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Conversations with designers, founders, and builders behind some of the best work
Ben Fryc Motion 3d Designer State of Play Framer .txt
English (US)
00:00:00.000 — 00:01:38.420 · Speaker 1
What do you tell the young creative who has ambitions to do it all? I'm hitting the point in my career where I have over 20 years professional experience, and I can kind of do it all. Like if I needed to. But Ben Fricke wanted to make video games, but there weren't any courses for that in metro Detroit in the 90s.
So he learned Dreamweaver and Flash because websites were getting interactive, and that was the closest he could get. And that decision set off a 20 year journey through basically every creative discipline you can think of web design, product design, five years at a language learning company called mango.
And then during Covid, he raised his hand for a project that needed 3D and animation skills that nobody else had on his team. So he learned cinema 4D, blender, After Effects, the Whole stack, and now Ben's work is admired by motion designers everywhere, from 3D to motion to product design. He's even spent the last two years working on a physical keyboard, the kind of project you wait months to see your iterations come to life.
He's collaborated with work. Lauder works at framer, and he creates these fantastical blueprints under a brand he calls The Knob. We get into why he treats his passion projects like hobbies, why he thinks young designers should temper their expectations around success, and his philosophy of just start making something, he says.
You don't need to know everything about a tool. You just need to ask the right questions and find your answers through trying. This is state of play. Let's get into it.
00:01:45.540 — 00:02:26.000 · Speaker 1
You know, I think back to the first time I ever created something. The thing that stands out to me was like opening up GeoCities and Front page. And I had this X-Men collection of cards, and I and I loved it. Man, I had such a good time. Just like creating this directory of my X-Men card collection and that that sent me off in this trajectory of all the things that I would love, which is like Winamp skins, wallpapers, and just like, you know, pirating Photoshop for for fun things.
And I want to know, for someone like you who has become such a, a narrative orchestrator of of product design. What was kind of that moment for you?
00:02:26.040 — 00:04:39.679 · Speaker 2
It's funny, you mentioned back, like when you were ten and when I was ten. So I'm, I'm 43 right now. So when I was ten, it was 1992. And the websites, uh, if there was an internet back then, it was purely like the research kind of demo tech that just wasn't accessible to the average consumer. But I like got my start, like creating when I was pretty young because my mom, uh, she's an artist that went to school here in Michigan.
Um, and she kind of like, gave all that up to, to raise me and my brother and, but she always instilled in us like a sense of discovery and creativity. So like, we're always, you know, making little art projects at home. I remember me and my brother were really into comic books. So like, we were drawing like superheroes that we made up and we made little like books that, that you could, like, draw each page in and make them more like, you know, graphic novels.
So that was like always fun, creative expression. And I always knew when I went to start thinking about my career that I wanted to make, you know, something. And because I was like, really into video games, I wanted to make video games. But there were no courses available in in the metro Detroit area for someone who had that passion.
So I was like, well, websites are interactive. And that's, you know, the closest I could get in terms of, like, the education that was available to me. So, you know, I dove into that. So I learned how to use Dreamweaver and Flash and Photoshop and being able to make something with those tools without really needing to program too much was really a game changer.
And that's kind of just trickled into, you know, my journey as a creative person. Like I've always been exploring new ways to use the skills that I have. Not being too concerned about, you know, being the best at something, but just trying to make something that that I was proud of that, that I was like, oh, this is cool.
I'm excited about it. I wasn't always like a product designer, you know, I started doing websites, like I said, but I also
00:04:40.800 — 00:06:33.320 · Speaker 2
worked at a product company called Mango Languages here in Michigan, and I was a product designer and manager at that company for over five years. And during my time there, you know, I got to learn sketch and Figma and, you know, a little bit of the development side, because I was working with directly with engineers and things like that to execute on designs that I had worked on later in my, my tenure at mango.
They, they had a project that they were working on that needed 3D and animation, and no one on the team had those abilities. So I kind of raised my hand and was like, I'll learn it. I've always kind of wanted to learn 3D and doing, you know, motion design and animation. So I kind of dove head in, like headfirst.
I started learning, uh, cinema 4D and Blender and After Effects and all of those, the stack that comes along with it. And I just fell in love with it. So I kind of just I was able to pivot my, my career really to being like from being a product designer to doing like 3D and animation. And this was during, during Covid.
So, uh, It. I haven't been doing the 3D stuff for that long, but I do have like this huge background of doing creative work. So like, all of those skills kind of translate your creative storytelling skills, your the the way you compose things and, and your artistic sensibility translates to different mediums, regardless of where you might find yourself.
So as I moved into like doing physical products like, like, you know, the keyboard and, um, other other, you know, products that I'm working on, it's been, you know, a new journey of, of exploration. And it's been really fun. I've been kind of fortunate that it's that it's worked out that way for me.
00:06:33.640 — 00:07:20.140 · Speaker 1
How would you look at kind of your journey through learning, tooling, learning how to create in new mediums? I can look at a few chapters of things like flash was a huge thing, multimedia had a big moment and then moving on from that into the new paradigms that were either created by like mobile technology being introduced or a new type of tool like sketch.
Coming on scene really changed things for me personally. And you coming from a place where the internet started, largely static, just markdown and research papers into, you know, one of the top motion and product designers out there. How do you look at those barriers now and how do you break barriers still, as now we're entering a new era of tooling.
00:07:20.180 — 00:09:25.740 · Speaker 2
Early on, you think, like, I need to know everything about this tool before I can make anything, but you don't, you don't. I don't know everything about cinema 4D after, you know, five plus years of using it, I don't not even close. I, I'm still looking up tutorials on how to do something if I have an idea. When you start with a new tool and you try to make something with it right away, that gets you asking questions about the tool.
And it was like that when I started learning Blender and cinema, where I wanted to try to make something right away. So I'd look at, you know, other work that people had done. And I've been like, how do you do that? And you, you start to build a vocabulary that you wouldn't have before you started using those tools.
Like, like if you don't know what cloth simulations are like, you don't know how to ask the questions in a search engine to find the tutorials, uh, to, to really unlock things. And that's kind of been the my journey too with like the, the product side of things. So like when I started with the keyboard project, I started doing the layout for that keyboard in Figma.
Like I just had a I might make a little box and I duplicated it with Auto Layout, and I figured out how to like, get the layout looking somewhat correct. But then like I learned about standardized key layouts in ISO versus Ansi and like the the thickness of the plastic. And you start to build on on those initial ideas.
So starting with something simple and just making it more complex over time, like you start to just know more about what's possible in a tool. But so just but just getting started is probably the thing that I'd recommend anybody do is like, just start making something. It doesn't have to be like the most ornate or beautiful thing, just like make something.
It lets you get a feel for how that tool likes to make you think, and you'll eventually get to a point where you're you're proficient at it.
00:09:26.860 — 00:10:08.200 · Speaker 1
When you pick up a new discipline or you start to play a bit, how much of your time is spent just digging in and trying to create something versus, you know, being resourceful, looking around the internet, joining a community, seeing what resources exist, you know, coming from in the 90s. And I know this too.
There weren't a lot of communities. I think IRC is kind of a place I hung out for a while. There were some ICQ channels and things like that. Very different today. There's now courses in communities everywhere. Has that changed at all for you? Has that been the largely kind of lonely, explorative journey for you?
Or have you always found community in different places to help you with this stuff?
00:10:08.240 — 00:12:41.909 · Speaker 2
When I first started learning 3D, I did start with a course. It was from a guy who posts a lot on on dribble. Um, back in the day, uh, he made these little isometric illustrations and his courses called Polygon Runway. Um, his name is Roman, I believe, and he just makes these a really simple looking isometric illustrations.
And it helped me build on, like in his course stepped me through things. So and I think I asked him a few questions, like one on one, like emailing, like, hey, how do I do this particular thing? Because blender is like this ever evolving tool and the tutorials are like recorded years and years ago. So like as those tutorials become, they age a bit.
You have to kind of like figure out where the differences are. So I found that early on, having someone that you can one on one ask questions to that isn't they don't have any kind of judgment with them. Like in and those questions aren't out in the open for other people to see. I find that that's really helpful.
But as you become more versed in in a particular discipline, I think communities are a super valuable, uh, part of, of the learning journey. Like there's one, um, that I'm on on slack for moe graph. Com um, those the guys that run that have this, like, really nice, invite only type community where it's all, like, industry professionals in the motion design in 3D space and they're just like rock stars.
And they've been doing this for 20 plus years. Some of them I've asked questions and I get answers like within minutes from from people who are working high up at these like big agencies or they're freelancers that are commanding really high rates. So like, it's awesome to be able to tap into that type of expertise and taking advantage of it when you get stuck is helpful, but you also want to contribute to, like if you see other people asking questions in those scenarios that you have the answer for, like just jump in and help them out.
But it also requires a little bit of attention to like, you can't just lurk and then pop in when you have a question and then, you know, duck out. So like being engaged, I think is an important aspect to just be genuine. Like, not be Schilling, like your stuff all the time. Yeah, it's it's a, there's, there's this whole like online persona that you can kind of have, but you also just want to be yourself.
I mean, I don't really put on a pretense. I'm
00:12:43.030 — 00:12:51.070 · Speaker 2
like, when I talk to people, it's just same as. You know, this. Like, I'm just excited about the work that I do, and I'm I'm grateful that I get to do it.
00:12:51.110 — 00:13:01.510 · Speaker 1
As you've gone through kind of the motions of your curiosity, which I think it sounds like a lot of that drives you towards these new mediums. Do you ever experience fatigue in tooling?
00:13:01.510 — 00:13:25.230 · Speaker 2
So a lot of my exploratory, explorative process is based on an idea that I have. So for the keyboard, for example, it didn't I didn't start with the keyboard for that project, I was making these little animations and I came up with a brand for it, the knob brand. And they all were like just explorations of,
00:13:26.550 — 00:14:10.729 · Speaker 2
uh, physical controls, that fantastical kind of like devices probably could never exist, but like, wouldn't it be cool if. And I would just kind of like, model something in this tool I was learning called plasticity. And then I would animate it back in cinema 4D because, like, I really knew how to use that program for animation.
And during that process I was like, wouldn't it be cool if I made a keyboard? Like, how hard could it be? And that's a very naive kind of thing to say because it's, you know, I started designing it almost two years ago now. I think it was in June of 2023 when I first posted like Figma mockups on my, my, my Twitter feed.
But at some point, I stopped making those knob explorations because it felt like
00:14:11.730 — 00:15:32.870 · Speaker 2
I was. I was not as excited about making them anymore. And that's okay. Like, I don't need to be like the knob guy forever. Like, in making this, like hundreds of these pieces, I ended up making 12 animated pieces and I got sound design from a friend of mine. They just live on the internet now, like I've made like Behance posts.
I have them on my Vimeo page and on my Instagram. So like, they're they're they're. And I'm proud of them. Maybe I'll make another one. But I haven't had like, the passion to make another one, because I've found that your passion will get you to a point where, like, you're just you have this body of work where you're satisfied with it, and then projects come across your desk that actually pay money, and you have to focus on those.
So like, it's you make room for the passion when it when it hits. But it's also okay to just like disengage and let let the let you soak in your creativity. And I don't know where that next burst of passion is going to come from. I still have that for like the keyboard and like the projects that I'm working on with Work Louder.
And of course with framer keep feeding. You have to have creative input to have creative output, and at some point you get to a point where you're just you don't need to to keep pumping out, you know, fresh stuff all the time.
00:15:33.030 — 00:15:53.210 · Speaker 1
But commerce versus passion, balancing act. is tough sometimes. We want to spend a lot of time working on the things that speak to us. But we got to pay the bills too. How do you balance when your curiosity is just stirring in the middle of the night, and you know, you've got a couple of things that maybe aren't as interesting to you.
00:15:53.210 — 00:16:45.670 · Speaker 2
The way I've kind of like balanced it out is as I treat it like a hobby. When when when passion hits, you focus on it. And I think it's like that with anything. Like if you're passionate about a book, you're going to you're going to finish that book. Like it's going to you're going to finish reading it. You're going to beat that video game and see the credits roll and everything else kind of like falls by the side.
And it was like that with the the art projects that I've had and the design projects where the passion takes over and it becomes the hobby, it becomes the focus. Like you're not like, oh, I have to also do this and also do that. Like, no, just let your passion be the thing that you do when you don't have to pay the bills or when you when you're just instead of watching your favorite show or watching a show like Tinker with the design thing.
Um, and that's kind of where I've balanced things out, is it becomes a hobby when the passion hits.
00:16:45.710 — 00:16:53.670 · Speaker 1
Is there a tool or a type of tool that feels more instinctively to more instinct, like an instinctual tool?
00:16:53.710 — 00:17:50.850 · Speaker 2
I'm like really fluent in cinema 4D. These days I can start from, you know, an inspiration board and then, like, I use Pinterest a lot, uh, to to just see, like what kind of vibe I'm looking for. And then I can usually jump, like, straight into cinema and start making something. But it's it's so dependent on the project.
Sometimes you need to lay out text and and doing that in cinema is just a chore to do. Like, you can do it, but it's not really made for that. It's made to do stuff in three, three dimensions. Um, you know, but something like, like Framer or Figma that where you can use text tools and just kind of freeform thinking, then it's using that.
But like, if I need to work on a project that involves 3D, I'm using cinema and I'm going to start in cinema.
00:17:51.050 — 00:17:59.850 · Speaker 1
Are there any maybe older tools or tools that are kind of considered a little bit janky that you still really love using today?
00:17:59.890 — 00:19:01.390 · Speaker 2
Every once in a while I'll go back into Photoshop, and it's crazy how much the muscle memory has stuck around. Like the whole like save for Web Claw, where you have to, like, hit like Ctrl, alt shift S and like that's like baked into my brain. And it's definitely long in the tooth, but it does. So much like if if Figma were to go away tomorrow and we we couldn't design it anything else.
Like you could still do all of the the that design work in Photoshop. Like it might not be the best performance, but you could still get. You can get great results, if not better in Photoshop, because that is all those masks and filters. And like all of these workflows that are just tried and true, that all these newer tools are trying to replicate in the browser, like it's it all kind of started in Photoshop and Illustrator, and it's kind of interesting how everyone's kind of like catching up to the breadth of functionality that those tools have.
00:19:01.430 — 00:19:45.450 · Speaker 1
Now, the thing for me is someone who started more static, um, and it's become evident, uh, and, and more feasible now than ever to introduce motion to our designs. Okay. Well, I've got to think about motion and, oh, it's helpful to storyboard. You start to kind of come across these things that I think are common knowledge amongst, you know, motion graphic artists.
But for those of us who are kind of getting into it and recognizing, It's very necessary to to introduce the skill set. Now, what would you say are some of the similarities or familiar sticking points that someone like me could start from to really grasp motion design?
00:19:47.050 — 00:20:11.730 · Speaker 2
The storyboarding is the the easiest I've found. I still use it, um, when when having to collaborate with people and get their feedback using some kind of storyboarding tool. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be Google Slides. It doesn't need to be anything more complicated than that. How can I iterate on that the fastest?
Um, with
00:20:12.810 — 00:20:57.830 · Speaker 2
with things like, um, like the state system in, in, uh, in framer where like, you can, you know, animate something and have it interact and you can interact with it. It's not quite like a timeline per se. Um, but it, it lets you kind of like, experiment with, like how things move really quickly. But there's also I mean, there's there's no harm either in jumping into After Effects and trying to keyframe some simple things you don't need to have, like fancy, uh, curves set up so that it's easing exactly the right way yet.
But it gets the idea across a lot of times. And it's crazy how good some of the AI, um, like
00:20:58.870 — 00:21:27.570 · Speaker 2
coding tools are getting, especially when you give them prompts like the the new framer workshop where like, you can actually prototype, uh, you know, motion interaction stuff with, you know, words and you can have something interactive right out of the box. There's stuff that it can do that that After Effects can't like after Effects is a linear animation tool.
You can't make it an interactive animation tool. So if you need something that's interactive, why not start directly where You need it to be.
00:21:27.610 — 00:21:36.330 · Speaker 1
Are there things that you think motion design tools could do a better job of that? You'd like to see something that's not quite solved?
00:21:36.370 — 00:21:41.050 · Speaker 2
Man, there's still tools that I haven't used yet, so I can't, like, be super opinionated. I know
00:21:42.210 — 00:22:48.109 · Speaker 2
cavalry is is one that's been popping up. There's this one guy I see on Twitter or on my Instagram feed all the time that's posting these really awesome like typography animations. I'll send you a link and you can you can take a look at his work, but every time he posts something is like Made in Cavalry. I'm like, I really need to learn this because it looks like you can do things that After Effects can't like very easy, like complex, interactive based, kind of like animations almost.
Then there's jitter, which is another one that's kind of becoming popular. Um, I saw a post from them earlier today that I was like, that looks cool. I need to dig into that. Um, but it's one of those things where, like, maybe, maybe that'll be like one of the sources of passion where like, I will start experimenting with this and it'll start like unlocking things in my brain.
I know After Effects is just there's so much behavior that's hidden in these tools behind like right clicks and hotkeys. Um, and just learning what you know, what it's what it can do. What? Where are the buttons hidden? Surfacing complex
00:22:49.190 — 00:24:25.230 · Speaker 2
functionality in these tools has always been kind of like this barrier. Even even something that I know a lot like cinema 4D. There's stuff and terminology that they use in that. Or it's like, why did they use this? Like, why would they use something that only someone who knows about math would know what this particular terminology means when when you're teaching someone something, you often will show an example of what you can do if you, you know, click these buttons in the right order.
Wouldn't it be great if the people who made these creative tools. Next to each item, there was like some visual that showed like, what does this do? Like when I, when I change this slider or I click this checkbox. Like what does it actually doing? One source of frustration in cinema will often be like, if you click the wrong thing at the wrong time, it will crash because you don't know what it does.
So like you're you're doing this experimentation crash loop. Like, okay, don't click that button when this other thing is happening because like it's going to break. And I have like pretty beefy hardware. Like it's not because like my computer is not good. It's like it's just because the tool isn't made to do it at the same time as other things.
So like you're you're learning what to do when it's this. It's it's a definitely a challenging thing, especially when you're trying to learn and experiment and it slows you down. So showing Examples of what a particular function would do in
00:24:26.270 — 00:24:28.470 · Speaker 2
write in the app would be amazing.
00:24:28.470 — 00:25:06.190 · Speaker 1
Just as you're talking about learning a new tool and learning the new vernacular, learning the new barriers. The sequence of events that you can and cannot do. The same is probably true for learning new mediums or modalities. You went from static to motion, and then you had the audacity to say, I'm going to, I'm going to have this physical product and bring it to life, which was probably a whole new world of things and challenges.
What's been your experience with that, and how do you kind of how do you cope or walk yourself through those new barriers of like new modalities?
00:25:06.230 — 00:25:22.330 · Speaker 2
It's funny because I like to post something when I'm when I'm excited about it. I like to be able to share it right away with with people that will give me feedback. And it kind of like fuels the their pursuit of of something new and exciting. So when you're when you're trying something new,
00:25:23.650 — 00:25:32.770 · Speaker 2
especially as a creative person, being able to share it with other people and get feedback as soon as possible, I think is invaluable when it came to like the hardware aspect.
00:25:34.250 — 00:26:06.010 · Speaker 2
Like, it's so slow. Like you have to you have to wait months to see like iteration change. Uh, especially with physical things. So being able to do that kind of iteration on your own in CAD and then render something to make it look realistic and send them a 4D, was like this cheat code for me to like, think like, oh, is this going to work?
And then you can put it next to other objects in real life or, you know, simulated life, um, in the render. And you kind of get start getting more feedback from that, at least visual feedback.
00:26:06.050 — 00:26:37.790 · Speaker 1
There was a post I was reading and people were asking a lot of these digital designers, why do the interfaces in these, you know, these displays and vehicles feel so dated? And other people were like, well, you're underestimating how long you know those interfaces. The design was done for those years ago, but the actual physicality of the the entire thing still took a lot of time before it even reached the market.
What have you learned about getting. You know, the knob created and some of the other keyboards that you've helped design?
00:26:37.830 — 00:28:18.550 · Speaker 2
I have some friends that work in automotive, and I do know that the timelines are way longer. Like, I have a friend who I think he works at, at GM or one of the subsidiaries that supplies GM, and they are working ten years out. Like it's crazy. Uh, like, the tech just takes so long to work its way through the supply chain.
So imagine you're working on an interface for something that's going to come out in ten years. Like, like you're not going to spend ten years designing it. You're not like you're going to spend however long the project manager allowed you to spend time on it, and then it gets passed down the line since I designed the user interface for the knob.
That was kind of like I use like my product design background to think like, okay, how would I want to interact with this screen knowing the constraints that I have? And it kind of let me think through some of those things in a more holistic way. We're now in the process of like creating the firmware and finalizing that.
And I'm working with a very talented engineer who is writing all of the software in C and like, it's not like they just publish a react component and it just works for the keyboard. There's no way that it would have the processing power to do that. So it's all this low level programing with a somewhat abstracted user interface on top of that.
So it's just a different a different kind of of process. And you don't get the performance that you would like out of it. So you have to think like, okay, what?
00:28:19.710 — 00:28:57.310 · Speaker 2
How can we make this as good as we can and not slow the person down when they're using the product? And I'm happy with with the results of where we're at, like I'm using the keyboard right now. I have it right here. Yeah. And and this is like a beta firmware or alpha firmware, like. And if I do the wrong things, I right now it'll crash.
But, uh, like, it's, you know, it works and and I'm testing it and, and I'm happy with with where, where it's at. I'm excited for people to get their hands on it. But it's, it's one of those things where you make it as good as you can in the time you have to make it good, and then you move on.
00:28:57.350 — 00:29:44.850 · Speaker 1
Now, I remember you shared, I don't know if it was the knob, it might have been with work. Louder. Beautiful video of the keyboards moving and then really great. Um, the interface in play, the sound design around this. It's just it hit hard. It was a great piece of collateral. And you treat motion design sort of like a narrative or film.
You talk about storyboarding. There's so many elements that go into the pacing and the visual direction. What do you think or how do you think about something? The concept of a hooks in, in kind of product, in motion design, do you think about things like that? What do you believe makes captivating? Motion design.
00:29:45.010 — 00:29:47.410 · Speaker 2
You want to have moments of delight,
00:29:48.930 — 00:31:55.770 · Speaker 2
something that they didn't expect to happen. What what does that surprise look like? And some of it sometimes you're constrained by what you can technically do. What are your what are you actually able to do? Like, you might look at some of someone else's work and think like, oh, that's cool, I like that element.
I'm going to try to include that in your piece, but you can't always do that. um, you can be inspired by it, but I think you have to make it your own. And motion design in 3D animation is a lot about that. Surprise. Like, where do you bring that surprise in? So if the animation you're talking about is the one for the Nomad, um, we had, you know, Mike and I, we collaborate on that one, and we storyboarded a lot of different ideas and that storyboarding looked like still renders like not actually animated pieces, but in the, in the, the space, they're called style frames, where you have a still render with an effect or some kind of like shot, and then you have multiple states that it goes through.
And down the road you'll animate it if that particular idea gets picked. But it was always just like, okay, we we like this particular idea. How can we make it be surprising and delightful? We just pushed ourselves to make as many of those as we could like in the video. Um, when it came to the sound design, it's interesting.
The the sound designer that I've been using in collaborating with is. His name is Joseph Sims, and he's based out of Canada. We've never talked on a call or done a video chat. It's we basically communicate via Instagram DMs and he always just knocks it out of the park. Like, I give him references every once in a while, be like, hey, I kind of like this vibe.
Then he just kind of runs with it and more often than not, he'll get a first version and it's just like, this is great, you know? I love it.
00:31:55.810 — 00:32:09.430 · Speaker 1
The idea comes to you. Uh, storyboarding is is a core part of a lot of this for you. But how do you think about moving into High Fidelity? When does that make sense in motion design? When do you decide to do that with 3D.
00:32:09.470 — 00:32:57.870 · Speaker 2
You can get to high fidelity very quickly. If if you have the the tool set up, you can start with on textured models or, you know, just very basic shapes and start with the motion there. But I found that when when you are doing the style frames, you want it to look as good as you can in those style frames so that by the time you're doing the motion examples like you already have, the look pretty much not nailed in.
It's just about getting the timing of the shot. And, you know, the the way they flow together, synchronized to get by in as quick as possible, especially for motion and 3D. Like you want to go high fidelity right away because most people can't imagine what it might look like.
00:32:59.150 — 00:34:08.720 · Speaker 2
If you add the light in this certain way, or the material was a certain way, or whatever the case might be. So you can't just, like, share a play blast, which is like everything's gray. There's no lighting. It's just like what you see in the viewport in your 3D tool. And you can you can use those renders for getting the timing of shots done.
And you. I'll often do that when getting like an After Effects project together. Like I'll render a play blast and use that to get the timing right. Um, but it's not something that I'm working with my my collaborators and saying like, hey, just imagine this rendered like I can now get a take a play blast and can get my timing okay, this looks good.
And then do a very low res render, but it's the actual full fidelity, uh, in, in a matter of, you know, a half an hour. So it's knowing what you need to do the best work. And then when you start to get feedback from other people. That's when you want to show things in the best light.
00:34:08.760 — 00:34:20.320 · Speaker 1
I think you've worked with with some major brands and some really cool things, but are there projects that you've shared that didn't get the hype, or that maybe not a lot of people saw that you're extremely proud of?
00:34:20.360 — 00:35:04.300 · Speaker 2
When I was learning 3D, I did a lot of experiments with characters at the first when I first, like, kind of broke out. Um, and there was this, this example that I thought would be kind of a cool thing to do where there's like little Play-Doh people. And they had like, little simple faces. And I spent a lot of time getting the Play-Doh to look good.
And I had like, all this, like, depth of field stuff going on and like, there's, like it looked really fresh to me and like, it just did not hit on social media. And I was like, well, all right. I mean, I liked it and it's still like up on my page somewhere. You know, you just move on, like, okay, people didn't like it, I liked it.
Okay.
00:35:04.340 — 00:35:25.420 · Speaker 1
You know, there's a there's a lot of tooling coming out now in the AI space and it sounds like you. What are your thoughts on on AI coming into design tooling and one from like a macro level just in general and in the ways that it's trying to help speed up creative work, but two specifically in motion design as well.
What's been your experience?
00:35:25.420 — 00:36:40.200 · Speaker 2
I haven't had the opportunity to use AI myself in a lot of my motion design work. The most recent use was when I was working with with Andy at Framer on the spring event. Um, there's a shot at the beginning of this when the when it starts where it has like these particles, kind of like assembling the framer logo in the middle of this grass field, and it zooms into the portal.
Um, the backdrop that we use there is, was AI generated. I think he used like Midjourney to make that. And then we used some other tools to upscale it in those instances. the AI couldn't have done the full thing. Like it could have gotten maybe close, but it wouldn't give you the the control that you need to do precise like motion work.
So I think when you need to fill in gaps. AI seems to be a great way to to help you. But when you have a vision and you have the skill to do it, like just do it the the normal way when AI enables you to be your most creative, I think that's where it's it's going to be the most useful for us.
00:36:40.240 — 00:37:32.420 · Speaker 1
Ezra Klein talks a lot about that in writing, and how what he realized was the it was the grappling with the material and spending the time doing that and making your own connections and points of references where that part is lost in quick summarization with AI or in quick deliverables through AI. And that really resonated with me.
And I think what's happening is there's a new generation of of eager designers and creators who are coming out, and they're very willing to early adopt new features and new tools. And there's a degree of, I want to do it all that's kind of coming. Maybe because it is possible now that the, you know, the barrier to entry to do a number of things in a given day is increasing.
What do you tell the young creative who has ambitions to do at all?
00:37:32.460 — 00:38:43.840 · Speaker 2
I'm hitting the point in my career where I have over 20 years professional experience, and I can kind of do it all, like if I needed to. I don't really do the video side of things. Like in like actual like live, you know, video. But I can do all the other things if, if I'm, if I'm pressed to do it and I have the time to do it, but to say, like right out of school, I need to do it all.
You don't. You can specialize and do something really great and find success. That being said, I think people need to temper their expectations about what success looks like at an early stage of their career. I know a lot of people will talk about how they're making this much RR online, and while that might get clicks and views, um, like I cut my teeth doing work locally for for companies that are in and around the metro Detroit area, and I built my reputation there before even moving on to the global stage.
It helped me
00:38:44.920 — 00:40:17.080 · Speaker 2
make my craft that much better by doing the quote unquote grunt work of being the the intern who has to answer to your creative director or an art director that is just doing what they're told. There's nothing wrong with starting your career that way. In fact, I encourage it because it builds up your. You get a thicker skin for feedback, and you start to learn how someone more experienced thinks about things.
And you, you start to develop a, a a sense of of what good design looks like. Like I'll get DMs from people that'll ask me, like, I want to be a product designer, an industrial designer, or a 3D artist. You know, what should I do? And I'll just tell them to make something that you want to make. Like, just do that.
Focus on things that you're excited to make. Post them online. Whether or not you get eyeballs is okay. You don't. You don't need to get a million views to serve something to be successful. But like, you made something and you put it out there like that and doing that on a regular basis. Day in, day out. You don't have to post something either.
Every day, every week, every month. Just post something. Make something for yourself, post it and you'll you'll start to build up a a skill set that will serve you well when it comes to project work.
00:40:17.520 — 00:40:38.080 · Speaker 1
And I'll end with this question. Um, you know that prodigy who might be sharing their work online in the state of tooling now, you know, creates this, this place of overwhelm for a lot of folks, regardless of stage of career. How have you dealt with burnout, creative burnout? Uh, moments of overwhelm.
00:40:38.120 — 00:40:45.879 · Speaker 2
I talk about it with with my family and, you know, friends saying like, I'm just tired and
00:40:46.920 — 00:41:20.740 · Speaker 2
just being able to vocalize it and say, your burnout and have someone understand and and show kindness is such a help. I think you can think like I have to keep my burnout to myself, because no one can know that I'm struggling. But it's okay. Like we all struggle with that. I, I don't feel the the the need to keep that a secret.
I've burnt out making personal work. I've burnt out making, doing professional work. I remember
00:41:21.860 — 00:41:50.500 · Speaker 2
I was doing, um, web development work at a local company, and dribble came out and I was able to get an invite to dribble. And I got started getting followers, and I started getting projects, and I decided I'm going to freelance. So I quit my job and like, I doubled my salary in a year. Um, which was super empowering.
But at the end of that year,
00:41:51.700 — 00:42:03.240 · Speaker 2
me and my wife were on a vacation with, uh, some family out in, um, in San Francisco, I think. And I was working,
00:42:04.320 — 00:42:05.159 · Speaker 2
and
00:42:06.560 — 00:42:29.240 · Speaker 2
it was very good for my wife to say at the time. You're working too hard. And I realized that I needed to take a break, like, I couldn't. I couldn't turn my that work side of my brain off because I was so focused on the projects that I had. And because you're a freelancer, every hour is billable. So, like, how do I make the most of that time?
00:42:30.280 — 00:43:53.200 · Speaker 2
And for me, that meant that I can't freelance and that be my only thing. And ever since that moment, I've just gone from full time job to full time job, and that's been fine. Um, and even now, I don't freelance, like, I don't do any freelance work because. Imagine you're working a full time job that demands a lot of you from a creative standpoint, and you also have to freelance on top of that to, for whatever reasons, like you might be like, oh, I want to have some big clients, but I can't do that because I'm working at a full time job.
So, like, I want those clients doing freelance, you're going to burn out like you're not going to have any creative output anymore. It's not going to be as good if you only did focus on the one thing. So for me, like I recognized a while ago now that I can't do it all, and it's kind of like been this freeing kind of sense that that I can do, do the work that I have for my full time job.
And when passion hits, I'll do that. But like, I don't need to freelance anymore. Uh, it's it's if necessity were to to make that the case, then I would of course try to do my best. But it's. You have to know your limits and know when to take a break and when to decompress.
00:43:53.240 — 00:44:49.240 · Speaker 3
I asked Ben what he'd tell the young creative who wants to do it all, and his answer was simple you don't have to. You can specialize and still find success, but you should temper your expectations about what success in your early career looks like. And that's not sexy. Advice. Nobody's going viral for writing threads about being an intern and do grunt work, but he's got 20 years of evidence that this does work.
He recognized he can't just freelance because he can't turn his brain off every hour, had to be billable, and that math was eating his creativity alive. So he decided to take on full time jobs. And when passion hits, he lets it take over, finishes the book, beats the video game, ships the keyboard. There's something freeing about admitting what you can't do.
Ben figured that out, and his work got better because of it. It's my hope that you took something valuable away from my conversation with them. I'll see you in the next one.