Creative Output

Despite having 3.6M subscribers on YouTube, I've always struggled with long form videos. My audience largely comes from my short, magical clips. But! This year, I’m experimenting with a new approach that feels far more natural—and it might help other artists who struggle with long-form content. (Check out the simple 'recipe' at the end to get started.) Present Tense Videos I've often gravitated toward vlog-style videos when documenting projects. Probably because they're relatively easy to...

This summer, I had the pleasure of working with LEGO Bluey to produce a 1-minute piece of stop-motion animation: (Sidenote: when I graduated art school in 2010, it wasn't even a remote possibility that you could make a living producing animated ads in the comfort of your own basement with full creative freedom. I'm incredibly grateful for having stumbled onto this path.) I'll keep this one simple! Here are the two stages of me communicating my ideas before I committed to the actual animation....

My strength on social media is creating scroll-stopping shorts. What I've NEVER been good at is sharing candid glimpses into my life or process. Posting Stories, basically. On Instagram, my audience of 1.8M converts to a hilariously low average of around 5k views on a typical Story. Clearly, I haven't built trust that my Stories are worth clicking. Taking It occurred to me that a lot of what I've shared through Stories over the years could be considered 'taking'. It's obvious I'm simply...

Let's get our hands dirty, shall we? I've started a new series of magical videos so that I can share with you the experimentation, evolution, and ultimate success or failure along the way. Lately, I've been getting the sense that 'performing' for the camera largely feels outdated. Gen Z grew up talking to their phones, so they have no sense of a fourth wall between themselves and the camera. That revelation led me to trying a more candid style of video where I'm speaking to the camera before...

I saw this interview clip with Phil Rosenthal (creator of Everybody Loves Raymond) and had to share it. Phil briefly touches on a brilliant idea: ✨ The more specific something is, the more relatable it becomes. He’s referring to how his sitcom leaned heavily on the exact details of Ray Romano’s real life while capturing the feeling of having a “crazy family.” That emotional truth is what gave it such broad appeal. It’s a perfect explanation of a term we hear constantly on social media:...

So this week, I snapped. From February through May, I packed up my house, moved, unpacked, and then settled into my new studio. That meant no making videos and a drought of creative output. I couldn't take it anymore. On Monday, I decided I was going to post something. Anything! Magic My instinct was to share a niche detail of my process, like a lighting or rigging detail in my new studio. I'll admit, the pressure of being offline for so long was getting to me. Would the platforms start to...