Soapbox

I ordered an extra set of Pantone books from Amazon recently and was shocked when they arrived. As the UPS guy is standing there waiting for me to sign I’m thinking, “Uh oh, they sent me the wrong thing”. Why did I think that? Well, the Pantone books are about 9.25″x 3.5″x 1.5″ and the box he was handing me was about 16.25″x 12.25″x 8″. Maybe they sent me an Easy Bake Oven instead.

No oven, just Pantone books. The packing madness didn’t stop at the awkwardly oversized box though. Inside of that was plastic packing material and another Amazon box. Inside of that was more plastic packing material and finally the box the books actually come in.

Is it just me or does that seem like overkill for books?

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For the sake of not sounding like a sore looser, I will avoid personal commentary on the top 10 winners of this years International Animation Contest sponsored by Toon Boom. You can judge for yourself. Instead I will comment on the experience of creating our “This is your earth” animation.

I can’t really say working on this animation was overly fun, partly because I hardly did anything outside of brainstorming the concept (John burned the midnight oil to do the actual animation), and partly because we were left with trying to finish everything at the last moment-what a surprise!

We got so busy running a design business we didn’t have the appropriate amount of time to push this concept further and maybe win (although I am not sure we could have possibly come up with a version good enough for those judges-didn’t I say I was not going to comment on that?).

Overall it was more of an exercise in proving to ourselves we can get this project done. It was a way to prove we didn’t start a business to just make money, we started it to have time for fun, creative design projects where the only payoff is our own pride at getting a nice creative piece. It was a way to make a statement we could enter as much non-billable time into our time-sheets as was deemed necessary, and it was OK for us to brainstorm all morning long on a concept for a non-existing client.

I am looking forward to our next creative exercise and even if there is no client, there is nothing to get the project done like a deadline.

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