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Timbuktoons is an award winning pre-production and 2D animation cloud based studio with customers all over the world. We have produced over 60 hours of original creative content and specialize in creating family-friendly media for the broadcast, education and gaming industries.

Thanks for a great year of fun projects!

Project: concept development, premises, scripts, visual development, art direction, character design, motion graphics, animation

Description: Timbuktoons helped develop a series of fun animated “how-to” videos to help encourage, inspire and train officials on new reporting procedures for helping former military in their educational endeavors.

Client, Project: Catholic Stewardship Consultants, Inc., concept development, premise, script, visual development, art direction, character design, animation

Description: CSC’s consulting services help parishes encourage stewardship in their communities. Theywanted a way to encourage those virtues in children too since giving back your time, talent and treasure is not an “adults only” message. Timbuktoons was asked to develop a show concept that could be used to entertain and educate children about stewardship as a way of life. We of course said…wait for it…robots!

Stewart Ship is a bored tween that questions the purpose of just about everything. That is, until he receives a mysterious gift that opens his eyes to making a difference in the world by sharing his God-given time, talent, and treasure with others.

Client, Project: bigstuf Camps/Lanny Donoho, premise, visual development, art direction, character design, animation

Description: bigstuf, led by Lanny Donoho, is an organization that produces some of the most creative and fresh camp environments each year for students. Timbuktoons was asked to create several animated shorts to match their 2011 theme: Konnekt. The project gave us the opportunity to brush up on our Rube Goldberg machine-making, faux whiteboard drawing and Facebook promoting skills.

Lifestyle can impact creative time management and productivity!

There really is a healthy lifestyle that allows creative work in animation to flourish. Practicing these could maximize your potential to have quality time at work and quality and quantity time at home. Here are a few helpful hints:

1. Develop an addiction. Also known as a “compulsion for completion” or a “sense of urgency” when it comes to completing tasks. The body actually releases endorphins when you finish projects. It’s the reason you have a strong sense of accomplishment and confidence just from being able to check off a “to-do” on your list!
2. Do something! Everyday do something that moves you towards your goals. To do this you need to be clear about your long and short-term goals and objectives.
3. Be positive. Talk to yourself in a positive tone- don’t beat yourself up about things. Refuse to complain about your problems! In fact, get in the habit of looking for the good and valuable lessons in the midst of your problems. Finding joy in your circumstances will greatly change your outlook on each day’s tasks.

If you missed a previous post on Creative Time Management here’s a snapshot:

• 3 Keys to Animation Creative Flow
• 5 Keys for Creative Procrastination
• 4 Steps to Creative Organization in Animation

It can take some work to get in the flow but here are 3 keys...

The goal to creative flow is to achieve that “almost effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness” (Mark McGuinness) we get when we’re “in the zone.” It’s the times when you’ve worked for several hours and didn’t realize it. Here are 3 Keys:

1. Creating “zones of silence” by choosing several hours per day that are free of e-mail, TV, radio, cell phone, land line, etc. (unless it helps you get in the zone, such as music).
2. Creating large chunks of time to focus on the work you choose to do and then protect that time vigilantly!
3. Develop a routine of the above and schedule these times when you are “at your best” (for example at Timbuktoons we’ve found that 8:00-11:00AM are great production hours if we decide the day before what to dive right into when we get to work).

If you missed a previous post on Creative Time Management here’s a snapshot:

• 5 Keys for Creative Procrastination
• 4 Steps to Creative Organization in Animation

The hamster city model of a production pipeline (like we use at Timbuktoons) is creative, flexible, colorful and scalable.

The factory line versus the hamster city.
For decades production companies have built pipeline systems to get their content (film, commercial, short, series, webisode, game, etc.) from start to finish. The pipeline is basically a linear system of creating content from idea to finished product, much like the factory assembly line first developed by Henry Ford.

A hamster city, on the other hand, is fun, creative, colorful, flexible, and scalable. You can easily customize and accessorize it at will and still have a system that leads the hamster thru from beginning to end.

Revolutions require new systems.
What happens when…

• …software and hardware become very affordable, powerful, and available?
• …technological advances allow you to skype, Cisco, or Facetime, your way to an LA or NY production meeting from anywhere, even Augusta, GA!?
• …studios or distributed teams from different countries decide to co-produce (as with the Oscar nominated film, Secret of the Kells)?
• …you find yourself in what Seth Godin calls “the land of a million channels” where content is delivered on your TV, internet, smart phone, and a host of other devices?

Rethink your business.
You rethink and offer new services to new markets. You focus on what differentiates your business in order to be noticed in all of the clutter. You customize your pipelines into fun, colorful and unique hamster cities tailored just for your clients.

For example, Timbuktoons has worked with educational, and faith-based non-profit organizations all over the world, providing them with animation and motion graphics services that would have been difficult for them to produce even 5 years ago because of location, budget and time.

Our most valuable asset is our customer service. Our systems make you feel like we’re “right around the corner” even if we’re 3000 miles away.

Enjoy the product AND the process.
Instead of maintaining a rigid system until it breaks, studios need to put as much creativity into the production system as they do in the content they’re creating.

There are well established and logical milestones necessary in each phase of development, pre-production, production, and post-production…but there is plenty of room for customization too.

Our goal at Timbuktoons is to customize the hamster city for each project to maximize customer service, collaboration, and creativity at every step of the process.

Next, I’ll share some stories, tips, and insights on how we build Hamster Cities!

About Timbuktoons
Timbuktoons is a leading pre-production and 2D animation cloud based studio with customers all over the world. Founded in 2003 by animator and illustrator Todd Hampson, they specialize in creating family-friendly media for the broadcast, education and gaming industries.

Apple's 32-foot glass cube flagship store, Fifth Avenue NY. Apple Stores have four times the foot traffic than all MLB stadiums combined. (Image courtesy of Apple)

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the brick and mortar Apple stores that, in typical Apple fashion, brought refreshing innovation to the retail industry. I was one of the more than 1500 that waited in line for hours to see what was behind the big glass doors at Tysons Corner in McLean, VA.

Looking back 10 years at my 15 minutes of fame
While there several reporters interviewed me about the experience. Just for fun I did a Google search for my name and Apple and surprisingly my quotes appeared on sites like PCWorld, BusinessWeek, MacWorld and more…

“Nobody can do it like Apple does.”

“It’s a Gap with Apple products!”

“There’s an aesthetic quality to using a Mac. It only goes without saying that their store would be the same way.”

“People here actually know what they’re talking about.”

Why did I wait in line at a mall, usually the bane of my existence? To see a bunch of Apple products? To be welcomed by dozens of cheering and clapping employees? No, although both experiences were, well, amazing.

It happened one night at a CompUSA
Yes, I’m a fan boy, but back in 2001 I’d only been using Macs for about 5 years. The real reason had to do with the miserable retail experience of being a Mac user pre iMac days…back when you couldn’t read an article about Apple without the word “beleaguered” in it or hear rumors of a buyout by this or that company (Sony, Sun, Disney, etc.).

It came to a head for me one late night at a CompUSA (remember them?) searching for a printer cartridge for my Stylewriter. It wasn’t enough to tell me they were out of stock. The clerk had to call his buddies over for a laugh and literally taunt me for owning a Mac. “Does that company still exist?!” “I heard they just got bought by Sun?”

I slinked back home and read my MacAddicts. It was crazy, but typical. When market share determined shelf space and availability (buying online was just taking off) it was a frustrating chore to find knowledgeable people and the right product.

The Apple experience: branding at it’s best
That kind of experience didn’t match Apple’s brand promises. Well, maybe their tagline “Think Different,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant.

Fast forward to 2001. Apple begins opening retail stores (while others are closing and analysts think they’re crazy) so they can control the whole experience of owning a Mac, from purchase to product.

Everything they do from advertising, product placement, even packaging all supports Apple’s promises that the experience will match their brand’s reputation.

Does a strong brand really matter?
At Timbuktoons, Apple has always been a brand hero. Their devoted attention to the customer’s journey is an inspiration for the way we approach our work. It drives us to understand the spirit of a client’s brand and translate that emotion and information through animation.

Branding matters more than ever in a cluttered market where everyone is vying for attention. Companies like Apple have shown us that, yes, product, price, promotion and placement still count…but so does the experience.

For me, the Apple Store was the last piece of the puzzle to creating one of history’s most valuable brand leaders.

This sums up our post-production scare in the Summer of 2010.

Here comes the train!
Animation, motion graphics, and video production studios easily get so focused on the daunting task of production that we forget about how hairy post-production can be. We forget that the light at the end of the production tunnel is the train known as post-production coming at us…full speed.

Big studios aren’t immune.
When most of Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was finished, the files were accidentally deleted. In less than 30 seconds critical assets and entire scenes disappeared from their main systems right before their eyes. Even worse, when trying to recover those they discovered that for over a month their back-ups had been failing!

The situation looked bleak until they discovered that one of their employees out on maternity leave had backed up all of the assets so she could work from home and be with her family. This detail-oriented mom saved the day (and hopefully received some extended maternity leave!).

Racing against time to render the final scenes for the feature film Jonah, Big Idea Productions had several unique post-production challenges. Not only did they have to crew up and hire additional lighting artists, they had to obtain 200 more render machines to meet their release date just two months out.

With no room available to store the machines, they had to run fiber optics to the other end of the mall where their studio was temporarily located. On top of that, while rendering final scenes, they discovered that their high-end render farm was rendering some scenes into a black hole!  It was a couple months of chaos!

Our 2010 post-production scare.
Last summer we were wrapping a large graphics package project up when post-production ate our lunch for over five days. Files refused to render completely, audio and video wouldn’t sync and at the lowest point the source files completely disappeared. To this day we still aren’t sure why!

We had so many things go wrong that Murphy’s Law had a few amendments added to it!

We pulled two all-nighters in a row, had files rendering on four different machines in two locations and the project was overdue. I had to leave for a trip after the second all-nighter but a couple of files still didn’t render correctly. So, our creative director worked the weekend, learned three new programs on the fly and earned some major stripes to get it done.

7 Lessons learned:
1.    Block out at least twice as much time you think you’ll need for post-production.
2.    Budget at least twice as much as you think you’ll need for post-production.
3.    Expect Murphy to show up at some point.
4.    What you sow in pre-production is what you will reap in post, so plan well.
5.    RAM is your friend.
6.    Don’t use .aif files in After Effects.
7.    Don’t under estimate post!

Bonus Lessons:
•    One all-nighter can be fun. Two in a row is not…at all.
•    Sabotage and Enter Sandman played loudly will help keep you awake at 3AM.
•    Coffee can only do so much.