Seize The Play!

Enter The Playground

• Spillt - Ryan Summers • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Ever felt lost, confused, or simply overwhelmed in the fast-paced creative industry? How about moments when you've doubted your own skills and talents? You're not alone. This episode of "Seize the Play!" paints a vivid picture of the raw, unfiltered journey of working artists, filled with both joy and hardship. Our guiding light is the captivating story of Ed Rhine, the owner of the studio SPILLT whose unwavering passion for animation was the inspiration for this podcast. 

SEIZE THE PLAY! is more than just a podcast – it's a playground designed to inspire, educate, and engage with the creative community. Let's come together and navigate the complexities of this industry, one episode at a time. So let's start up this journey together – because it's time to seize the play!

Join the creative conversation on all things animation and motion design:

Check out our studio website for Spillt's latest and greatest work!

Until the next time, SEIZE THE PLAY!

Ryan Summers:

Have you ever noticed that a lot of great stories end with an apology? Now this story. It starts with an apology, but before I start spilling the tea on who actually had to say I'm sorry, I'd like to tell you a little bit about why we're here Now. All of those people, plus senior editor Alex Miller, senior creative director Brian El ow, executive producer Kate Swift and owner Ed Rhine, these are the voices you'll be hearing from on Seize the Play. This podcast is our story, the story of a little studio in Denver called Spilt.

Ryan Summers:

I started here at Spilt almost exactly a year ago and I came here for a very special reason. Spilt is different. We're headquartered in Denver, but we work from just about everywhere and we come together every day on slacks and zooms and through emails and phone calls and text messages to try to make some cool stuff Stuff like title sequences, promos, bumpers, network IDs, videos all the stuff that probably most of you out there listening you probably make too. We try to sell little things and explain some really big things, and we come from all different backgrounds. Some of us are key slingers, curve operators, pencil pushers, light benders, and we conduct all this creative energy in a really unique way. Some studios build the reputation around a specific look or sometimes specific workflows or tools, but we decided Spilt to build around one simple thing Trying to have as much fun as possible.

Ryan Summers:

Now my name is Ryan Summers and I'm the creative director here at Spillt, and this voice might sound a little bit familiar to you if you ever listened to the School of Motion podcast. I spent a couple years there and I got to talk all about animation and motion design, how all those different things connect together through our day to day jobs. I was so lucky because that got introduced to a lot of different artists. One of them was Glenn Keane, arguably the best living animator. You might be familiar with some of his work Ariel the Beast it truly is a beauty and the beast. And Tarzan Tarzan. If you've ever seen any of those old 2D animated films from Disney, glenn probably did one of the lead characters.

Ryan Summers:

Now, what amazed me the most about talking with Glenn was the absolute joy and nonstop energy he had to pushing himself further and finding more people to collaborate with. That joy was infectious. As an animator, as a director, going from 2D animation to 3D animation, he still had that drive to find out what's next for him in his career, that idea that someone that has been the best in the game for so long, they could still find joy in the day to day and at the future of his industry. It struck me as something that's almost missing from many of us here, and I want to find out why. Now that word careers that's something that's been on my mind a lot lately. The definition of being a working artist seems to be ever changing. We get so busy telling other people's stories that I think we often forget right around there. I'm talking about stories. Let me tell you a little bit of part of my story that's let me hear right now talking to you Now.

Ryan Summers:

Camp MoGraph just ended. It's a wonderfully awesome event that gets put on every year where a couple of hundred different artists take a break from their screens and their clients and their work and they all rock it up to a camp somewhere and they just hang out. It's amazing that if you've never been there you've got to go. But let's go really far back, way back to the very first night of the very first camp. I was actually really lucky to be the first person ever invited to talk in front of everyone on the first night of the camp's inaugural fireside chat and I was super excited, but I was also probably just as nervous. What was I going to do? Just talk about myself the whole time?

Ryan Summers:

Instead, I decided to do something a little bit different. I decided to ask three simple questions. First, I asked them if they were where they thought they were going to be when they initially got started in the industry. There could be a big gulf between what your expectations are when you start off in an industry like this and where the day-to-day grind of just living as a working artist can take you. It can lead to a lot of confusion and disappointment. That leads to the second question I asked everybody there Do you feel imposter syndrome? That was the question that everyone raised their hands on. It's not surprising. This industry is pretty chaotic. It can change at a moment. The tools you use today may not be the tools you're supposed to use tomorrow. We're always chasing trends. Imposter syndrome made sense, but being able to see that everyone there, for the most part, has felt imposter syndrome, it made me really realize that we need to be talking more about how we do our work, why we do our work, and sharing those stories, because there's a lot that just gets stuck behind the keyboards and you never hear the day-to-day from everybody out there. Now that last question that I asked leads to today sitting here talking to you. It's actually driven the title of this entire podcast.

Ryan Summers:

I asked everybody there Just very simply are you all having fun? Now, think about that. That's kind of a silly question to ask. Not every single day is going to be fun. This job is still a job, but when we all started, didn't we think that there was going to be a little bit more fun waking up and making art and animating and designing and being around a bunch of other people that do that? Now it's an amazing possibility, but it's also frightening when that doesn't always happen. The industry is constantly changing in terms of who wants our services and how we value them. How we do our business is completely different whether you're a freelancer or you're a studio. The world's changing underneath our feet. It's kind of hard to just have fun. Now this podcast. It starts with a story about an apology that I actually had to make.

Ryan Summers:

I mentioned earlier that we have a bunch of different artists working at Spilton. One of them the last name I mentioned Ed Rhine, our owner. He's different month after month after month. I try to find different ways to get the answer of what's your dream job from Ed. Is it a title sequence? Is it working with a cool brand? Do you love niking? Do you want to work with a director? What is it? Do you want to make a cartoon? Do you want to sell a show? Do you want to create toys? Because the weird thing is everywhere else I've ever worked, the owner is someone that all the other employees serve.

Ryan Summers:

But I think I asked the question enough times of Ed that he said one thing. When I asked him hey, ed, you've got to tell me this time, if you had no deadlines, no notes, no budget restrictions what's your dream job, his response actually shocked me. Rather than having one job or one client, what he really wanted was to create something for us. I actually went back and found the meeting where he told me this and he started to explain that in his head. This is how he sees it there's this giant sandbox of creative choice, like surrounded by doors, and we're allowing people to come in, kind of thing, you know as we call it, like it's a playground. It's all about like learning, expansion, growth, knowledge those kinds of things. We're allowing you not to become a child again, but to hop into the creative playground and and join us for the journey that we're going on together.

Ryan Summers:

Now, that created a lot of pause for me. I actually didn't even know what to do with it at first. It almost sounded silly, but that's the magic really behind it. When you're given a playground to try out different things without worrying about if it's a mistake or not, when you're creating, when you're problem solving, when you're staring at that blank page. That's the difference between work feeling like work and work starting to feel a little bit more like fun. There's a reason why we've called this podcast Seize the Play this job. It could be hard every day showing up and filling that blank page, but as long as there's a promise that one day, one job, one client, one moment, one phone call, that you might make yourself laugh, that your work might mean something more to people than just a commercial, that you might actually go to bed so excited that you can't wake up to start again and continue it, that promise to me, that's what I want to spend every single day chasing. So that's the podcast that sees the play.

Ryan Summers:

We're going to be giving you news and views straight from inside the walls of spilt slacks and zooms and meetings and phone calls. We want to hear you in those conversations as well. So what do you think? What have you found? What scares you? What's keeping you from that fun? If you want to find the fun and get your work done, I really ask you to join us as part of the creative conversation on all things animation and motion design. And don't forget, until the next time we talk, get out there and seize the play. Seize the Play is a spilt studio podcast. If you have an idea of someone you'd like us to talk to or a topic you'd like to hear more about, drop us a line at play at spiltcom that's S-P-I-L-L-Tcom, and if you like what you hear, subscribe.

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Ryan Summers

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