CREATING RESOURCES for our CREATIVE COMMUNITY™
CREATING RESOURCES for our CREATIVE COMMUNITY™
Here's how IT All STARTED
This is the BEYOND THE PROCESS Substack and there’s no going back! 😊
If you've been a subscriber to THE PROCESS, you probably know that the videos have been lacking over the last year. I've been working at trying to save enough money to upgrade my cameras to 4K. But the other part of that equation was two-fold:
1) I didn't know where I wanted to take the channel as I felt like I was repeating the same information. Which, as I can now see in hindsight isn't bad as I'd be applying that information to new problems, and sometimes repetition has a way of sinking in... but, I digress.
2) I also felt like I needed to focus on becoming a better artist as opposed to showing you what I could do. It felt a little like I was stuck in a loop, in a state of arrested development and my art, at least to my eyes, was becoming insufferable.
Enter LANCE LASPINA, Storyboard Artist | Filmmaker | Friend
Last year my friend Lance was talking about doing a video podcast. I thought that was interesting since everyone and their brother had one. I asked him what he was thinking about doing.
LANCE: I want to do a podcast about storyboarding.
SHANE: That's awfully niche, don't you think?
I don't remember the rest of the conversation...but I might have explained my thinking on opening it to be a broader subject, like Visual Storytelling. I do remember relating to him the time back in 2005 when my friends and I traveled to NYC for my bachelor "party" / ROBERT PEAK show at the Society of Illustrators.
What I ended up telling him was we had met the director of the Society of Illustrators who asked us what we did as artists. I told him I did storyboards, and he seemed pretty enthusiastic about it. The fact that they were rarely seen in the public eye gave him the idea that it would make for an interesting exhibit. We totally agreed but I never found out if that ever came to fruition.
Regardless of my diatribe, I did think Lance was onto something. It sounded like a great idea, and I told him I couldn't wait to hear more about it.
SMASH CUT: One Year Later.
LANCE: Hey, Shane, would you want to do a podcast with me?
SHANE: Uh...how much is it gonna cost? What equipment do I need? And YES!
So, we started down this path of which Lance had been doing a ton of research on. And when I say research, I mean, he'd listened to a lot of podcasts as well as looking up hosting software, apps, equipment, you-name-it! He bought everything he thought he needed and then sent me the list. And I don't mind saying, but I freaked out a little. We're talking about $4k worth of stuff, and I didn't have that kind of scratch to invest...not yet anyway.
Low and behold I did have enough equipment already that could deliver high enough quality, so...we gave it a shot and did a test run. I didn't realize my Logitech camera that my wife no longer used had 4K resolution. And the mic she no longer used for work wasn't bad either.
Here is the list of gear and stuff Lance ended up going with along with photos of his setup.:
Logitech Camera the cheaper option.
Sony a6400 or the nicer more expensive version.
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/RRSA3PFRHFWZ?ref_=wl_share
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QSQBBJ3?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C2PVP7J?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
https://podcastle.ai/ -for streaming
Adobe Podcast -an audio clean-up tool that is becoming more popular.
Audio Cleanup Tool: https://audo.ai/
Vocal Remover: https://vocalremover.org/
Mind you, he's an Apple products guy. I'm a PC guy, but a lot of this should translate.
I ended up using a BLUE YETI mic and a LOGITECH camera with a NEEWER RING LIGHT.
The one question that I had to ask about all this is WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? It's an important question as it will take time away from other pursuits. What do we have to gain from this extra load of work?
As long as I've known Lance, he's always pushed his way toward innovation and trying new things. He started and maintained a fairly successful ETSY SHOP because of his longstanding desire to create passive income. He was the one responsible for getting me to start my own, much less successful shop. The idea of passive income was intriguing to me: Create the architecture (shop) somewhere and load it with products you believe in, that people can pay for, all the while spending more of your time marketing and creating. At least that's the idea.
As we march headlong into the fourth quarter of our lives and careers, the jobs are not nearly as plentiful, but our skills are still highly valuable. Which means: WE HAVE A LOT TO SHARE. This was a realization I'd already come to, but Lance was already making moves to leverage everything. What he was proposing though was going to be a heavy lift. Made even moreso if we were starting at ZERO. Meaning, if we started a wholly new channel with NO FOLLOWERS, it would take A LOT MORE WORK and A LOT MORE TIME to get to where we hoped to be. We needed to work smarter, not harder.
TRUST & INTEGRITY
Any relationship worth having has to be built on a foundation of trust and integrity. If you're partnering with someone whose core values do not match your own, it's probably going to be a very hard road for you both. Having those open and sometimes ugly conversations up front will weed out all the insecurities, differences, and questions. This is only made more difficult when one's friendship is on the line. I have friends I would never go into business with for a wide variety of reasons. Friends who have wanted me to join them in something, and yet, I knew I could not. We just had too different work ethics, values, and quality bars for it to even be considered.
Lance and I worked together years ago on the FRAZETTA: PAINTING WITH FIRE documentary. We knew how each other worked, and we worked well together. We had mutual respect for each other, and we shared a lot of laughs. The good and the bad of it is, we're both perfectionists. But you have to remember, one person's idea of perfection may not be as high, or it may be higher than your idea of perfection...as well as your capability. Even so we both had strong beliefs around what perfection looked like. More importantly what the ROI of putting in the time to get what we want, and when to say, "it's good enough". That was something that had come with maturity.
With those conversations out of the way we figured out what was important to us: Have fun making cool stuff with someone you respect with the hopes of making money.
I’ve always said HOPE IS NOT A BUSINESS PLAN. Luckily Lance is more skilled in business tools than I am, and he had some interesting ideas to share.
BUT first, I suggested to Lance, that instead of ground zero, that we should rebrand my Youtube Channel, THE PROCESS and leverage the 6000+ FOLLOWERS I already had. Even though the channel made all of $100 and was eventually booted off the Adsense Revenue stream for not hitting their minimum views each month, it was better than starting all the way over and ignoring what I'd built. It took some convincing...a lot of convincing. And internally, I struggled with it, feeling fairly vulnerable about letting go of something I'd built on my own. But I asked myself the question:
Who else in my life would I ever entrust with this?
Lance was about the only one. Even if it tanked, and we made a mess of things, I was damned sure we'd have fun trying. So, I said, fuck it...let's break some shit!
APPS FOR EVERYTHING
I had no idea how many tools were out, there that could assist in setting up this kind of business. But first things first, we had to decide on what our LLC would be. When it comes to money, things are always going to get complicated and really fast.
Because California is a beast when it comes to taxes and fees, Lance setup an LLC in Washington State which we agreed the name would be 2 BOARD ARTISTS LLC. I wasn't crazy about the silly name at first, but then I said, JUST LET IT GO...who really cares? Let's just get to the good stuff.
Next, he setup a bank account where we each put in $250 to pay for PODCASTLE and other various subscriptions to apps.
So, here's a list of what we're using for our business and why we're using it. They may not be right for you, but the way our brains work...it tends to be right for us.
In the tradition of KANBANs this is a little nicer than the Kanban Flow. It's a task-oriented board that has a lot of great features, and for a limited use of 2 people it's absolutely FREE.
And the best part, is that you can access it on your smartphone. Which has been very helpful as we've had ideas early on that we wanted to make sure we addressed.
I've gone on an on about this app in the past when I started work on that game for the UAE company earlier in 2023. I still like what it can do, and it's helped us create a great way to visualize PROGRAM SCHEDULES, ART DIRECTION, SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING and everything in between. You can rapidly get ideas together or go a more formal route with organization.
The great thing about this as well, is that it's FREE for less than two people, I believe. Which is perfect for us. Minimizing our upfront costs were very important.
After watching this video, we both were blown away at the customizability of Notion as a production tool. Again, if you wanted even more features you'd have to pay. But for our purposes, by using one email account and just sharing access, it was essentially FREE to use. Add any more than one and you'll have to pay.
What's great about it, is there are templates and modules you can access and drag into your viewport to create everything from a SCHEDULE to a SHOOTING LIST, CALENDARS and be able to share that with DEPENDENCIES on your team on multiple projects.
Some of the other tools that we are still trying to set up:
SUBSTACK- which helps capture emails and creates community. This is probably one of the more important marketing tools overall. Others have used it with great success and we're planning on adding MORE CONTENT through a monthly newsletter (written interviews/industry posts) as well as a wrap-up of our WEEKLY VIDEO PODCAST to remind everyone what's available. We may also have SUBSCRIBER ONLY content that will enhance engagement. People like JONATHAN HICKMAN'S
has over 25,000 subscribers. That's nothing to sneeze either. I'll let you know when it's ready to subscribe to.
KO-FI- is not much different than Patreon, but it has a better layout for a shop and another way to build a subscriber base an community. Don't worry, I'll still have my Patreon. This Substack will be more for selling DIGITAL PRODUCTS, COURSES, and SWAG related to the show.
Outside of FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM and YOUTUBE there aren't too many other social media sites we'll be using. All these will have customizable videos depending on lengths of time and engagement. We'll use short clips to market our work and tease things out.
The great thing about BEYOND THE PROCESS, is it'll be similar to what I was doing before, but more focused, tighter content, with more punch. As a friend commented on various videos over the years, he thought they were too long. And because I'm working on trying to make things right, I'm hoping to rectify that going forward. We’ll surely make mistakes as we navigate new territory, but we hope we can pass on what we learn along the way.
BEYOND THE PROCESS where we EXPLORE THE ART OF STORYTELLING with creatives in the fields of COMIC, FILMS, ANIMATION, VIDEO GAMES and COMMERCIALS. We'll still be doing some PROCESS VIDEOS as well as CONVERSATIONS that Lance and I will have about working and thriving in our creative fields, while covering timely topics on AI and other digital initiatives that we need to be aware of to keep doing what we love. Hopefully you'll join us because things are gonna get interesting.
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