Making Art Outside Your Discipline is Hard. Here’s How We Are Making it Easy.
It took us many weeks until we finally found Rick Troula, the Brazilian illustrator and concept artist that would create the visuals for our film, Unbreakable. The process was stressful, time-consuming, and at times, shocking. Here’s what happened and what we are now doing to make this hard process, easy:
THE STORY
I first learned about 3D animation while working at a maker space for kids in Manhattan. My colleague was showing us some of his work with Blender, a 3D animation software. This would be amazing for our latest film project, I thought to myself.
Bubbling with excitement, I shared the idea with Emmalie, and we jumped right in to find a collaborator. Our discombobulated search consisted of:
A rough sketch of the Unbreakable storyboard
Scrolling through Instagram’s animation hashtags and direct messaging animators
Diving deep into the infinite pages of a Google search for a studio that wasn’t a major corporation working with Pixar or Disney
Looking on ArtStation, a platform for visual artists, and emailing potential collaborators
Contacting the illustration department at arts universities for recommendations from professors
Reaching out to our tiny network of visual artists for any leads
Just a few of the responses we received:
#1 Potential Collaborator: Boutique animation studio in Brooklyn
Their Response (without knowing our budget): “We are way out of your budget. Our prices start at $90,000 for 30 seconds of simplistic animation.”
Our Internal Thoughts: Very condescending, but very true. Our film was 14 minutes long. 😳
#2 Potential Collaborator: Animator from Prague, who invented a 3D animation software that makes paintings come to life
Their Response: “Sounds like an awesome project, I’d love to do it for $995,000.”
Our Internal Thoughts: Ok, better price than before and still absolutely unattainable.
#3 Potential Collaborator: Animation team in Sweden
Their Response: “Only a 3 month timeline? Well, that’s just impossible.”
Our Internal Thoughts: Uh oh, this was supposed to be faster than 2D animation.
A clip of the animated storyboard from Unbreakable edited by Art Beyond the Ink, illustrated by Rick Troula
As we got farther into the process, we began to realize how out of our element we were. Our budget and expectations were utterly unaligned with the standards of the field, and the timeline continued to get shorter. And shorter.
Anxious about the project falling through, we changed our direction: instead of 3D animation, we’ll make a colorful storyboard, which will serve as the first draft for an animated film in the future. Although this made the project less daunting, we had to start our search over again! In a couple of weeks with pure luck, we found Rick, who was a great collaborator – open to feedback, communicative, hard-working, and very talented.
OUR SOLUTION
This journey was one of many that prompted us to think of a better way to connect with artists outside of our field: Across Disciplines Database is an organized directory of interdisciplinary artists from musicians to filmmakers to painters. This resource is meant to help artists expand their network, connecting them with others outside of their discipline for upcoming projects.
A quick look into how the database works
You can filter the database by location, discipline, identity and more to look for the dream artist that your project is missing. For artists interested in joining the database, it’s an open call! Not only are we so excited to be launching a platform that can help artists (especially in their early career) grow their network, but we are also thrilled to be able to use this resource ourselves! Though we’ll all still have to navigate new disciplines full of unknowns, we hope this database makes the first step more accessible, manageable, and simple, so that we can follow through on our visionary ideas and bring them to life.
Quick Links:
Search through and join the Across Disciplines Database!
Watch Rick Troula’s work in the Unbreakable film for free through our YouTube channel.
Check out the listen-along Unbreakable comic book in our shop.
