?? New from Raconteur - Swarmy orbs and Kelly Clarkson

Hi friends!

Wow, I can’t believe 2022 is already half finished. So far it has been full of many tough and beautiful lessons.

Q1 had two of the worst financial months I’ve experienced in 8 years in business. I was afraid of returning to life as a starving artist like when I lived in California, behind on rent and buying groceries on credit. I was afraid of letting my team down, that they would leave.

As I sat with that fear, sought advice from mentors and made a game plan to move forward; one huge lesson came out of it:

A business is not the books. It’s not the procedures. It’s not the portfolio. It’s not the website…it’s the?people. And it’s the relationships between those people.

Raconteur is YOU. And it’s me.

How do we nurture people and relationships? With love. With connection. With closeness. I think we could all use more of those things right now ??

That lesson allowed me to soften into a new way of seeing Raconteur, how it could feel to work at the company every day, what we could represent in the world and the kind of work we could do. And it also brought in some new opportunities, which was nice. ??

If the spirit moves, please hit reply and let us know what’s happening in your world ??

Blessings,

-Joe

Featured Client:?The Swarm

?? We’ve been working with The Swarm over the past couple months to make a trailer for their product launch this month.

?? The goal was to create an abstract visualization of how people’s social networks can link together to help a company grow.

?? For the first time in years, we had almost total creative freedom on this project. Apart from branding, copyrighting and a conceptual outline from The Swarm, it was up to us to create the entire piece. That included the storytelling, visual concepts, soundtrack, editing, pacing etc.

??? It felt really good to exercise those creative muscles that don’t get stretched in more technical projects.

???The Swarm is the Network Relationship Management (NRM) platform turning disparate individual connections into intelligent collective networks.Their initial focus is in helping early-stage companies combine and manage the connections of their team and stakeholders to find top talent faster. Join the waitlist to get started for free this fall at?theswarm.com

Our animation was on Kelly Clarkson!

?? On May 31 we celebrated?Buderflys’ shout-out on the Kelly Clarkson show! She gave away a pair of buds to each of the audience members.

?? They also showed one of our super-sexy-squishy animations as B-roll, which is not typical procedure according to their editors.

?? ?? After seeing such groundbreaking artistic work, Sophia and Heidi were calling incessantly, but I reminded them they’re both married and the Raconteur team are modern men with healthy boundaries.

We do graphics and logos now!

?? I met Nuno, the founder of?Dotgraf, in Portugal in 2017 when we worked together at?Cru Coworking, a rambunctious community in the heart of Porto’s art district.

?? ?? Since then we’ve kept in touch as friends and fellow creatives/entrepreneurs.

?? He and Susana bring so much passion and expertise into their work. Every time, I’m amazed by the insight, ideas and energy they bring into a project.

?? Last year Dotgraf created a new logo and branding for Raconteur. Since then we’ve been able to bring them on for a couple different?animations.

?? Now, they’re an official partner of Raconteur, so we can offer graphic design, web design, branding and logos to all our clients.

?? Please let me know if you’re in the market for any of those things!

We went to Salt Lake City!

?? We had the privilege of attending the first annual?Salt Lake Animation Expo?this year. It was fun to step back into the world of animators and artists after about 7 years away from that industry, focusing more on technical projects.

?? I found it inspiring to spend time with hundreds of people who are masters of their craft and at the top of their game. It was absolute privilege to connect one-on-one with a few of them and soak up their hard-earned wisdom. Something sparked inside me and I remembered why I got into this craft in the first place: to tell stories; to find awe in beauty and a craft.

?? ?? On the other hand, I had forgotten about the mix of obsessive perfectionism and low self worth that seems to pervade that world. It feels like the whole industry runs on Red Bull, cold pizza and the hours between midnight and 4am.

?? There seems to be a deep, unquestionable myth that an artist or animator must suffer and sacrifice in the name of creating. As if achieving artistic success is somehow synonymous with personal fulfillment and happiness. At our core, artists question, search and explore beyond boundaries. Maybe some of the beliefs and culture in animation needs to be questioned too.

?? On that cheery note, you can see our virtual booth for the expo?here

AJ Graduated!

?? Our winter semester intern, AJ, officially graduated from NMU this spring! Here’s his final project for the Senior Exhibit.

“A New Arrival is a 3D animation about untamed curiosity and new-found friendship between a trio of robots. Old meets new in a struggling robot warehouse. I have always been fascinated by the look of sophisticated machinery, whether that be in a steampunk, scifi, or modern style. Watching a movie like Wall-E with its emotive movements and machines with personality is fascinating to me. In turn, I enjoy telling stories... and creating robots.”

Thanks for being along for this ride and we’ll see you in Q3 2022!

-Joe & Team