When you create something, you want it to be epic, to have a life of its own. But to give it a life that's timeless you need to let others own it for themselves.

In this way, most epic stories move beyond their creator and become something Other.

For instance, Apple created the iPhone. But there are users who demand to use cool things, and developers who make cool things happen - together they make the iPhone epic.

People you don't know, people you've never even met, will pass on your story, but only if you hold it with an open hand. If you create something and say It's mine!, you come off like Gollum in a cave.

But real stories, true stories, stories with momentum, they take on a life of their own that is much bigger than us nitwits who create them.

This is why we at Lilipip have an affinity for stories like Knocking Live. Here's a little app that allows you to stream video from phone to phone, getting used in ways its creator hadn't even considered - deaf people are signing to each other, blind people stream a restaurant menu so a friend can read it to them, families are staying connected while separated by great distance.

And because these stories were bursting out of the platform box, Knocking Live followed its own story where it wanted to go -- by creating a cross-platform app, giving its users the ability to stream video between an iPhone and an Android phone.

The universe is full of recurring themes, and in this age of the mash-up, creators can't afford to hold their creations with a closed fist.

And with that being said, I give you APPATAR...

Since he can remember, Andrew has found himself immersed and in love with storytelling.



We also worked with a great animator, Kevan Atteberry, who captured the vision of our client and developed the storyboard. I love all the little extras he put into the illustrations, like the x'd out eyes of the dead fish and the dollar signs floating up with the bad smell.

I really enjoyed working with Kevan - he's a seasoned illustrator/animator that understands great storytelling, and I hope we get a chance to work with him again soon.

p.s. Check out our latest animations here.

We've had the pleasure of working with Mike on three projects to date - Parallels, Adobe, and Circle Street. Following is a little about him, but you can find out more on his website.

 Never at a loss for words, Mike can remember holding a pretend microphone almost as soon as he could walk. 

But still to this day, the highlight of Mike's career came as a sophomore in college.  Mike, a communications major, was on summer break and waiting tables at the Olive Garden in Mansfield, Ohio.   Through a chance meeting, in between breadsticks and lasagna, Mike was personally invited to the set of  Shawshank Redemption (being filmed just outside of town) to interview Morgan Freeman.  "The 30 minutes I spent with Morgan Freeman in his trailer on the set of that incredible movie was one of the greatest moments of my life."

Also worth noting: Adobe requested a non-standard video size that would fit within their web banner space. My compliments to Andrew for designing a storyboard that filled out Adobe's requested non-standard video size quite nicely!

Jen brings years of writing experience to the Lilipip team, using her love of story telling to help shape the scripts and storyboards that give birth to future animations. As a blogger and active twitter user, Jen's approach to script writing is quick and dirty, catering to the short attention spans of today's web surfers. After a lifetime of writing stories, producing short home movies, and creating the proverbial "mix tape" for every occasion, Jen can hardly believe she gets to do all this for a living.

I look forward to bringing you many more stories of Lilipip in the weeks and months to come!

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!

Born in Brooklyn NY, James aspired to work in a field he would enjoy the most. The only problem was he did not know what he wanted to be! At the age of five he wanted to be a dentist, but a week later after seeing the wildly imaginative "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" he quickly abandoned cavities for cartoons.

James loved cartoons so much, he even wanted to be one. But his parents wisely told him that sticking his finger in an electrical outlet would not comically show his skeleton, but would lead to rather fatal results. Since he wanted to stay alive like all human beings, he decied to take the safe approach and draw himself getting electrocuted, as well as squashed, stretched, and twisted.

For the next twenty years, he continued to draw electrocution, squashing, stretching, and twisting, only with more refined skills and using different characters. Since then, he has graduated from New York's School Of Visual Arts and has interned and freelanced for such companies as Sony Pictures,  Discovery Channel, Frederator Studios, Augenblick Studios, and more recently, Lilipip.

James' goal is to keep improving his skills while finding work in animation and to someday produce his own cartoon series. James' claim to fame is his undying determination to succeed and his crazy but cute cartoon style. Not bad for a guy who likes to collect toys of his favorite cartoon characters and still lives with his parents.

James worked with Lilipip on the political animation for the League of Conservation Voters.