MAX SESSIONS Hello. Hello, everyone. -How are you doing today? -Good. Good? All right. I'm Amanda Russell. I'm one of the co-founders and creative directors at Cream Studio. Has anyone ever heard of us before? All right, I'm going to take that. Thank you very much. It's the West Coast, so it's a little bit different up here, but we are from Richmond, Virginia. And so we've noticed a big breakthrough in the last few years. And so today, I'm going to talk to you about how that was accomplished, both with our studio and me personally. So here we go.

First, I want to start out with a couple of questions.

Have you ever found yourself doom-scrolling, and you're looking at someone's work, whether it's a studio or an artist, and all of a sudden, you get a little jealous. You're like, "Why do they get all the attention? Why are they getting so much exposure?" And like, "Why is it not me? What am I doing wrong?" So let's go to the next one.

"Why do some artists and studios get more attention than others?" That's the question, right? So also, some more questions. How do they get noticed in the first place? But, most importantly...

"Why not me? What's wrong with me? What have I done? What can I do to get better?" Not too long ago I was asking myself those exact same questions...

And as one of the co-founders and creative directors, one of my responsibilities is to find opportunities like this, to show everybody what we're capable of and why they should trust us and why they should hire us, really.

But that's really hard for me to do because I have every form of anxiety.

I know it's really common to have anxiety. I have every flavor, which is kind of fun...

including presentation anxiety. So how am I here? I'm nervous, sure, but I'm up here. How did I overcome that? That's really what we're going to talk about today, and hopefully, it inspires everything that you do moving forward.

Really quick question. How many of you are motion designers? Okay. How many of you are aspiring motion designers? Okay.

Thank you, Ricardo. How many of you are illustrators and creatives on the outside? Okay. All right. So that's the vast majority.

So... WHY NOT ME? I HAVE EVERY FLAVOR OF ANXIETY. Getting back to the anxiety that I have every flavor... social anxiety, presentation anxiety, and even sleep anxiety, which is like that really thing, you know, why? Why do I get anxiety before I go to bed? But even if I didn't have anxiety at the time of... A few years ago, I was so insecure at doing anything that I really didn't... even know what to say. If I would have been invited to a podcast or an interview or anything like that, I really would not have had the confidence to talk about what we do. Or even myself, I would've been freaked out. So does it sound familiar to anyone? Yeah, okay, I thought so.

But in 2021, everything changed completely...

and I didn't really have a specific method of how to change, how to get better.

I just kind of figured it out as I went along. But since then, I have compiled it into three important steps that I want to share with you. THREE STEPS TO BREAKING THROUGH Control of my own fears.

Confidence within me.

And building trust in the community so that the people who really need to share, actually care about me and my studio and my work. You cannot be someone without having a support system behind you. That's really important. So whether you're an artist or a studio, the results of this are going to be the same.

And I promise this is not only going to change how people perceive you, but really how you perceive yourself. So with that said, before we get started...

I really need to make you aware of the very unique format that we're going to be using.

So I thought long and hard about the best way to present this information. And I'm kind of a geek, whatever, so I made...

I converted my journey into a board game called, wait for it... "Breakthrough Adventure." So we're going to be traveling from start to finish, overcoming challenges along the way.

But don't let the game befool you. The stuff is hard and you really face a lot of demons when you go through it.

So we're going to get really deep. And it might be a little weird for some of you. Might be scary for all of you out there. But don't worry, we're going to do it together. We're going to figure it out. All right. So here's a closer look at the board.

And the object of the game is to travel across the trail that you see here. We're going to start at the dragon, go to the treasure chest, head up that village, and then we're going to be in the castle. The idea is we're going to hit these three main challenges. And if we reach the castle with all three cards in hand, then we can finally break through into the castle and win the game. The only way to lose the game is to quit. So just keep pushing forward, even though it's hard. And now that we've taken a look at the board, let's take a look at-- oh, wait, sorry about that. Still getting used to Keynote. These are our control cards. Control, confidence, community. So this is our player, the Maven and she kind of represents me. And, to be honest, I picked this illustration off of Adobe Stock. Thank you very much. Because she looked like she was about to twerk. And I was like, you know, it kind of feels spicy. I like her. So this is what I want to look like.

All right. Since this is a reflection of my journey, we're going to be using my actual strengths and weaknesses. So I'm really putting myself out there. We talked about anxiety. I also have ADHD, which is really cool. Thank you. I don't mean to brag or anything, but, yeah, I have that too. I'm also really, really busy. I have a family. I own a studio. Lots of things going on. So it's hard to learn and do new things. So if I can do these things, so can you.

Finally, I'm just really insecure, just God given. I mean, that's just the way I am. I have to battle it all the time. My parents raised me right. It's not their fault, I promise. I just am this way. Now, moving on to strengths.

I'm very ambitious to a fault. I take on way more than I can chew. And then I figure it out along the way. I have an excellent support system at home...

with my husband Adam, who's probably watching, and my daughter, Arabella, and Max. They deal with all of my stuff.

And then, of course, I have a decade of studio experience, which is kind of a big deal for this, right? I realized that I'm not an individual artist, but it doesn't really matter. This really will hone in skills for individuals or studios, whoever.

And finally, we have a really strong portfolio at Cream, which... I'm going to show you a little bit of it.

First of all, here's my team, Ruth Newberry, who was right there. Everybody look at her. Make her uncomfortable. She doesn't want to be up here right now, so I have to do it.

Dave Swain, he's my other partner. Hannah Quinn, amazing producer. And Emily Eha, another amazing producer. I'm so, so very lucky to have their support.

Also, side note, you're going to see some QR codes on the screen. If you take a picture of those, they'll take you to pretty much whatever I'm talking about. So if I'm talking about Cream, it will take you to the Cream page and so on and so on. But I've got all kinds of different shout-outs on here.

All right. So we're an animation studio, like I said, based out of Richmond, Virginia. And these are my people. These are... This is why I do what I do because I love them so much. We go everywhere together. And the studio really motivates me to be better, both in my personal life and in my professional life.

And I really wish I could show you so much of our work, but I have 60 minutes. It seems like a lot of time, but it's not. So all I can do is show you this, but it's pretty good. This is for the Richmond Forum. It's one of my favorite pieces. They are the largest non-profit-speaking series and it's held right in Richmond and we've been their sponsor for, I think a decade now. So, let's take a look.

In a time that magnifies the darkest of our differences, it's easy to find solace in the familiar. But the connections we seek begin with patience... brave conversations, and a genuine desire to listen, learn, and grow. By igniting our curiosity for one another and opening our minds to new and challenging ideas... we'll carve uncharted pathways in our understanding. We discover the universal connections that bond us together. Tonight, we invite powerful voices that reveal courage, perseverance, and wonder. As we gather to hear their unique perspectives... we add color and context to our own points of view. Our conversations will echo beyond these walls, adding new layers to our collective history... and reshaping our world through reflection, insight, and growth... at the Richmond Forum. THE RICHMOND FORUM Cool, right? Thank you. Thank you very much. And I can brag about that one because I wasn't the lead on it, Ruth was, you know what I mean. I thought it was pretty awesome. So, now that you know about us, you know about me, let's jump into the first challenge, which is Tame the Dragon. And really what that means is gaining control of who you are, your future, your fears, your ego, your thoughts. I know it's a lot and it's kind of hippie of me to be up here talking about all these things. But if you want to be successful, you have to gain control of your thinking, period.

And your remote.

There we go.

All right. So... the first step of my journey started in 2021.

I bet Joey Korenman, who is the founder of School of Motion, I met him at a couple of conferences that I went to a few years prior, and I'm a big fan of the podcast. Just the whole community itself. And I know that his influence, it stretches pretty wide. During that time, we had the COVID situation, we were all kind of in it and everything was really disruptive.

There were protests. There's lots of change happening all at once, and things felt scary for many reasons.

And I noticed that I also started to see a little bit of disruption in our own community, in our own industry, in motion design. And, honestly, I just saw a lot of freelancers that were posting about how studios were taking advantage of them. And I'm a studio and I was like, "No, we're not. I promise you." They weren't talking about us and they weren't talking about me. But I felt threatened because the community was threatened. Artists need studios and studios need artists, and it should be a really good, healthy relationship. And when one doesn't trust the other, there are problems. So I felt the need to clear the air. I saw a lot of misinformation going on about why studios wanted project files and why studios paid Net 30 or whatever. And I was like, "No, but that's not the reason. That's not why we do it and I can't speak for every studio." So I wanted to reach out to Joey to let him know, like, "Hey, that's what's going on. And like, "We clear the air. Let's figure this out." But, instead, Joey wanted to have me on the podcast. So I wanted him to talk about it. I didn't want to talk about it. I wasn't prepared for anything like this.

So... I was completely panicked because he invited me on to the podcast. And again, a couple of years ago, that wasn't my thing.

I was worried about making my studio look stupid, making myself look stupid, making Joey look stupid. All the things kind of crumbling down. I just had immediate fear. That's all I could hear in my head.

But instead of saying no...

I knew I had three weeks to figure it out. I really, really wanted to help the community, and that was my motivation for pushing through. So here's how I did it.

One... HOW I GAINED CONTROL OVER FEAR I identified my ego.

I know that sounds maybe a little abstract, but the ego is the thing that really sabotages us. 1. IDENTIFY EGO And if you let it overcome your thoughts, it is going to tell you lies all the time, including "You can't do it" because your ego is there to protect you and, you know, whatever, from lions and stuff, but we don't need it anymore.

So I needed to hear... what was going on and differentiate between what I believed to be true and what my ego was feeding me as a lie to protect me.

So how do you identify your ego? I highly recommend this book You are Not Your Brain. There are so many wonderful books out there. But that's a great one.

You have to listen and be present in your mind, and meditation will do that for you. I'm not great at meditation. I kind of suck at it. My husband's really good. He's like a super meditator or whatever. But for me, I can listen to my thoughts all day long, and I can differentiate between whether it's true or not. The thing about the brain and our thoughts is that your brain is just processing external information. And if you're not present when it does that, it could go into weird places. That idea can be mis-categorized as a belief, but it's not really. So...

we have to re... sorry, we have to rethink everything with a present mind. So present mind processing. And then we can go into a belief.

So, thoughts are just the brain's way of interpreting information. It doesn't make it true or false. You have to decide what you want to be true or false. Okay? Number two, rewire your thinking. So rewiring is a little bit more difficult. 2. REWIRE THINKING Because it's already a damage and trauma to your brain, something that you've been telling yourself for years. This takes longer, if it's not like a new idea or a new thought. So the best way to do this...

is to rethink it in the way that you really believe. So, for example...

if you have a false belief like "I can't do this podcast, I'm going to embarrass myself and my studio and I should just quit." With a present mind, you can reprocess it and say, "No, that's not true. I can do this because I know what I'm talking about. And I can't tell everybody unless I actually do it. I can't quit." Right? And so your new belief, if you keep telling yourself, "I'm not nervous, I'm excited." Your new belief will actually be that. It really works. It sounds like magic. And it kind of is, actually. You just start to truly believe what you're thinking. Number three...

Create a mantra. Again, I know it sounds kind of stupid, but it's not. It really, really works. So a mantra, which is it's similar, but it's more focused on addressing the fear itself. So...

you basically are able to lift up yourself when you're feeling your weakest. So mantra is really great right before you get on stage or right before the scary thing.

So my mantra is, "I'm here to help others, but I can't help if I quit right now," because I'm always like, maybe I'll just fake an illness or something, you know? That will be okay, right? "Everyone wants me to do well because we're all in the same team." I have to constantly remind myself of that because for a long time, all of you were very scary to me. But that's just not true. You all want everyone to succeed. Nobody wants a crappy speaker, right? You want good information.

So coming from someone who has struggled with presentation anxiety, this stuff really works and I'm on the very extreme side of presentation anxiety. So, seriously, if I can do this, anyone can. 4. GET EXTRA HELP All right. Finally, this is like the juicy nugget. This is what I really want to share with you.

As great as all of those things were that I just described...

a couple of days before I was about to go on this podcast, I freaked out. I had a total panic attack, which it doesn't happen often because I didn't put myself in these situations. So I was really thinking like something is wrong with me. I need to go to the doctor. So, for this game, "I went to the healer." Okay? I was actually surprised how many options there were for presentation anxiety treatments, and now there are even more. It's kind of cool. My doctor told me that so many journalists, so many other doctors, so many professionals take something, a little pill, before they go on stage.

That's cheating. But is it really? If you're failing and you can't do something and you need a little pill to give you confidence, heck, yeah, take that pill, unless you don't want to, I'm not a doctor. Don't sue me, please. Thank you.

I'll be honest. What she prescribed me is propranolol.

And like everything else, it has multiple uses and they give it to heart patients who have... I think high blood pressure. Don't quote me on that.

You don't have to take it every day. You take it right before you go on stage or whatever you're freaking out about. And then that is it. Problem solved, right? It lowers your heart rate so that you can calm down and you don't go into fight or flight. So that has helped me tremendously and now I really don't even have to take it very often, maybe once or twice a year.

So the day of... the School of Motion Podcast. I practice being present.

I was sure not to let any fearful thoughts get into my head. Did all the mantra stuff. Took my pill. How did I do? I did it. It was awesome and it was so easy. You know what's crazy is it was not hard at all. I literally was freaking out what felt like for nothing. It was an easy conversation. I even got to laugh a few times, it was a full-hour and we met clients from it. I didn't even know clients listen to School of Motion podcast, but that's cool. I had emails from strangers I'd never met before... that wanted to thank me for filling them with more information, to help them understand why studios did what they did.

I was on cloud nine. I really felt great.

But then I got trolled... (UH OH) YOU HAVE BEEN TROLLED. and I was looking on the School of Motion podcast like one of their promotions. And I saw in the comment section, there's a bunch of good ones. There was one bad one.

She said, "I was cringe." And it broke my freakin heart. I lost it. I mean, I wasn't crying, but I was really affected by it. I felt like for all that that I just went through, if she only knew, you know? But she didn't and she didn't care. And that's okay. It's not her job to care. It's not her job to listen to the entire podcast. And instead of maybe not listening or scrubbing through it, which I think that's maybe what she did. Some of her points didn't really make sense to me. I'm like, "Why did she call this out?" Because I clearly said it a different way. I can't control what other people do. I don't even have control over whether or not they like what I do. So I had to really reframe everything from there. I went from up here to way down there very quickly, but I redid all of my control steps...

and I realized it's not going to stop me. And actually, I use it as motivation to push forward.

I took the false belief. I used present mind reprocessing and I created my own belief and I told myself, I'm good at this. I'm pretty good and I'm going to do it again. And so, I did it again. I did it many, many times. And I'm continuing to do it. And, yes, "Literally happening right now." I think that it's really important to not let other people decide your future. And so, yes, I use it as motivation and I will do it every time now.

So, next one is, hey, we tame the dragon. That's how we do it. I overcame my fear and I gained control over myself. CHALLENGE I: CONGRATULATIONS, YOU TAMED THE DRAGON AND GAINED CONTROL! So... we are going to go onto Challenge II, we're going to find the treasure and reveal the confidence. CHALLENGE II: FIND THE TREASURE TO REVEAL YOUR CONFIDENCE This is how I did it. HOW CREAM'S RE-BRAND INSPIRED ME TO CHANGE All right. What you see here...

is our 2021 Cream website. That was the extent of our branding. We had been around for a long time. We opened up in 2013...

and I think we had really good work for the time.

We had an unusual dynamic having two owners female, one male. We had a lot of things that were kind of being... that were interesting at the time in 2021.

We had a couple of bigger clients, a few good pieces, but we weren't really good at branding and positioning ourselves to where it was clear what we did and who we wanted to work with.

So we rebranded.

And let me see if I can... play that. There we go. We rebranded. We put up a new website, a new reel. NEW SITE, REEL, AND BRANDING We had kind of an anything but vanilla approach to this. We really wanted people to know what we were capable of...

why we do what we do... and the richness and the flavors of our work.

We like to think of ourselves as the secret ingredient for indulgent visuals that engage viewers and elevate brands because, hey, everything's better with cream, right? Get it? All right. So we would hear things, like after we rebranded, we would hear things like, "Wow, I can't believe I've never heard of you before." Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.

But we could tell that there was excitement. There was a lot of connection with our work that was being put out there just by rebranding. And so...

and so, we also included... these are actually on our website now too. We have a custom website, animated website banners on each page to kind of show off every style that we were capable of.

But it got me thinking. "Should I re-brand myself?" Cream was able to do that, kind of transform itself into a new studio in a lot of ways, just by putting a pretty shell on the outside.

And, no, I did not get a makeover. It's not where I'm going.

So... HOW I FOUND MY CONFIDENCE This is how I found my confidence. Okay.

This is the second challenge again, redefining myself was a process that was like multilayered... and it's a little bit of personal branding, a little bit of personal positioning. Anybody familiar with positioning, in general, in this room? Positioning. Okay, cool. So positioning is really defining who you are as a company, as a studio, as a brand, as an individual. It's calling out exactly what your goals are. The kind of work you want to do, who you want to do it for.

It's putting you in a very clear category for everybody around you to respond to. Some people like it. Some people don't. But the ones that like it, they're going to be your biggest fans because they know exactly who you are. It's very clear. The positioning is really powerful for companies...

and for individuals. So, you have to know yourself when you're "repositioning" and discovering yourself, right? You have to ask, "What do I even like? Who am I? Lots of questions you never thought you'd have to ask. And the cool thing is, is you don't have to know, really, because that's hard for a lot of people. It was really hard for me. I didn't know who I was. I knew who I wanted to be. And that's okay, too, because you can totally shoot for the stars and say, "This is what I want to be." You have to define yourself.

1. DISCOVER SELF 2. DISCOVER PURPOSE All right, then you go into discovering your purpose. Has anyone heard of Ikigai? All right. Thank you. Ikigai is not some icky guy in the corner that's creeping you out. It's a Japanese concept that is beautiful. Please look it up. It's I-K-I-G-A-I.

Basically, it's like a Venn diagram, but split into fours. It takes your purpose in life, your passion, thing that you're good at, things that you can make money at doing. Takes all of those and puts it into one little sliver and that's it. That's your Ikigai. That's what you can give to the world. Make money, feel great about it. You're great in the first place at doing it, you wake up every day, and that's what you want to do.

So just through a lot of YouTube tutorials and a lot of books, I learned how to discover my purpose. And I wanted to be a good person. That was it. It's really what it boiled down to. And I was like, "Well, how is that going to transmit into what I do at a studio?" It's kind of lofty, right? Well, my role is to pull clients in and to get them excited about working with us.

And... it's actually pretty easy being a good person when you are in sales in a lot of ways because a good salesman or a saleswoman...

they're actually really good people and they help you. They're not pushing anything on you. They're not talking about work. They're not telling you about their capabilities. They're not doing any of that stuff. They're helping you figure out if you need them or not. And so that's what I started to realize. I'm just going to help everybody. I'm just going to help everybody that calls on me, whether it was a freelance artist that I had never met before, that reached out to me on LinkedIn, which happened a whole lot. Ruth can attest to it. She saw my calendar... or if it was someone who was calling because they needed something that I clearly knew we would not be the right fit for.

I still help them. I didn't say, "You know what, we're not the right fit, go somewhere else." It was like, "Hey, I think this is a bigger conversation. I think this is what you need. Let me follow up. And I'll give you some references and I would truly try to help everybody all the time." That... is taxing. I'll be honest, it takes a lot out of you, but it also feeds you. And that is what just filled me up with so much satisfaction. I found my purpose, just helping.

3. DISCOVER VALUE So another thing that plays in the Ikigai is your value.

And I'm not talking about what you like about yourself? It's about what other people like about you.

So... let's see. For example... uh-oh.

I went too far. For example...

if you are an excellent illustrator, okay? You know that because people told you that.

So you can use that to enhance whatever other things that you're good at, your other values. So if you're a very generous person and you're a great illustrator and you want to help somebody, maybe you'll just create some illustrations for them for free. I'm not recommending to work for free for everyone. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you pick specific times to gift your value to other people.

And although it might seem counterintuitive or a waste of time, it's not. It is not because the currency in our society and our community is kindness, generosity, and trust. And if you are showing your value and sharing your value with everyone or with those who need it the most, they're going to appreciate it and remember you and they're going to pass that along.

HOW I FOUND MY CONFIDENCE All right. So... discovering your voice. DISCOVER VOICE My whole thing was really, why am I special? I did not feel like I had any sort of specific platform to talk about. I didn't feel particularly interesting at all. So I really wanted to know how am I going to say something and really be heard? So you have to figure out what makes you different.

Why are you different? What weird things about you that you have that you actually might not even like about yourself? For me, that was ADD. I hated it. It sucked. Who has ADD? Anybody wants to share? All right. There we go. It's really annoying sometimes to have ADD. Am I right? Yeah. So I started talking about that a little bit in some of my posts out into the world. I started sharing that with other people.

And a weird thing happened. I noticed more and more people were talking about ADD with me and they were like, "Yeah, I heard you talk about this one thing. I saw you post about this other thing. I have ADD, too." And I felt heard. I felt seen when you talked about this and, all of a sudden, it really took off. So I was the girl with ADD that talked about it on LinkedIn for a while. And then I found some other things that I really wanted to dive into, more important things that weren't just about me. They're about everybody.

One thing that I did not reveal, really, with the outside world. We didn't reveal was the fact that we were majority women-owned.

Why do we not do that? And I think it was because we were insecure.

I know, for me, I didn't want anybody judging our work before they saw our work.

I didn't want a free ride because we were women-owned. I didn't want anybody to give us any credit that was not due to us unless we earned it.

And Ruth felt exactly the same way.

I had it wrong.

I had it wrong because what I didn't realize is that I could have been leading and inspiring and giving permission to all of the other women out there who were thinking about doing the same thing...

and starting that conversation. I was way too insecure. It was in my own mind. They're going to care about me. It's not about you, it's about them.

So it takes courage. It takes bravery to really expose yourself. And I know it kind of sounds silly now, right? Majority women-own like, what's the big deal? But it was really hard for us to actually start speaking about it. But when we did... we had so many people saying thank you, women and men.

And it really affected us in a way that, you know, kind of have the regrets cease a little bit. Damn, I really wish we would've talked about it sooner.

So discovering your voice just means discovering the things that you have uniquely inside of you. It's just your own experience, your own challenges, the things that make you a little bit weird. That's okay, right? We're all weird here.

So I started posting about majority women-owned on LinkedIn, right? And I started noticing I was getting a lot of followers, kind of all of a sudden. But I will say this, it's not all just me. We've been posting a lot of great work, too. I was really proud of it. But starting that conversation when we were at our... we were hitting a peak, we were hitting our stride, I think was really powerful for a lot of people. They're like, "Damn, they're women-owned, too." So we got some exposure on it, and we started getting more and more attention. And then one day, I got a LinkedIn message...

asking me to be the fireside chat speaker for Camp Mograph.

Has anyone ever heard of Camp Mograph? Hey, that's right. So Camp Mograph is like a real deal camp. It's a real camp outside of like a YMCA, and it's for motion design community. Illustrators, anybody that's kind of in that world can go...

but it's a three or four-day camp. It's analog, and you don't get to show anything on a screen. If you do a speech, you just have to sit there and talk. So I'm like... 90 minutes, by the way, 90 minutes of me yammering on about whatever. I was thinking, "No way I can do this." Why would anybody invite me to do that? Then again, I did my whole thing and I just said, "Yes, I'll do it." So... I did.

And when I did...

there was one question over there right about where you're sitting.

And it was towards the end of the speech.

And the person who asked me the question at the time was a freelance motion designer. Her name is Casey, and I didn't know her at the time, but she popped up and she said, "Hey, as a mom and a studio owner...

do you have any tips or tricks about how to balance your life? And I'm like, "No." You know, right away, "I'm sorry, honey. I'm no good at that. I wish you well." It was pretty much it. And I remember getting off-stage and being like, "Dang, I really failed her." And I kind of brought that with me. But I talked to her after the fact and she was just so excited to see someone up here that was a mom. She told me it was the first time that she saw a mom up on a stage talking about motion design. Now, that blew my mind.

Seems a little bit weird, right? Why aren't there more moms doing this? Turns out motion design is really hard and it takes up all your time.

That's why.

So, basically, I would not have been able to be on that stage...

and talk to Casey about being a mom at all. If I didn't have the confidence that I learned from the step before, because I wouldn't have even been invited to Camp Mograph. So all of these things kind of fall in line with each other.

All right, so the second. Oh, sorry. That's how I found my confidence. So we have to make sure that I'm saying all these things out loud for our live audience. All right. So I gained my confidence card, and I found the treasure.

So, finally...

we have to build a village to grow the community. CHALLENGE III: BUILD A VILLAGE TO GROW YOUR COMMUNITY You really can't have a community of one. You got to work on your people's skills a little bit.

I know for me, it was so much easier just to hide behind my laptop or my computer and just be in a bubble. And that becomes addictive, especially now because we all work remote still. We gave up our studio. It's better. I like it better. But still, you need to have the people and the support around you to lift you up.

First thing you have to do is really pick your platform. PICK A PLATFORM So... I'm an old lady, so I'm on LinkedIn a lot. That's my thing. And...

I know that it's really getting very popular with designers and good for everybody for kind of jumping on that boat. But if you don't like LinkedIn, don't feel like you have to be on LinkedIn. If you prefer another platform like Instagram or Dribbble or Behance, whatever it is, stick to it. Just be consistent on that one because there's plenty of clients. There's plenty of people out there that are in that community to support you. You can only be consistent if you really enjoy the platform.

So... you have to connect in real life by going to real meetups or conferences or something. You have to show up for people with people and build those relationships.

We've been to a lot of conferences over the last few years. Some of my favorites... South By, that was fun. Dash Bash, Blend Fest, which I don't know if they're going to do that anymore. Of course, Adobe MAX is like the best, right? All right. There we go.

So you got to get out there. OFFF Fest is another one. We went to OFFF Fest last year in Barcelona.

And although it can be expensive, if you go to the smaller ones, the really specific ones... that's where you're going to find the most connection. That's where you're going to be forced into a room with a bunch of people. I feel very uncomfortable and they're going to actually talk to you. That's what you want. You don't want to just be in a huge, huge crowd all the time. That's the opposite of human connection. CONNECT IN REAL LIFE MOGRAPH MEETUP And if you are not in a place where you can go to conferences all the time, join the club. It's really hard. They're expensive. You got to pay for travel and it's a big time commitment to go out of your way. You lose work, all of that stuff. You have to juggle all these things. So then just make one. Make a meetup, make one.

It was so easy for me to have a local community around me because I think it was 2017. We've been running the studio for a few years...

and I started noticing a lot of Mographers and people who are working in the industry they were kind of showing up in Richmond, Virginia, like random. So I thought, "Why don't we all kind of get together?" And then the Mograph Meetup was born.

And I cannot emphasize this enough.

It is so easy to make a group out of nothing. At the time, it was Facebook groups, but now is Instagram. You just make a page and people start following it and showing up. Oh, my gosh. How hard was that? Right? But then all you have to do is set a date and a time and then everybody shows up. Now, obviously, you need to use your network. You need to gather people and get people excited about it. But it can start very small. We had I think the first few were like eight or nine people. And then, all of a sudden, it's like word got out. We had people driving two, three hours to go to a Mograph Meetup. And that blew my mind because I was not doing anything special. I was completely out of time anyway. I needed something very quick and easy, and this was the easiest thing I could have done. So Mograph Meetup was born.

Shout-out to Rachel for the awesome branding, by the way.

3. GET INVOLVED. CREATIVE CODEX Another way to get involved is the Creative Codex.

This is kind of important to me.

So, the Creative Codex is a community-led site that aims to empower the next generation with valuable teachings on the foundation of the motion design industry.

What the heck does that mean? Well, I'll tell you.

Have you ever heard a word like motion or design? And it's used in different places and different corners of the industry incorrectly or style frames or storyboards or anything else. It's like, "Well, that's not really what a storyboard looks like. It looks like this." Well, that's not really an animatic. An animatic from my point of view is actually this. People are using things incorrectly. At least I think they are. But who am I? I'm just one person, right? So why should anyone's one opinion really matter? Exactly. That's why the Creative Codex is a group of community members. It's all volunteer. And it's basically like a Wiki. We can all contribute. You all can contribute. If you... go to that code. Or maybe the next one, the next QR code, one of them. I had to include two, because one of them I wasn't sure about.

It will take you to the Creative Codex site. Right now it's sort of in Beta, but here's what it's going to do and how it's going to work.

So, let's say you go to the full site, which is basically going to have a dictionary of all these terms that are useful in our industry. Maybe you see one and you're like, "Hmm, I don't think that's it. I think I can do better." You can actually submit a term with a new definition. Give an example URL, if you want. If you have visuals to go with it, submit those as well... and you'll even get credited for your submission. It has to go into review by the committee. But we're just all volunteers and we want you to succeed too. So it's not like it's some big judging panel to be afraid of.

This is the volunteer committee. VOLUNTEER COMMITTEE Austin Shaw, literally, wrote the book on motion design. I love saying that, by the way.

You might notice there are a lot of studios and a lot of individuals on here. It goes anywhere from audio engineers to high-end production companies to very specific animation studios and beyond, individuals as well.

So, this conversation started because I posted something on LinkedIn.

That's how I got involved. Hung Le, who is amazing, of course, if you don't know who he is, he's one of the owners of BIEN. The other one is Ricardo, right here. Everybody look at Ricardo. Make him very uncomfortable.

So he reached out to me. Hung reached out to me because I posted something about this very thing. I've been passionate about the fact that motion design has an issue. And it's actually not just motion design, it's the creative industry. We are kind of layered. I don't know if you guys have witnessed this, but we've got production companies, we've got studios, we've got artists. There's the illustration world, there's the animation world, production world. We're kind of all spread out. We take little nuggets, little pieces of the terminology and the terms that we know... and maybe we tweak it a little bit. We tweak the meeting or we tweak the actual word. There's a lot of overlap, and it's really confusing, not just for us but for our clients. So we're trying to fix this in this way. And in a lot of ways, it's going to leave a legacy because we believe it's going to be the gold standard for how all creative industries use their terms.

There's other ways that you can get involved in the community.

If you are a studio like me and you need support because you don't know what you're doing, if you're having trouble with positioning or branding or whatever it is, there are actually companies that do just this one thing, and that's RevThink with Tim and Joel.

They've really helped us... throughout the years. But you can take them on like a consultant. Really do one-on-one work with them. Or you can just join the community for free. And when you do that, you're talking with a bunch of people in the community. There's hundreds, if not thousands, of people in there. And if you're a freelancer, give Hayley Akins a call because she knows what she's doing. And Motion Hatch, I love supporting Motion Hatch because she really helps artists...

work with studios easier so that we're all speaking the same language and she helps them prepare for a very successful career.

Camp.

So...

When I was at Camp Mograph... and I spoke to Casey...

I remember even having our conversation and kind of going through, maybe I can reach out to her. I know she's a mom and maybe it makes sense to have a discussion again this year, so four years later.

She actually reached out to me, of course, on LinkedIn, where I'm most active. And she said, "Hey, do you know of any more moms that are in motion design? I kind of want to start a group or something, like... Have you ever started a group?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I've started some groups, you know?" And I told her straight out, I can't do any more groups. I can be a part of it, but this will be your thing. And, man, she really took it on...

because Mothers of Mograph was born like a week after our conversation. And I'm not taking any credit for this. This is all Casey and Jenny. MOTHERS OF MOGRAPH So this was founded a couple of months ago, maybe one month ago.

And the whole purpose of it is just to have a group of mothers that have been through the same stuff mothers have been through that are in motion design and it sounds so simple. It's like, "Well, why not just create this thing? And how hard was that?" It's not hard and that's the point. But what is hard is just starting it or committing to it.

For Casey and Jenny...

I remember having a conversation with them saying, "Watch how fast this happens." One month, they had over 200 members on their Slack channel... and motion design is small. So I know that's not a big number, but that's really impressive for Mothers in motion design, considering we have some of the lowest rates of women in the industry and mothers in the industry. Okay. So I had no idea there were even 200. So I was thrilled. And the comments in Slack are really revealing.

So many women felt heard, and seen just because there was a group to feel heard and seen.

So I can't stress to you enough how important your unique voice is to share with the world. I didn't think that what I had was interesting. I didn't think that what I had to offer... would inspire anyone or help anyone. But that's just not true. It's in all of us. We just have to have the confidence to share it.

So that's how I helped build a community. And to really break through in the industry. It's not just about professionally breaking through, breaking through with my studio, getting seen, and getting amazing projects. Yeah, that all happens. It's true. The biggest thing that I can say to you that this is a breakthrough that is very personal. You're going to feel it in every relationship that you have because it's going to be real and authentic, and you're going to start getting deeper with people and actually feeling like you're making a difference and that is the most powerful thing of all.

So we've got our control. We've got our confidence. Got our community. We've broken through to the castle and we are on our way to success.

That's it. Thank you so much.

THANK YOU AMANDA

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Break Through: Amplify Your Creative Voice in Motion Design - S6006

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ABOUT THE SESSION

Prepare to feel unstoppable as Amanda Russell, co-founder and creative director at Cream Studio, reveals how overcoming presentation anxiety led her to becoming a well-respected industry leader in motion design. Amanda will candidly share the secret toolkit that will empower you to express your unique creative perspective without fear. This session is for creative professionals who want to learn how to squash crippling nerves, confidently speak while showcasing their portfolio, and gain respect as a standout leader in a competitive creative market.

Amanda will openly discuss and share tips on how to:

  • Block nerves so you can communicate creative ideas more effectively
  • Present your pitch deck so you look like a pro
  • Advance your creative career through meaningful conversation
  • Earn fans, followers, and clients without trying too hard

Technical Level: General Audience

Type: Luminary Session

Category: Inspiration

Track: Video, Audio, and Motion

Audience Types: Art/Creative Director, Educator, Graphic Designer, Motion Designer, Post-Production Professional, 3D, Illustrator, Marketer

This content is copyrighted by Adobe Inc. Any recording and posting of this content is strictly prohibited.


By accessing resources linked on this page ("Session Resources"), you agree that 1. Resources are Sample Files per our Terms of Use and 2. you will use Session Resources solely as directed by the applicable speaker.

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