not true. That is just.

00;20;27;23 - 00;20;29;01
Speaker 2
A little bit of air.

00;20;29;02 - 00;20;52;20
Speaker 1
Okay. A reminder to you all, but just as a quick update, we release our audio episodes on Saturday mornings. Yes. Anywhere where you get your podcasts and Sundays are the days of we released the YouTube episode. So if you want to watch us, but we're honestly about a month behind on edits. So yeah, you're going to if you listened to an episode and then a month later you're like, Man, that was a great episode.

00;20;52;20 - 00;20;55;10
Speaker 1
I want to go watch it. You can go watch it, then.

00;20;56;23 - 00;20;59;12
Speaker 2
We'll watch it a month later. Yeah, yeah. We got we got to.

00;20;59;18 - 00;21;01;05
Speaker 1
People love watching things a month.

00;21;01;05 - 00;21;02;21
Speaker 2
Later. We're big, we're busy people.

00;21;02;21 - 00;21;18;12
Speaker 1
We are. Let's go. We're working on it. But a big thank you as always, to E Media for producing this podcast. Our producer is Jackson Foote. Our music was created by hidden and licensed through Premium BET.com and as always, until next time.

00;21;18;29 - 00;21;21;08
Speaker 2
Stay honest, stay creative, stay open.

00;21;21;22 - 00;21;28;04
Speaker 1
We're getting better at that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you in the next episode. Audio listeners, stick around for that.

00;21;28;14 - 00;21;29;21
Speaker 2
The bad idea.

00;21;54;25 - 00;21;57;05
Speaker 1
As a quick reminder of what we actually do.

00;21;57;23 - 00;21;59;03
Speaker 2
We don't do anything here.

00;21;59;03 - 00;21;59;09
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00;21;59;25 - 00;22;02;12
Speaker 2
We've been secretly not doing anything.

00;22;02;12 - 00;22;05;01
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the secret sauce.

00;22;05;01 - 00;22;06;02
Speaker 3
Behind the work.

00;22;07;16 - 00;22;08;01
Speaker 2
We actually do.

00;22;08;01 - 00;22;26;14
Speaker 1
Not. Yeah. One thing that we do at our company is sometimes after the end of a meeting, especially when they're, they're, like, hard or, you know, challenging, challenging the things that we have to do. We will pitch bad company ideas to each other. So these are ideas that will likely usually never get made.

00;22;26;14 - 00;22;31;04
Speaker 2
You come to the table with something that you want to fix that does not need fixing, correct? That's what.

00;22;31;04 - 00;22;36;00
Speaker 1
It is. Yeah. Yeah. And usually they're very stupid and silly and fun and we have a great time. Yeah.

00;22;36;01 - 00;22;58;12
Speaker 2
So this one, I'll take this one because I think I'm pretty sure I came up with this. So this was an idea a long time ago. Yes. Where we were. I think I was critiquing those house shows and those like home like HGTV, Home Builder or whatever, whatever. And I started realizing that my dad is he watches those shows.

00;22;58;12 - 00;23;05;12
Speaker 2
He goes home and then he tries to be that person, but he's not very good at doing it.

00;23;05;16 - 00;23;06;04
Speaker 1
He does.

00;23;06;04 - 00;23;07;17
Speaker 2
Into everyone tries that.

00;23;07;17 - 00;23;07;23
Speaker 1
He's.

00;23;08;13 - 00;23;14;22
Speaker 2
Like, you know what, I, I just saw that on TV. I saw how he nailed it. I'm going to do it.

00;23;14;22 - 00;23;15;15
Speaker 1
You know what? Then you.

00;23;15;15 - 00;23;18;00
Speaker 2
Take a leap and it doesn't pan out as well as you thought.

00;23;18;00 - 00;23;19;23
Speaker 1
It. You know what that is? That's the magic of editing.

00;23;20;00 - 00;23;35;18
Speaker 2
That is true. That is true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, yeah. So they're deceived anyway. So I was thinking, well, that happens a lot in animation too. You know, we see something that's like, I don't know, you know, the spider-verse or something that's like it takes a long time and a lot of people do it and were like, we.

00;23;35;29 - 00;23;37;21
Speaker 3
We could do that. We could.

00;23;37;21 - 00;23;38;05
Speaker 2
Do that.

00;23;38;26 - 00;23;42;02
Speaker 1
We can go, How much time I got 20 minutes. I got, I got you.

00;23;42;03 - 00;23;54;05
Speaker 2
Air is going to help me out here. No problem. And so we thought that we would come up with a YouTube show for either of these for house repairs or for animation.

00;23;54;09 - 00;23;59;20
Speaker 1
Right. But the key here is that it would be a YouTube channel around, I think Idiocracy.

00;23;59;20 - 00;24;02;08
Speaker 2
I think it would be called mediocre TV.

00;24;02;08 - 00;24;03;24
Speaker 1
Right. It'd be a TV channel.

00;24;03;24 - 00;24;05;18
Speaker 2
It would be a channel for YouTube.

00;24;05;23 - 00;24;08;04
Speaker 1
For everything related to doing things.

00;24;08;04 - 00;24;25;21
Speaker 2
Media locally. Yeah. Yeah. So we would have mediocre Monday's Yes, which is a video series for animators. And basically it's just the most simplest things to do, right? It just be like setting a keyframe, right?

00;24;25;21 - 00;24;38;00
Speaker 1
It would be so like tutorial videos. It would be probably a little too long. It'd be a little bit monotone. Yeah. And it would be for one thing that like, just just one thing.

00;24;38;03 - 00;24;39;29
Speaker 2
One thing that everyone knows how to do.

00;24;39;29 - 00;24;40;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

00;24;41;00 - 00;24;41;21
Speaker 2
And that's a that would.

00;24;41;21 - 00;24;47;17
Speaker 1
Be I think we recorded a video. Did we. We did. Yeah. A while ago. It was about how to set a keyframe.

00;24;47;17 - 00;24;52;05
Speaker 2
Yeah. We thought that the, like, intro would be, like, amazing, right? But then you would get this.

00;24;52;05 - 00;24;54;22
Speaker 1
Oh, this garbage animation intro would.

00;24;54;25 - 00;24;56;03
Speaker 2
Animation intro would be it'd be.

00;24;56;04 - 00;25;03;09
Speaker 1
Wild. Yeah. But then it would get tired and it would be like, welcome to mediocre Mondays. This is a day.

00;25;03;09 - 00;25;04;12
Speaker 2
This is how you said, okay, if.

00;25;04;12 - 00;25;08;10
Speaker 1
We're going to set a keyframe and you're going to use you.

00;25;08;11 - 00;25;09;08
Speaker 2
Use your mouse.

00;25;09;10 - 00;25;10;22
Speaker 3
You're going to and you're going to.

00;25;10;22 - 00;25;16;10
Speaker 2
Move it and move it forward. And you're going to move it right over here. Yeah. And then we're going to hit it.

00;25;16;10 - 00;25;18;23
Speaker 1
The keyframe button is.

00;25;18;23 - 00;25;22;05
Speaker 2
A keystroke right there. And and that's it.

00;25;22;12 - 00;25;25;02
Speaker 1
That's for attending mediocre Mondays.

00;25;25;02 - 00;25;28;18
Speaker 2
And then it was like and then that and then it cuts. Yeah, that was it.

00;25;28;25 - 00;25;29;21
Speaker 3
But we could do it. We could.

00;25;30;03 - 00;25;35;06
Speaker 2
We could do it for house repair. It'd be the same thing. How to nail something to a wall. It would be stupid. Things like that.

00;25;35;07 - 00;25;35;19
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;25;35;22 - 00;25;36;16
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's the.

00;25;36;17 - 00;25;42;14
Speaker 1
End of you. Yeah, well, it's a great idea. First off, mediocre house repair is still one of my favorite bad ideas that we.

00;25;42;14 - 00;25;43;27
Speaker 3
Had.

00;25;43;27 - 00;25;54;28
Speaker 1
Because it's like how to do things, you know, not perfect, right? Right. Because when you're on the HGTV shows, like they're showing you how to do it correctly. Right. Because their contract.

00;25;54;28 - 00;26;04;17
Speaker 2
But I think you're right. It's the power of editing. Like you see these guys like, oh, we're just going to go in, we're going to do all this stuff. And I'm sure it doesn't pan out that way, like, right, right. You know, it's not seamless.

00;26;04;28 - 00;26;15;10
Speaker 1
Because they're always showing the perfect. Correct? Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So ours would be the one time in perfect, right? It's like you said, the nail looks like a drop the nail.

00;26;15;11 - 00;26;16;00
Speaker 2
Okay, that's it.

00;26;16;01 - 00;26;20;13
Speaker 3
Yeah. Okay.

00;26;20;13 - 00;26;24;25
Speaker 1
I guess they're like one minute video, so very sharp. Never happens in that moment.

00;26;24;25 - 00;26;26;27
Speaker 2
Stays on TikTok. It could be a TikTok channel.

00;26;26;27 - 00;26;27;28
Speaker 1
That's true. That's true.

00;26;27;28 - 00;26;33;19
Speaker 2
We could make it work. Well, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Oh, yeah. We will see you in the next episode.

00;26;33;29 - 00;26;34;05
Speaker 1
Yeah.

Creators and Guests

024 - Production - Concepts - A Visual Sales Tool
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