In this episode, we talk about a sensitive topic for most designers… feedback. Whether it’s client feedback or internal feedback, often designers get offended and even feel hurt by feedback on their work. 

Hopefully, today’s episode empowers you to keep doing great work, stay gracious in taking on feedback, and always keep an open mind. The biggest reality check we recommend is to remember that no matter how much of your blood, sweat, and tears went into a particular project, the client is still actually the owner of the work, and they are the ones who need to live with it once you walk away and take on your next project.

In today’s episode, we start off by chatting about the importance of making a great demo reel. Whether it’s a montage or in some other format - it is the first impression people will get of you and your skillset and interests. We chat about what we look for when reviewing reels for job applications and what you should spend extra time on to make sure you don’t blow it in the first few seconds of your demo reel. 

We also dive into a demo reel submitted to us by one of our listeners and make improvements to it in After Effects in real-time. Listen along to find out which changes we felt were necessary to improve John McKinney’s demo reel submission. Maybe you could make some of the same changes to take your demo to the next level. 

In today’s episode, we share the second part of our conversation with famed motion designer Sekani Solomon. We jump straight into some quickfire questions, getting Sekani’s thoughts on a few interesting topics. He shares some background into two of his most recent passion projects - the short films “Hidden” and “Star Wars.”

Sekani is a deep thinker and extremely insightful when it comes to the way he works. We loved getting to know the artist behind the incredible motion design work and we hope you’ll enjoy listening to the conversation just as much.

Sekani Solomon is an award-winning Motion Design lead at Cash App. His diverse skill set in design, animation, and compositing allows him to work at any stage of the production pipeline with a high level of proficiency. He has worked at a wide variety of companies, both as an employee and as a freelancer. He is now the Motion Lead and manager at Cash App. In part 1 of this chat, we get the opportunity to pick Sekani’s brain about his career choices and what led him to start working for a tech company.

In today’s episode, we chat about the role of the producer.

Going deep into the role we cover both the job responsibilities as well as the necessary personality traits of a producer. We also cover what we look for in a great producer, where producers come from and why are producers so important to the creative process!

This week’s episode is about mistakes. Mistakes we’ve made and mistakes we’ve seen colleagues or employees make. We are sharing these mishaps and the lessons learned from them. While we can’t help you not make any mistakes at all, hopefully, this conversation will open your eyes to things that are potential pitfalls in the workplace. It’s important to note that errors happen to everyone and it’s impossible to learn if you don’t make them. So, if you make mistakes, embrace them, and move forward.

In this episode, we continue our discussion around freelancing. We unravel the tricky business of setting your rates when first starting out as a freelancer—keeping client expectations in line with your skill or ability as a designer is key. We share the good, the bad, and the ugly around paying (and claiming) taxes as a freelancer (spoiler alert—there is more good, than bad or ugly). There are also some eye-opening truths that come out about what it means to make the move from being a freelancer to starting and running a business.  

In this episode, Austin picks Erin's brain brain about full-time employment. As a full-time employee and as an employer she has a lot of insights... The pros, the cons and everything in between.

In this episode we discuss the importance of passion projects—a non-commissioned work that is motivated solely by the maker's conceptual and emotional vision. We examine how passion projects help with sustainability, reinvention, and opening new doors in addition to overcoming stress and burnout.

In this episode we find ourselves reminiscing about the crazy year that was 2020 - the year that forced most of the world into a remote working situation. While Austin has technically been working from home since 2005, the lockdowns had a huge impact on the way found himself lecturing his courses and connecting with his students.

Erin Sarofsky and Austin Shaw host this podcast chat about the history of motion design and production. This first episode of Between the Keyframes is a laid-back discussion around all the moments that have contributed to huge shifts in the motion design world along with all the people and companies that contributed to these pivotal moments in history.

This Episode will cover who we are in a nutshell, how we met, why we decided to do this vidcast, what we hope to accomplish and why we call it “Between the Keyframes.”