Lately many of our customers have been wondering where we find all those amazing artists that we work with, so this newsletter is dedicated to our creative team – how we find them, screen them, and work with them.

Each of our animation projects is seen to completion by a dedicated project manager (we only have two right now) and, on higher paid projects, edited and sweetened by a sound designer (our own Director of Business Development Bryan Zug, until we find a good candidate to relieve him of that!).

The creativity for each project comes from our animators, illustrators, composers, voice-over artists, and writers. Therefore, the artistic quality depends mostly on their talent, so we search all over Internet for the best talent we can find. 

How large is our creative team?

We have 181 creative people currently in our database, profiled in Batchbook according to their skills, with sample portfolios, contact info, etc. All of them are independent artists, residing in US and outside US, from Brazil to Germany to India. They are all freelancers who tell us when they are available for work, so that we can plug them into a project that fits their schedule.

We have recently started profiling them on our blog, so check it out. 

Where do we find them?

Our favorite online “fishing grounds” –

For animators we love to look on Film Festival sites (like SIFF,VIFF, Berlinale); animation school sites (like Vancouver Film School); animation blogs (like CartoonBrew or ColdHardFlash); video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo; Twitter – through searching via Tweetdeck for “animation” or on twitter directories like Twitr.

We always find great illustrators who do children’s illustration, they tend to create better characters (on sites like Childrens Illustrators) and we’ve found some illustrators on stock sites (like iStockphoto).

Most composers come to us by word of mouth or on MySpace; voice-over artists and writers have been harder to find, so we only have found good ones though friends recommendations. And, lately people have been contacting us almost daily inquiring for potential work, so we hardly look for them ourselves. 

How do we screen them?

We screen all of our talent against our brand values – wow, simple, smart, alive.

Do we say “Wow!” out loud when we see or listen to their work? Is their work simple - does it flow easily, without effort, is it intuitive, does it seem natural?

Does the artist know their craft and appropriate tools/software, is the work intelligent and/or innovative? Is the work alive - is it human, authentic/original, enthusiastic, conversational?

Only if all 4 criteria match, we contact the artist and offer to work with us. If the answer is positive, we add the artist to our database in Batchbook and contact them when the right project comes along.

How do we work with them?

For their first project, we put them on our Bootstrapping package, to give them enough time to be trained, and we always have backups in case something goes wrong. Once they have completed a project to customer satisfaction, they move on to being profiled from NEW to PRO in our database. And from then on, we’re set to work together!

We are excited to join the Common Craft Explainer Network, and are honored to be in such fantastic company. Here is the Common Craft blog post about it.

Jeff Blancato - Voice-over artist.

Jeff Blancato attributes a good portion of his creative output to solo rides in the car and his AM shower. He's the guy you see unashamedly singing/mugging/shouting/vocalizing in your rearview mirror or playing the B3 solo to a classic Yes song on the dashboard. He has also been known to take a shower long enough to fully orchestrate a bridge to an in-progress song while the wallpaper peels around him. Long, long ago, before Pearl Jam was cool and when cassettes lined the new music shelves at Strawberries, Jeff first picked up a guitar. It was The Doors' "Love Me Two Times" that happened first, and the rest is self-taught history. 

Even long, longer ago, when NES was the game system all the cool kids had and you first learned the words to New Edition's "Cool It Now" (all of which you still remember), Jeff was known at school by the 100%-not-flattering nickname "Pee Wee" as a result of his impression of pre-police raid Pee-Wee Herman. It was another notch in his impersonation belt, having had a knack for imitating and creating voices for as long as he can remember.

Here in the present, Jeff calls Seattle home, busying himself with all manner of guitar and bass playing duties, as well as a healthy influx of voice acting jobs. When there's time, he hops in the car and makes all sorts of ungodly noises, some musical, in an attempt to perfect a new character or write some new killer melody.