Enter the Cone Zone: The Motion Awards

Motionographer does a lot for our industry...

They inspire us, interview industry professionals, educate us, and put on the amazing F5 Conference. In this interview Joey talks to Motionographer Co-Founder Justin Cone about their Patreon campaign and the latest project Motionographer is heading up, The Motion Awards. Justin and Joey get deep into the nitty gritty about this new award, why the industry needs it, and what makes it different from all of the other award shows out there.

Justin also offers his wisdom on what makes great design, well, great. We'll give you a hint, it has nothing to do with originality. If you want more than that you'll have give this one a listen.

Don't forget to check out the show notes below for links to all of the studios, work, artists, and resources mentioned in this podcast.

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Show Notes

‍

MOTIONOGRAPHER

‍Motionographer.com

‍MotionAwards.com

‍Motionographer Patreon

‍Step By Step Spectrum

‍Step By Step Locked and Loaded

‍F5 Conference

‍Submit your work to Motionographer.

‍

PEOPLE

‍Joe Donaldson

‍Lilian Darmono

‍Nol Honig

‍David Brodeur

‍Carlos El Asmar

‍Jorge Rolando Canedo Estrada (JR Canest)

‍Daniel Savage

‍Claudio Salas

‍Brian Gossett

‍Maxim Zhestkov

‍David Kamp

‍Alex Moulton

‍Danny Elfman

‍Erica Gorochow

‍James Blagden

‍Daniel Savage

‍Ryan Honey

‍Michael Jones

‍

STUDIOS

‍Digital Kitchen

‍Not To Scale

‍NBC Universal

‍Buck

‍Gretel

‍Antfood

‍Cypher Audio

‍Psyop

‍Giant Ant

‍Oddfellows

‍PepRally

‍Blur

‍Aixsponza

‍Renascent

‍MK12

‍

WORK

‍Buck - Spectacle of the Real, David Blaine

‍Buck - Good Books - Metamorphosis

‍GMUNK - Box (Bot and Dolly)

‍Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No

‍Yule Log

‍

Awards:

‍MotionAwards.com

‍The Emmy's

‍The ADC'spromaxBDA

‍

RESOURCES, INSPIRATION, & EDUCATION

‍Kickstarter.comI

MDB - Film Credits Database

‍Wine After Coffee

‍Kuka Arms

‍Art of the Title

‍Stash

‍Mograph Mentor

Episode Transcript

Joey Korenman: Hello everyone. Today, I'm really, really excited because we have Justin Cone of Motionographer on this, I guess, I'm going to start calling it a podcast. If you have had any experience in MoGraph or Motion Design, whatever you want to call it, you are familiar with Motionographer. It's been around since 2006. It has influenced and inspired everybody in this generation of Motion Designers. As someone who's in my mid-30s and I came up in the industry around the early 2000s, I've watched it grow. Over the last year, I've actually gotten to know Justin a little bit. Justin is one of the most professional and brilliant people I've ever met. I really wanted to pick his brain about Motionographer, specifically, what's going on with it now 10 years later.

There's a lot of new faces on the site. You may have noticed Joe Donaldson, Lilian Darmono, Nol Honig, among others. There's a lot of neat new kinds of concept they're putting out. For those in the know, there is also a big announcement coming very soon about something called the Motion Awards. Justin will talk about it in this conversation with me. The Motion Awards, I believe, are probably going to be the premier award for Motion Designers in our industry. This is the first year they're going to be happening. It's going to be incredibly exciting. We get into what he thinks is going to constitute award-winning work. What even makes work good? Have you ever thought about that? Why is something good and why is something else not good? I was expecting his answer to be really vague and formless but he actually had very almost a bullet pointed list of what makes work good, what makes work bad.

It's an awesome conversation with an awesome person. I hope you enjoy it. Before we get into it, I just want to remind you we are going to talk about a lot of resources and things in this episode. You can find all of those in a nice little convenient list that we like to call show notes at SchoolofMotion.com. Head on over there. You'll also be able to find other interviews and podcast episodes, articles, and tons and tons of free Motion Design lessons. If you're so inclined, you can also get information on our training courses such as Design Bootcamp, Animation Bootcamp, the new Rigging Academy Course we just launched which is very popular. All of that and more is at SchoolOfMotion.com. You can sign up for a free student account which will let you download actual project files and assets from the lessons as you watch them of the site plus a bunch of other neat things. That's all I'm going to say about that. Now, let's go talk to Justin Cone.

Justin Cone, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with me today. I really appreciate it.

Justin Cone: Thank you so much for having me here. It's an honor and a pleasure.

Joey Korenman: To have you tell me it's an honor to talk to me, this is like a little 23 year old Joey is getting a little tinkle. I want to talk first a little bit about what's going on over at Motionographer. I'm sure everyone listening is familiar with Motionographer. It's been around for years, it's this cornerstone of the industry. There's been a lot of changes over there starting with back, I think, in May you did Patreon campaign. I wanted to just check in, see how that's going and find out why you decided to go that route.

Justin Cone: Yeah, that's right. I think it was May when we launched the Patreon campaign. For people who aren't aware, Patreon is like Kickstarter except it's a monthly thing. You contribute over time instead of one lump sum. You can sign up and be like, "I want to give two bucks a month to Motionographer." A lot of people will give $50 a month depending on how valuable they think it is to them and so we start that.

The reason that, I think, we were drawn to Patreon as a way to unlock more potential for Motionographer was it's consistent. Over time, you can count on, month to month we're going to have this much money coming in from the community until you can actually plan things. You can plan content, you can plan hirings of people and that thing. With Kickstarter and other forms of crowdfunding, it's one lump sum and it's really hard to manage that. That's a boring logistical reason for going with Patreon.

The other I like about Patreon is the kind of community aspect of it. They really encourage updates and different kinds of interaction with your patrons. It just works well with what we were already doing with Motionographer. Because of the campaign, we have been able to hire a part time editor. For the first time ever in the 10-year history of Motionographer, we're actually somebody to function as an editor and that person is Joe Donaldson. People probably know his name, he's been posting more on the site because that's his job. Joe was also an art director at Buck in LA. Before that, he worked all over the place, the Digital Kitchen, he was a freelancer in New York, he was a director in the [inaudible 00:05:23] roster. He's just an awesome guy. He's really plugged in, super smart, super ambitious. Patreon has enabled us to have him be an editor.

An editor, by the way, if you're thinking that's somebody who checks spelling and that thine, then that's a copy editor and we don't have one of those as you can tell if you read the site. He's actually, really Joe is pretty much at the same level that I am. He's finding new content, finding new people to contribute to the site writing. He and I have different takes on things. I really like a lot of CG work, I like really high polish work, Joe like a lot of bespoke 2D, more like handmade work so we compliment each other well. I'm super, super grateful to the Patreon community that we've been able to have him on board. That's the Patreon piece and I'm really grateful that it's still going and working out well for us.

Joey Korenman: Yeah that's awesome. I definitely want to get into a little bit later what you just talked about. Those interesting art directions and styles that we see all the time on Motionographer. I'm looking at the Patreon page and I remember when it came out. There were goals, it works just like Kickstarter. You tell people, "if we reach this dollar amount this is what we'll be able to do. If we reach this dollar amount, well be able to do this." You had some really lofty goals on there.

Justin Cone: They're still there. They're like buried somewhere.

Joey Korenman: Yeah, I wan teacher just a gut check from you like, in your head, was this successful because you actually, I think as of this morning when I checked when I did my research, I think you were up to like almost $2700 a month in Patreonage, which is pretty amazing. I know that if you had been able to get up to say $10,000 a month or something like that, you'd be able to hire a wen developer and all these other things.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, was this a success? Would you have done anything differently? Is it making you rethink you strategy for the site?

Justin Cone: Sure that's great. The goals that we had on Patreon really existed long before the Patreon campaign ever launched. The first goal was something like hire an editor and the second goal is ... there's a lot about hiring people and getting the team bigger. Then there's other goals there about creating a consistent and authoritative industry survey or multiple surveys every year so we could figure out salaries and demographics and even hardware and software trend, but you have it really well-quantified. We had a lot of these goals. There are other ones too that existed before Patreon. When we launched Patreon we thought, "Well, you know, we might as well aim high and see what happens. It's experimental thing for us to even be on Patreon."

We've plateaued, as you said, around $2600 right now. I think there are some reasons for that. If you look at the people who do really, really well, and there are some people who $30,000+ a month on Patreon, if you look at those people, for the most part they create episodic content so people who create a video series or who create a really popular podcast or who create, I think one of the top ones is people who create adult video games. They're tapping into a whole different sector.

Joey Korenman: You're in the wrong niche. You're in the wrong industry.

Justin Cone: Tell me about it. I think that makes sense because there's a real clear dollar of dollar match there. People's perception of the value they're getting translates to this regular production of content. We have that going against us. If you look at other sites like ours that are on Patreon like Art of the Title, Greatest Cale [Gorrilla 00:09:30], they're all in the lower end in terms of how much you're getting per month. I'm really happy with where we are because I think relative to the other creators on Patreon who were doing what we're doing, we're doing really, really well.

Having said that, this is advice for anybody who's thinking about going on Patreon or Kickstarter or whatever, whenever you have one of these crowdfunding campaign things and you hit a plateau as we have, you have to ask yourself, "Okay, could we increase the number of people, could we increase the amount of money that people are giving each month? If so, how much work and time will that take and then, the big question is, do the little math there, is it worth it?

In any project, this is true for business in general but you have to decide, are we going to get a good return on the investment of time and energy that we put into this? Right now, we put a certain amount of effort and time into our Patreon community and it's manageable because it's just me and Joe part time really, that are doing everything as well as a few other volunteer writers. If I was to start putting more and more energy into boosting patronage on Patreon, it would start carving into what we're getting the support for in the first place, which is creating content and resources for people in the industry. We'd be cannibalizing, In other words, ourselves. We don't want to do that.

I'm really happy with where it is right now. We've been able to actually hire Joe earlier than I thought. We'd be able to, originally, that goal was at $5,000. Eventually, I'd like to get there and maybe we'll just have to apy for that some other way. It's been really helpful for me just to have a clearer vision of where Motionographer is going to go because every month on Patreon, we do a monthly update and that's a time when I tell everybody in the Patreon community, "okay, here's what we've achieved, here's what we're trying to do next." Just having to do that every month is great for me. It keeps me on track. It tells me where we're falling short. That's a good reality check. I hope that helps clear it up a little.

Joey Korenman: Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of great little nuggets in there of advice just about business in general. Frankly, one of the things that I hope people would take away from it because being in charge of Motionographer, at this point, I'm sure it feels like a big responsibility and it's your livelihood and everything. Doing the Patreon thing, it probably felt really scary and risky and it worked out fairly well, maybe not as well as you'd hope but I think that's great that you did it because that's how ... There's a lot of correlations I think I'm finding between business and the creative side. You take risks knowing that it might not go the way you want but now, think of how much you learned in the meantime.

Doing my little back of the envelope math here, I'm trying to figure out how much this Patreon campaign has earned from Motionographer. I'm coming up with maybe somewhere between $10,000 and $11,000 bucks since the beginning. Most of that has gone to paying Joe which obviously I've noticed there is a constant stream of new content no Motionographer which is very hard to do and it's a really high quality content. Is that really where the bulk of that revenue has gone?

Justin Cone: It almost covers all of our expenses. $2600 a month right now is what we're at on Patreon. That covers Joe and our hosting. We have a bunch of other little tiny expenses, little services, font hosting for the website, things they add up. It's basically helping us break even. More important than that, what it allows is for me to step back from the day to day of running Motionographer and let Joe do more of that, focus on the content production, and I can look and say, "Okay, what's the next thing we should be doing and how are we going to do it? That's super, super important to me." It's unlocking a much greater potential I think for Motionographer than it was ever possible without it.

Joey Korenman: Yeah. I'm seeing that because there's a lot. You're still doing content for the site but it seems like most of the content is coming from Joe and now you've got Lilian and I see Nol Honig on there every once in a while. It's really awesome. On that note, what has this freed you up to work on? What are some of the things that we haven't seen going on behind the scenes on Motionographer?

Justin Cone: The new content, you're mentioning and the new contributors, a lot of that is Joe's stuff. Joe had ideas about monthly guest articles from people and the community. Lilian Darmono had the idea for Spectrum which is a series. It's like looking at people who are outside the normal mainstream rockstar motion design world. It's just been encouraging, those ideas and letting them take on a life of their own. We just published another step by step piece. Step by step is Joe's idea of ... we've all seen tutorials that are great for learning like a specific technique or aspect of a project but there's a lot to be said by just looking over somebody's shoulder as they work and do their thing. The one that went live today was from locked and loading. David, I can't remember how to pronounce his last name.

Joey Korenman: It's David Brodeur.

Justin Cone: Brodeur?

Joey Korenman: Yeah.

Justin Cone: It's just like you're watching him make one of his scenes from start to finish and it's super interesting to watch. We were letting those things go and take on a life of their own. We have more ideas for that stuff in the future. The big thing that it's let me focus on was what to do next. I thought initially the thing that we needed to do next was build a credit system, like an IMDB style credit system for motion design and animation. I still think that's super important. Ultimately, that's the next that I want to make.

What I did, I went down a rabbit hole where I started working on that. Joe was focusing on the day to day stuff and I started building out this tool and I realized that it was going to be harder and take more coding prowess than I currently possess. I had this choice to make. I was like, "Well, I can work on this for the next 18 months and make like glacial progress or we can work on something else and hopper our list of projects that might actually enable us to build this credit system in a different way where we can actually hire people and work with people who are full time coders all the time who actually know what they're doing.

We looked at our list of projects and one that we've been wanting to do for a long time is an award show. Carlos, my business partner and really the co-founder of Motionographer in [inaudible 00:16:57] festival, he's been talking about doing the award show for a long time because he's been frustrated with what's out there. He was an executive at NBC Universal for many years and at ABC before that. I always pushed back, I was like, "I don't know, an award show, it seems lame. I don't really want to do that." Then I started talking to people about it out in the community and everyone was like, "yeah, there should be an award show, really, there needs to be one." I thought, "okay."

I started doing research and I got [inaudible 00:17:25] help doing some research on what's out there and we dug in it. The more that we dug into it, the more we realized there's a real need for this in our community. We chose that to be the next project that we're going to do. We're launching very soon. In December, we're going to be launching The Motion Awards by Motionographer. I'm really excited about that. It's a lot of work, in many ways it's just like starting a whole new non-profit entity but I think it's worth doing.

Joey Korenman: Yeah, that's an understatement. It's a huge, huge job to put on an award show, even a small one. The first time you do it, I'm sure you're up to your neck in branding and categories and all that. Can you tell us where did the genesis of this come from? Why another award show? Why do we need that?

Justin Cone: Some people have responded with that rhetorical question, why another award show? The unstated thing there is, "Oh there's just so many". When you actually look at what's out there, it's abysmal for motion design at least and certain kind of animations. There's this perception there's all these amazing shows out there but for Motion Design, for most of them it's just a single category.

Joey Korenman: Shoe-horned in there.

Justin Cone: Yeah. If you look at the Emmys for instance, the Emmys, that's one of the largest award shows in the United States at least. It's long had the title design category which is motion design but that's it. It's a really authoritative award for that one narrow aspect of motion design. As we all know, motion design goes way beyond just titles and it goes beyond television, which the Emmys is also limited to.

You can maybe look at some other places like the ADC, the Art Director's Club. They have a motion category and I've judged that before. I was actually one of the first judges for that category. But it's focused on advertising as because it's the ADCs. The winners are all agencies, its' hard to even find studios listed as winners, the whole thing, if you look at the winners for motion, it's confusing. It's like, "What are these categories?" There's Promacs BDA which has been on for a really long time. Promacs BDA is more for TV marketing and graphics. There are some others. Basically, there's was no one award show that I feel celebrates the full potential of motion design. There's so many areas that motion design has worked its way into. A lot of those, there's not any award show period that shines a spotlight on some of these newer areas.

If you're looking like the role of motion design is played in UI development, app development, VR/AR, your exciting places there. But even just looking at the power of a visual essay, there's not really an award show out there that's saying, "Hey, visual essays and explainer videos, those are a thing and they're important and we want to celebrate them. We're going to do that. That's the idea is basically try as hard we can with a lot of people helping to celebrate the full potential of Motion Design because nobody else is doing it.

Joey Korenman: That's awesome. I totally agree with you. I was researching before we talked today. I was looking at all the other award shows, and it really does feel like the Emmys is they've taken this tiny sliver of Motion Design and shoehorned it in. There's another thing to I'm curious. I want to get your take on this. Other award shows, every award show has a culture to it, the Emmys feel like television and ADC feels like advertising. If you've ever been around ad agencies, you know what that culture is.

There hasn't been anything that really speaks to motion designers. I might even use the word "mographer" here. To me, when I think of industries having a certain culture, and maybe it's just because I'm in my 30s but I think back to the mograph.net heyday and there was this vibe around all this stuff that like, "Hey, we're kind of on the cutting edge and no one really understands how this cool stuff is getting done. Let's try to figure it out."

I haven't ever seen that in an award show. I'm curious like obviously, the categories and the breadth of work you want to feature in this award show show are going to be tailored to how diverse motion design is now. Is there also going to be this aspect of its "for motion designers by motion designers", like a culture thing?

Justin Cone: Absolutely. That's really, I think one of the most important things about it is this is for the people who are actually making this stuff. This is not for agencies or big clients although now they are increasingly making stuff too, they have in house teams. These are really for people who are making this, pushing the pixels, setting the keyframes. Already there, that's a cultural difference from many of the other award shows where the people who are getting the award are several degrees removed from the wacom tablet that actually made the thing happen.

That's a big difference. This is for makers, by makers, every judge is directly involved in the creation of motion design and animation. Even the people who are teaching this stuff, they're teaching in that field for the student categories. Everybody's directly involved. We purposely didn't include producers and executive producers as judges even though I think they're incredibly valuable on how to really ... valuable perspective to offer. Everybody is a designer, art director, animator that thing, because that's how we're going to differentiate ourselves and that is the culture that we're serving.

Whether or not that's going to match some existing culture that we've seen online before, I don't know. We've got 120 judges and they really represent the culture of the awards. They're from all over the map. Some of them were old school mographers, old school being like early 2000s. Some go back further than that.

Joey Korenman: Ancient.

Justin Cone: Ancient, I know. That's when I got into this game too. Many of them are not from that world there, animators and people that might be more described as designers or illustrators as something who have a different background and might come from the other world college of art, which has been producing an incredibly array of people who've translated their skills into motion design. I'd like to think there's a group of cultures that are going to be represented but they're all bound by the fact that they're makers, if that makes sense.

Joey Korenman: Yeah. I think that's a brilliant move. I want to talk to you in a little bit about this. One of the things that I've noticed is there are some tastemakers in the industry. What that does, and you've even talked about this before, this idea of confirmation bias. It creates this perception that is probably not accurate that there's a certain style of work that is popular right now and that that's what people want and that's probably was going to win awards when in reality that's just like the mograph version of what just happened with the US elections where, if you live inside the bubble and you only look at wine after coffee, you might think that that's what all the work looks like. Let me ask about  the judges because you mentioned 120 judges which is a shitload, if I may put it bluntly. How come you need so many judges?

Justin Cone: To basically to combat what you were just describing. It's one of the main reasons. If you look down the list, you'll see a lot of the rockstars and the tastemakers. You're going to see Jorge from One After Coffee, Claudia Celis. You'll also see Daniel Savage and [inaudible 00:25:46] a bunch of people that are active in the community and some rockstar kind of people. They are important but then they're also going to be counted by a lot of names you amy not be familiar with but as soon as you look at their CVs or their resumes, you're going to realize that, "Oh wow! This person's been a creative director for 20 years and has five Emmys under their belt", or whatever.

We have this range to provide basically diversity of opinion and also to not give any single judge too much power. This, I hope, this is something that, this is a page we took out of the book of some of the other older award show like the Emmys for instance. They have a board of governors and they have tons and tons of judges across their categories. It's a way of distributing power and keeping things as fair as you possibly can have it and not letting one style or perspective dominate the judging.

We also have two rounds of judging. The first round is a shortlist round. One group of judges will go through and basically say in or out, this piece goes to the next round, then in the finalist round, a different group of judges then looks at that work. Again, that takes more judges to have two rounds. That's another reason we have 120 judges.

Joey Korenman: Cool. What are the criteria that they'll be judging on? Is it just like a gut thing like you like it or you don't or are you trying to standardize it a little bit?

Justin Cone: We're going to strike a balance I think. The emphasis is on craftsmanship. This is an award show for people who are actually making stuff as I said before, so not agencies or clients, unless they actually made the stuff themselves. With that in mind, you're going to have to look at execution. You can't just ... this can't just be about a good idea. It has to be beautifully brought to life. But there's a lot of freedom for the judges to bring their own personal interpretation of what good means and what kind of work should win.

I want them to bring their own definitions of good to bear. I've judged a lot of competitions in the past and it really bothers me when I jump into the judging and they're like, "Okay. Here are the criteria for good work. Bullet one, bullet two, bullet three." I'm like, "Whoa! I've been looking at award for 15 to 20 years. I could have my own definition of good. Isn't that why you want me to judge this thing?" We're going to encourage a diversity of opinions about good knowing that that means judges will clash and disagree and some judges are probably going to be wanting us to give them more criteria about what is good. That is, again, that's why we have 120 judges. It's to get them defining it for themselves and putting their own mark stamp of approval on the work.

Joey Korenman: That brings up a really interesting point. This is something I was thinking about recently because if anyone has listened to me ramble on these podcasts before, I bring Buck up at least once an episode. I feel they're my favorite studio times a million. They recently came out with this piece, it was an intro to a David Blaine show. To me, when I saw it, I remember, I think it two or three years ago when JimA came out with that piece Box. It was button dolly thing. I saw that and I knew instantly that it was probably my favorite thing I've ever seem. Then, when this David Blaine piece came out, I had that same feeling.

But, if you look ... I couldn't put my finger on why because if you look at Buck's work, they have 15 other things that look just like the David Blaine thing. He's really beautiful, selly animated, crazy transitions and really great sound from ant food and really good design. Why was that piece so good? I'm curious because you've seen more work than probably anyone out there because you've just been curating it for years. Do you have any what it is that makes certain pieces good? As someone who was an after effects artist, cinema 4D artist, I'm always looking at the technical stuff. However, I've seen things from, "Gretel", is a good example where it's so simple. Execution wise, there's not much going on but it's still amazing. Why? Why? Why is it amazing?

Justin Cone: It's such a good question is when I thought a lot but never really publicly so here we go. I think it's actually helpful to start with what makes bad work. It's easier to agree on that and when you define what makes bad work, it kind of, through negative space shows you what makes good work. Let's start about that. We could say, bad work doesn't communicate its message clearly or create the intended emotional impact that you're trying to create.

I should caveat all this [inaudible 00:30:46] to us by saying I'm talking about design here, I'm not talking about art. That's a whole different conversation. I'm talking about design. That's really what I have spent my time looking at. Bad work doesn't communicate clearly. It doesn't create that intended emotional impact. This could be a message for a client that you're trying to communicate. It could be your own personal message that you're trying to communicate.

Bad work uses the wrong techniques or the wrong aesthetics for the job at hand. An ad for hand-made pottery from Mexico, probably shouldn't feature photo real CG robots doing the dishes. It just doesn't make sense to have some super high polished when you're talking about this Earthy pottery made from Mexico. That would be bad work.

Bad work is forgettable. There's a lot of reasons for that. We could talk about that in a second. Bad work contains technical flaws as you were talking about, technical stuff is important. Bad work contains technical flaws that distract from the core intent of the project. What do I mean by that? If your animation is so poor that the viewer is distracted by it, even if they're not consciously aware of being distracted by it, if it's so poor that the viewers are distracted by it, then you're not serving the message or emotional intent of your project. That's a problem. That's bad work.

Bad work is also internally inconsistent. An emotionally charge like sentimental stop motion piece about a girl who loses her father to alcoholism probably shouldn't have some slammin' soundtrack by Skrillex. It just wouldn't, that's internally inconsistent. That's bad work. These are extreme examples. Usually it's not so clear. But we all know bad work when we see it because of these things. That creates, like I said before, negative space around what is good work now.

One thing I think you have to caveat, and this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think you've talked about this before. I have to say right off the bat that good work is not necessarily original. In the Unites States at least, I don't know about the rest of the world but we have this cult of originality. We worship innovation and novelty. Even our economy is even dependent upon it, the perception that newer is always better. It's just not true. All created work is a conglomeration of the past and the present. There's really nothing truly original or new especially in the space of design because it's message-based communication, it's about communicating ideas in messages.

If you don't believe me, let's, by definition this is true and only explain why. Let's think of language like spoken language for just a moment. You and I are able to communicate with each other because we have a shared set of read upon conventions that we call the English language, we're speaking it now. When I say tree, you know what I mean.

Joey Korenman: You're talking about weed exactly.

Justin Cone: If I say tree, you know what I mean, and if I say cut down the tree, you also know what I mean. If I say Garpool Gok the tree, you're going to be confused because you're like, "What the hell is Garpool Gok? " I'll say, it's an original word, I just made it up. Isn't it great, it's based on nothing before. Meanwhile, my tree isn't getting cut down.

In the realm of art where personally expression matters most, that's probably okay, that's fine, maybe Garpool Gok, means something to me personally, maybe it resonates of the range of emotional tones. It's something that I want to convey. But for design, it's a failure because you've broken the language that we had English or shared language that we had, in the name of novelty. Design is a visual language. It uses shared conventions some of them are not consciously understood by the viewer but they're still there, they're still very powerful. Some of those shared conventions are culturally specific and some of them are just universal for all humans. If I can continue my rant for just a a little bit longer-

Joey Korenman: Keep going.

Justin Cone: In the US, for example, we have a visual convention that we read from left to right. We don't read from right to left or top to bottom as some people do in other cultures around the world. That's a culturally specific visual convention. If you try to animate text from the right to the left, you're going to confuse your viewer and probably undermine the intent of your piece. It may be exciting and cool but good luck to the reader, the viewer who's actually trying to understand what the hell you're saying.

An example of a universal convention for visual language would be something like contrast. The human eye is drawn towards areas of high contrast in the composition. It's a super powerful phenomenon. Good designers know how to use that convention that understanding of contrast to create hierarchy and rhythm in their pieces. All too often, an attempt by designers to be original ignores the fact that we are speaking of visual language and we need to work within that language to make our messages clear and impactful.

Again, talking about design not art. Art, forget it. I don't know anything about Art. I can't even talk intelligently about it. For design, the idea of a visual language is super important. Circle back to what makes good work? You have to acknowledge, you're working within a visual language. It's culturally specific, it's even temporarily specific. There are certain, at any given moment in time, there are certain shared visual conventions that you can work with or subvert that makes sense at that time.

An example now would be emoji. Ten years ago, throwing emoji into an animation or any visual work would have confounded people. "Why the hell you have a smiley face with it's tongue out? What is that?" But now you can create entire sentences that are actually sometimes profound and complex with just emoji. In 10 years, it may completely go away. Being aware of that visual language that convention they were working within is an important part of being an effective designer. Okay, rant over. Sorry about that.

Joey Korenman: Wow! Hold on, let me just soak that in. Everyone who's listening you just let your brain percolate all that stuff like a little plinko machine. That was intense. Thank you for that. Let me try to dissect some of this. One of the things said that really resonated with and we actually teach this at School of Motion. We have a course called Design Bootcamp and a big component of that is not just design in a sense of like open Photoshop put a font here, but also like coming up with ideas and things.

One of the things that we stress to our students because it's really daunting, if you look at, for example, Motionographer and you're looking at all the design on there. That's it, you're not looking at rookie sensor. You're looking at, I mean sometimes you are and you're looking at these like these phenoms that are really good at it right away. Most people it takes a long time.

We preach the idea of competence before originality. If your work is super original for the sake of originality like you just said but it's not competent. You've decided you want to use ten fonts all at the same time because you never see that so it's going to stand out. No one's doing that. No one's doing that and then you realize there's a very good reason you wouldn't do that. That's one thing.

Then, the idea that originality is not in our industry. It's not, I've never seen that before. Frankly, there might still be something like that out there but I'm not sure.

Justin Cone: Even the box PC you mentioned before just as a quick aside, it looks so crazy original because you have a man who's interacting with a robot arm and this projection mapped imagery. But the if you actually look at the components of it, some of this been, the [cuckoo arms 00:39:32] have been used a lot before in motion graphics and also in film production.

Then the CG itself, [GMUNK 00:39:43] incredible but it looked a lot like stuff that [inaudible 00:39:46] has been creating Russian dude who's been creating black and whites CG abstracts there for like 15 years. You could see the antecedents if you just are honest with yourself or knew enough about what had come before.

Joey Korenman: Of course, of course. I believe the GMunk, he's got a little breakdown on his site and he actually references him and shows some of this work that inspired him to do this. I guess what I'm getting at is that originality in our industry, it's more about remixing things. That was what GMunk did with that piece. Then, going back to this buck piece, the David Blaine thing, to me, it was just ... There are certain that blow me away because they are novel feeling like the GMunk thing felt new.

The buck thing doesn't feel know though. It feels like, they did that 5-6 years ago with the good books piece. It's almost identical to it in terms of the look and the vibe and the execution but god damn it, it's so good. I have some theories, I want to run past you. One of the things that we don't ... I don't think it's talked about enough that elevates good work to great work, it's tough for us to admit sometimes  be we're emotion designers and we're making visuals, but it's the audio.

The GMunk piece had like this brilliant, brilliant score. I think if you want either those pieces with the audio, they're good. If you turn the audio on, they're great. I'm curious because I know like, you do feature, you mentioned ant food on your site. Frankly [inaudible 00:41:31] does, like, "Have to go to work out there", or "David Camp" or [siphers 00:41:36]. Do you think there get enough credit for making great work?

Justin Cone: No. They don't. This is something that's bothered me for awhile. I used to make music and still do every now and then, I'm a big, big music fans and sound design as well, which by the way, the two different things in case you're curious, a lot of times sound designers do make music but not always. Sound design is like the non-musical enhancements or whatever. Then music is music. Ant food does both and they often have a way of weaving the two together seamlessly which is really amazing.

Ive' talked to a lot of people about these sounds [inaudible 00:42:18] in music, musicians and stuff, I wanted to actually create either an area of Motionographer or a whole new site that really gives sound design and music composition its due but I don't have much time to do that. It's a whole new project. They have other people who've done it. One person, I'm blinking, it might have been Alex Molten who used to do this for a living. He started something, I don't think its ... I think it's dead now. That was a blog dedicated to Sound Design Music Composition specifically in commercial and short form production.

I don't think in general that they get enough credit and it starts, unfortunately for sound designers and musicians, it starts with the project itself. A lot of times, clients and agencies either forget to include sound in the budget or it's like a tacked on item at the end. There's not a real appreciation for that component of the piece. I think what Buck has done by consistently partnering with Ant Food and I guess making that part of their negotiations when they do work, I don't know but I'm assuming so because they said they worked together on almost everything.

That is fantastic because not only is ant food incredible at what they do, it allows Buck and Ant Food to then develop chemistry in their own kind of shorthand for how to work together and so it makes the end product that much better, that much more aligned emotionally. That is huge. I know some people who try to do that, who try to work with the same musicians and sound designers. It high up, when I was at [inaudible 00:44:07] we tried to do that as much as we could. We were working on really big budget projects though and a lot of times, when you get up to a certain budget number for a lot of commercial client, there's not a nice way to say this, some of the clients or people in the agencies get they call Starfucking. They want to like, sorry if there's a big 'F' word there.

Joey Korenman: I love that term. That's one of my favorite terms.

Justin Cone: They think, "oh, we could get Danny Elfman to do the music for this"< even if Danny Elfman isn't the right choice. Even if it makes more sense to have John Black from Cyber Audio or somebody do it. They're going to go Danny Elfman because of the Starfucking thing. That happens a lot with directors of commercials too. That can derail the audio and really limit who gets involved.

But now, they're the unsung heroes of motion design. So much emotion comes from not just the audio but the audio working with the visuals. Not watching pieces with audio is, you're really doing a disservice to [inaudible 00:45:26]. Anytime I look at work I had my headphones on and cranked up.

Joey Korenman: For me, because I, in a previous life I was in a band, and I've been a musician for years and years, and so for my, I always approach everything I did from the audio first which I didn't really know why at that time. I was just comfortable doing it. But now in hindsight, I think what I like about it and what I recognize in pieces I like like the David Blaine one, is it lets you think about the pacing, the timing, because good work has rests builtin to eat.

You look at the Buck piece of David Blaine, by the way, everybody we'll link to all these on the show notes, you'd be able to check them out. There's these moments where there's this burst of amazing animation. If you just did that and went right to the next thing, you wold give the viewers anytime to resonate. If you aren't working to a soundtrack, you had better be really, really good at imagining the movie in your head and then making it, in order to get those pauses. I think music helps naturally create good pacing in motion work, which is one of the reasons I think, this my theory I was getting to, which is why when Buck has to do a 30-sec commercial and they have to cram everything the client wants into it, no matter how beautiful and glowing executed it is, it does not resonate the way something that can be 1 minute 17 seconds can be because that's-

Justin Cone: That's a really good point. If you look at the work that has been most widely celebrated over there is I would argue doesn't fit in the traditional 30 or 60 second box. That's a really good point.

Joey Korenman: It's the same time with the GMunk piece, there were these crazy visual moments and then the camera would pan down to the floor for I've seconds and you'd rest. The music will die down right at that moment. That's one on the things. Where I'm going with this was, sometimes I wonder if when we could bring in another studio because we've been just like, we've been kissing Buck's ass like rightfully so. Let's bring in, I don't know, let's say like a giant ads, another on of my favorites. When they're working on something that's going to end up being a classic piece, do you think they know it when they're happening, or is it only in hindsight that they realize, "Whoa! That came out really good."

Justin Cone: I think, talking to people ab this for years, I think that the experienced people one experience studios know when they're on to something, they know when they're doing something that's great for whatever reason. By the way, that doesn't mean that hey know it's going to get attention and universal praise and win awards because that's a whole different set of skills. That's self-promotion, that's community involvement, that's marketing, that's different stuff. I think that experienced designers and studios know when they're making something good. They know when they're on to something. I think that comes from [inaudible 00;48:35] we can think about inexperienced designer the studios, this is something I had to deal with a lot at Motionographer but inexperienced designers and studios often think they're creating something amazing.

Joey Korenman: Right.

Justin Cone: But they lack the perspective to really see their work clearly against the backdrop of history, against the backdrop of their own work against the backdrop of the current landscape of visual language and trends and whatever else is going out there. When you're inexperienced, you lack that perspective. I think that the more experienced studios have that perspective just from going to battle so many times. They know when they're making something good. I think a lot of times they do.

Now the time when I think these people don't know if they're making something amazing, is even if it has a really long timeline, actually this happen a lot where ... For instance, people who work on experiential work, those timelines can be really long., 18 months is not unusual for a semi-permanent installation piece that's going to live somewhere for awhile. You really do lose perspective it's hard to see the forest for the trees when you've been hacking away the same branch for six months or something. That I think is hard no matter how experienced you are. It's too hard to maintain perspective.

Joey Korenman: Yeah. That's one of the things that we really try to get our students to develop as soon as they can, is the ability to self-critique. Because, everybody has to go through this phase where the work you're able to execute is like far less polished than the work you can visualize in your head. There's that brilliant Ira Glass quote about the gap and that's what it is. What I found is that if you just get into the habit of looking at work all the time, eventually, you'll develop a sixth sense of like, "Okay, I know what I'm doing feels good", but it doesn't look right.

It's tough for studios too. I've been in the position of being creative director at a studio and working for six months on something and hoping maybe this one will get on Motionographer and sometimes that desire and that aspiration to do great work overrides being realistic. It's a great design, it's a great animation, but it's for a bank. It's not going to resonate.

Justin Cone: Yeah that's true. Just understanding, again, this those goes back to what is good design. It's basically something that is helping a message come across clearly and with as much emotional impact as appropriate. If you let the desire to be posted to Motionographer or something drive your decisions, it's a good chance ti's going to screw you up because we need to be driving the decisions is, is this the best thing for the client or for the project hand, for what I'm trying to say here?

It's worth saying that like a lot of the people that I think of as rockstars who just consistently produce incredible work, they're humble about it. When they send something, there's like, "Hey, I finished this." They don't assume that we're going to post it.

By the way, us posting it doesn't mean that, it's like we're like the end all, be all, it's just what we like. They understand that too. They understand that they were just one voice in a crowd of many and all those voices are valuable and valid. They understand all that. We have this on our if you go to Motionographer.com/process, we have a list of loose criteria that we don't go down the like and ask ourself all these question later on that page. They are in the back of our minds. I think it can be helpful if you look at those things. It can be helpful but helping you critique your own work and understand the larger context in which you're creating stuff.

Joey Korenman: I think that's really, really good advice. Don't let the tale wag the dog. If you do work using the right mindset and trying to make your clients as successful as you can because they're paying you too. Or if you have a vision and you're working on a personal project, just be true to that. If you are, you have a better chance of getting on Motionographer. One of things I want to ask you about too I that regards Justin, a lot of that kind of sentiment of like, "I hope I get on Motionographer." That's out of your control. But now there's going to be an award show. I imagine it's going to be a big deal to win a Motion Award.

Justin Cone: I hope so.

Joey Korenman: Or maybe not. Maybe it'll be like the price you get in a Happy Meal. But hopefully it's a big deal. My question is, are awards really ... because people are going to make them sign very important in their mind. Are awards you think still relevant today? It used to be that award shows and things like Stash. They served to fill a whole that was how do I discover new content. Now there's a million ways to do that. You've got Vimeo feeds, you've got Art of Title, and you've got Motionographer and wine after coffee.

What does the award show that all of those things don't?

Justin Cone: It's interesting. I think we went through a whole cycle here where you have this kind of institutions and then social media challenged those institutions. Its like look, you can go direct to the starts and find it here on Vimeo or whatever. Then because that became so popular, those streams of gold content soon became like raging rivers of mud. It's like the good thing, it was too much of that good thing.

No, we're just drowning in amazing stuff, I think no more than ever, it's important to have an awards show to create a space for people to go, "Okay wait, hang on just a second." There's been a whole bunch of stuff created in the past 12 months or whatever. Stuff

What's this stuff that really sticks? What's the stuff that we really want to remember and that we really want to hold up. You can't do that on social media, by definition, you can say it's will get buried and the fee within 15 seconds. An awards show is the way to create that permanent space, a quiet space small you have these things up. There's also, I think there's a historical value to having the awards show year after year after year which we plan on doing for decades. You can look back and see clear changes and visual connections and even in technology and these sort of things, that you can't, again, kids social media is terrible at looking back. If you don't believe, try to find something that you posted 8 1/2 weeks ago on Facebook or twitters.

It's impossible, this is a again a to preserve some sense of clarity. I think it's more important than ever. There's also, that the big aspiration thing about why I think the Motion Awards are going to be important and why award shows in general is still important. Then there's also the practical benefit, is that studios still get work and recognition from clients and agencies through award show because  while we all are constantly in this world, we know who's hot and who's the greatest blah, blah, blah.

That's because we breathe it and live it everyday. But the people who are paying the bills in many cases don't. They have a world other worlds that they're involved in. They can't go dipping their toe in the vimeo feeds and hope to find anything valuable there. They also don't even necessarily know what good is. You're talking about a client that's not worked in the space much before but they know they need motion deign to help communicate something. I need some help and award shows are incredibly at that. They're basically a way of saying, "Look this group of peers have said that these people or this person is doing amazing work.

You start here, check this out first, then if you want to go dive in down the rabbit hole with Vimeo, at least now you're going in, you're not going in blind. You've got something that to judge against or to use as a standard against what you can't measure what you're wring to do.

Joey Korenman: I think you're totally right. I think studios that win Motion Awards, that's going to be a press release that they send to all other clients. It' going to be a big deals. I could see a huge value for, I mean, obviously the big studios, it will be helpful to them. I think even for smaller studios to newer studios, odd fellows responsibility Erika [Gorcouse 00:58:05] pep rally. If they win a Motion Award, that's really helping their bottom line. But is that who this wards show is for? Or is it just for ... is it going to end up being dominated by all the names we've already heard because they're the ones capable of putting twelve cell animators on something for six months. Is that going to end being being the case or do you think?

Justin Cone: Yeah, there's a lot to be said their. I think to start, putting 12 animators on a project for six months does not guarantee good work. There's a lot of people who can do that and in the end, it creates crap. What's really happening at Buck is you've got just really talented people holding the reins of who know how to guide people. That can happen  at a small team or a big team. We're going to happen in a young studio or an older stdio. Just depend on the people who are on to something. I don't think necessarily you have to have a big team. If you look at Motionographer's homepage right now, I'd say more than half of the work on there was create by really small teams, sometimes 2 to 3, sometimes just 1 person, not counting the audio component.

What the awards were trying to build in some inclusivity there to make sure that there are enough spotlights. We have, in some of the categories, we have a solo category. In the commercial category, you can enter a solo project which means you created this thing pretty much by yourself, maybe you had some people chipping in here and there and somebody did the audio for you but you pretty much made it by yourself. There's a solo category in the commercial group, there's a solo category in the visual essay explainer group, and there's one in short form because a lot of people create short form work by themselves, and also in the student category, there's a solo award as well.

We're trying to bake it in. I also think you're going to see a whole range of work. I don't know, I'm not judging. By the way, I'm not a judge for the Motion Awards. We're going to have to wait and see. Again, we chose 120 people that we chose because they're not all there reinforce the status quo necessarily. Some of them are going to challenge it. I guess we'll wait and see. I know that it's one of our goals to include as much range as possible but ultimately the best work is going to win according to the judges and we'll see what they say.

Joey Korenman: Yeah, I'm really excited to see. I can understand you're not a judge because you probably have enough on your plate. I do hope, because one of the things that ... we have a very big alumni group and most of them are working as the only motion designer at their little job or their place of business or they're freelance or something. They're these solo artist. When you look at ... I know, the Motionographer, I think, it really does an amazing job of showing a lot of different styles. But a lot of the pieces that get passed around that really blow everyone's mind, they have what I call the big studio look where, as good as the software is getting, selly animation is still insanely labor intensive. Being a hardcore 3D shop like Blur or [inaudible 01:01:37] that requires these, basically, an IT department level of expertise and people with different realms of expertise like texturing and modeling and things and it becomes harder and harder for a single person or even two people to pull that look off because the studios don't stop getting better either, they keep improving too.

I'm curious, are there styles that you think a solo artist or a small two-person shop could do that would let them win a Motion Award? I guess I want to wave people with like, if you're out there listening to this and you're like, "I won a Motion Award but I'm just me, and I cannot do selly animation like Buck can." What's the thing that's going to help them standout?

Justin Cone: You have to play to your strengths. That goes whether you're an individual or if you're a studio. You got to know what your strengths are and play to them. Again, that takes a little bit of experience to even know what your strengths might be. If you're a studio that really has been passionate about creating photo real abstract CG work but you think that selly animation is how you're going to get attention, you're already going down the bad path. It's not going to work out for you.

Joey Korenman: You going to have a bad day.

Justin Cone: Yeah, exactly. Ultimately, you have to play your strengths and all, make sure that the work you're creating again is creating that emotional impact and aligning with the message that you're trying to get across. I get the feeling ... this big studio look, but I see so many mindblowing things create by individuals whether it be on Instagram or Motionographer or whatever, that I think everybody has a shot at not only the Motion Awards of winning a Motion Award, I really do think everybody has a shot provided they work as up to a certain level. But I also think in general, people have a shot to stand out. Some of the work that has been, ... if you were to look at what's been popular or what had viral success, you can find some crazy examples of work that doesn't fit any traditional definition of quality.

What I'm thinking of right now is I can't remember what it's called. It's a weird animated short about a baseball player who pitched a no-hitter while he was tripping on acid. Remember that? Remember that when it came out?

Joey Korenman: That's amazing.

Justin Cone: It came out two years ago. There's been a follow-up on me posted on Motionographer. It's one dude, he interviewed some people for it but it's one guy who created. It's by James [inaudible 01:04:44]. There's a quality to a naivette to the style of it but it's one guy and that thing has been viewed million upon millions of times. There's always a way to look in an old problem in new and you don't have to have a team of animators or designers behind you to do that. Anybody can do that.

Look at the [inaudible 01:05:18] the project that Daniel Savage launched a collaborative project that he launched a few years ago. Now, there are studios and if you look at some of the earlier ones, it's just one person creating a little sequence for this collaborative animation project. Some of the best stuff I saw that year was in [inaudible 01:05:36]. I think people have to ask themselves, again, what are they really trying to achieve and how can they play their strengths to achieve it? Hat's going to give you your best shot.

Joey Korenman: That's awesome. I think it's a really exciting time to be getting into Motion Design because I remember getting to it probably around the same time you did when it was the domain of these wizards that they were the only ones that knew how to do this stuff. Renaissant and I'm k12 and all that, but now, you can learn how to do anything and the question now really becomes what do you do, which is my harder?

Justin Cone: Yeah it is. It is exciting. So much of the work is shifting to freelancers, individuals and small groups. There's just an enormous opportunity there and there's a drying up of work at the higher end of the spectrum. It's worth remember too people like Buck and [inaudible 01:06:43], they have so much work that I'm guessing they don't post on their websites. Work that pays the bills and they the lights on and they decide we're going to go all-in in this one and lose some money on it and do it for fun. Of course, that's going to make them look like they're just always sitting out at the park. There's a whole bunch of stuff you're not seeing from every studio or individual out these.

That stuff isn't important. That's what keeps you going and keeps the lights on. There is so much opportunity now for that kind of work. Then, if you get a steady stream of that going, you can then whatever you want with the freedom that afford you. Erica [Gorchou 01:07:24] you mentioned earlier, is a really good example. She work, she does client jobs, maybe she lights out, turns out, maybe she doesn't. But then she takes the money that she gets from that and she puts it into products that she cares about. She's becoming politically active so she's got some project. She's able to work with friends on and spend time on.

She can try to, she mad a game for iOS. There's no many to be made in that really but it's something she wanted to do and she was able to do because she went after, strategically, he went after some of the working that pays well and is coming out now, all the needs for content are so huge there's a great opportunity there, and si didn't was it up.

Joey Korenman: Frankly, that's my philosophy. That is One for Mill, One for the Real, I think that's how you do it. I remember chatting with the Ryan Honey at Blend last year. I forget what the percentage was but I think he said something like, "What you see on Volks website is like 10% of the work they do. Even Buck, there's like a basement somewhere at Buck with a bunch of really shiny turds in it.

Justin Cone: Yeah, exactly. It was the same in [inaudible 01:08:36] when I was there. It's funny too because that worked often in forms the big rockstar work because you learn stuff, you learn efficiencies, you learn new tools and stuff, from the work that you get paid to do that comes back around. People who feel like every project they make has to be Buck level, you're going to set yourself up for burnout and failure and just disappointment. It's a balance to cycle.

Joey Korenman: I think people should take that advice and save their goods up for the Motion Awards. Justin, if someone wants to learn more about the Motion Awards are there any URLs or dates you could share at this time?

Justin Cone: Yeah. Go to MotionAwards.com. If you get there before December 13th, you can sign up to get notifications via email about everything that's going to be happening. MotionAwards.com. That's also the website for the awards. On December 13th, it will be opening the call for entries. There's going to be an early bird period that will save you about $50 per entry so I recommend getting entries in sooner rather later. The early bird period is going to fun from December 13th to I think January 6th. There's different price points. I won't be able to explain all that in the podcast without confusing people.

Solo projects are cheaper. The student entrees are obviously the cheapest. The solo projects are cheaper and there's a kind of professional level for studios and stuff. Our entry fees are below the industry average. We're trying to keep as low as we can. Everybody should get their work in as early as they can. We'll probably have some discounts and stuff for patrons. We haven't figured out how we're going to that. If you're interested in becoming a supporter on Patreon.com, go to Patreon.com/motionographer. Sign up and you'll get updates from there to.

I think that's I for now in terms of plugging stuff.

Joey Korenman: Cool. The work that can be submitted, it just has to be done by the end of 2016?

Justin Cone: Anytime in 2016. Online or on Air and anytime in 2016.

Joey Korenman: Perfect. If anyone out there is listening, you have a few more weeks in 2016.

Justin Cone: There's a category for you I'm sure. There's 22 categories. I think across seven different areas, all that stuff would be on the website, it's not there now but it'll be on there soon.

Joey Korenman: Awesome.

Justin Cone: Our Patreon people, our Patreon supporters have actually already gotten the sneak peeks. They know all the judges, they know all the categories. It's one of the perks of being a patron on our Patreon campaign.

Joey Korenman: I would highly recommend anyone who frequents Motionographer. Go become a Patreon because you do get a little peek behind the kimono. It's really fascinating and you do get pretty much direct access tot he leadership and Motionographer which is helpful if you want to influence the direction the industry is going.

One last thing, Justin. When are the Motion Awards?

Justin Cone: The winners are going to be announced in April. For those who are paying attention, April is historically when we have held the F5 festival. F5 won't be happening in 2017 but there is a strategic alignment of those dates and I won't say anymore for right now.

Joey Korenman: Interesting. Interesting. Awesome. All right. I personally cannot wait to actually judge some of these things.

Justin Cone: Yeah, that's right. You're going to be, I think we have you in the student category. By the way, students, if you completed an online program like design bootcamp or any of the School of Motion program, that's valid. That works. You're a student. You can enter projects fro those courses in the Motion Awards.

Joey Korenman: That is excellent. I saw Michael Jones on the list too, a little shoutout to MoGraph mentors, those guys are our buddies too. That's awesome. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm sure everyone's really excited to submit work and then sit there in April with their fingers crossed hoping for the golden ticket.

Justin Cone: Yeah, super curious to see how it's all going to go. I'm just as curious as anybody else. The more work that's in there, the better it's going to be for all of us as an industry. Yeah, let's do it.

Joey Korenman: Awesome. Thank you again for hopping on. This is awesome. I think there's like ... this went all over the place. There was a lot of really interesting-

Justin Cone: I've had a lot of coffee.

Joey Korenman: little profound things you aid in there. I hope people get a lot out of it. That's in. Thank you. We'll do this again soon.

Justin Cone: Cool. Thanks again so much. Cool, thank you.

Joey Korenman: I want to say thanks again to Justin for coming on and chatting with me. He is an awesome guy. Motionographer has been a source of inspiration for me and for everyone else for a long time. It is his baby and he has managed it extremely well and I cannot wait to see what the next 10 years bring for Motionographer. If you're in that same boat, go to Patreon.com/Motionographer. For the love of God, pledge $5 a month, will you? It's a cup of coffee. Motionographer does a lot, not just for the readers who like to get on it and find out what's new and exciting and what's cool looking.

Motionographer does a lot for the industry, attracting new talent, teaching people about Motion Design. It does a lot more than simply giving you something to look at while you're drinking coffee in the morning. Also, if you want more information about the Motion Awards, go to MotionAwards.com. Starting December 13th, you'll actually be able to submit work for consideration in the first ever Motion Awards. Judges will be announced the same day and as Justin mentioned, there are 120 of them of which I am one. If you would like to bribe me [email protected], I take cash.

You have until March to submit your work. All the work must have been completed in 2016 and the awards will actually be in April. At some point in April, there's going to be the first crop of Motion Award winners.; it's really exciting, I think it's going to be huge. Go to MotionAwards.com, sign up for the email list so you can get notified and get all the information especially that early submission discount that Justin mentioned. That's it. I want to say thank you for listening. Go to SchoolOfMoton.com for show notes and all the other good stuff we have to offer. I will catch you on the next one.

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