Finding Work

[mrhogg]

My three cents:

1) A professional, high quality demo reel.

2) Unswerving commitment to "be" a video puppeteer. This means discussing it ad nauseam with anyone who will listen. The talent of being a puppeteer is NOT an obvious one (like being pretty or athletic) so you MUST promote yourself a every opportunity. You never know who's sitting next to you at a party or who your bank teller might know that can get you a job.

3) For the fatally serious, you should consider investigating a talent agency and get yourself listed. Representation is extremely valuable. Yes, they take a cut of your paycheck... but at least there's a paycheck to take a cut from!

-Gordon

These are very good points, Gordon, thank you. I've considered going the agent route, but haven't had a whole lot of luck finding one.

Self-promotion is definitely a thing I need to work on. Must be more aggressive with it.

 

[mrhogg]

I don't know if my personal story will be helpful in terms of this discussion or not, but about eight years ago I started a puppetry company and in the beginning it went very well. This was before most people figured out how they could use the internet to market effectively so there was much less competition and we were insanely busy building puppets for everything from TV pilots to theatre shows and private collectors. Unfortunately, I knew a lot less about business than I did about puppetry and I made a series of mistakes that compounded and the whole thing rapidly spiraled out of control and I ended up about $45,000 in debt and really depressed.

How did you get those first few jobs? How did you get insanely busy?

Which program did you get funding from? It's something I've also been thinking of, but I've not yet started to look at the specifics.

Incidentally, Andrew, you're going to be speaking at PodCamp NYC? Crazy that there will be two new media puppeteers (that I'm aware of) speaking at the thing.

 

[mrhogg]

It really sounds like you should put that free-time you have into making a post-card/pamphlet to mail to ad agencies. Like I said, you may not hear back right away, but they don't file all of them in the trash. Unique ones they keep. Puppetry is unique.

Yeah, I probably should've. But I hadn't defined the targets to that point, yet.

(In my defense, the Colbert puppet, once I film the challenge video, will get me some attention, I think, so it won't be a waste of time.)

 

[mrhogg]

Because I'm not entirely sedentary, as part of the puppet I just posted photos of yesterday, Git, I'm doing a promotional video thing for FITC, the design festival in Toronto next week. (fitc.ca) Git is your basic pretentious know-it-all designer, who will be interviewing a few of the speakers, and making an *** of himself.

As part of my involvement with the festival, and partly in lieu of money, Hoggworks is a Bronze sponsor of the festival, and gets a full-page ad in the conference program. And the conference is frequented by a lot of ad people, so that might end up with some good leads for me, I think.

I should probably get a few t-shirts made, or buttons or stickers, or something like that. Hmm.

The ad I made for the festival is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inelegant/2378506348/

 

[Buck-Beaver]

How did you get those first few jobs? How did you get insanely busy?

I did most of the work with my ex-wife and the first job was a total fluke; we were out of work and saw an ad online for a company in South Africa that needed help with a black light show. I had spent about 4 years doing black light and she had 10 years experience as a builder so we got hired and ended up writing their show and designing and building all the puppets for it.

This was about eight years ago and there were very few puppet builders on the internet and most that were online did Muppet style stuff and were somewhat limited. There was a lot less competition than there is now. You can see pictures of some of the puppets we built here.

The other thing we had going for us was a low Canadian dollar. The exchange rate was around $1.40 Cdn = $1.00 US so if we worked for clients in the U.S. there was no way an American company or builder could compete against us price-wise. Of course that's no longer the case.

The thing that I did really wrong from a business stand point though was take on way too much way too fast. If you grow too fast you get caught in what they call "the start-up squeeze"; the more business you get in, the more it costs to fulfill the business and if you're not properly capitalized if anything goes wrong you're going to run out of money and go broke, which is what happened to me.

Which program did you get funding from? It's something I've also been thinking of, but I've not yet started to look at the specifics.

I enrolled in a self-employment training program for people under 30. The Canadian government runs a bunch of these through the ministry of Human Resources and Social Development. The specific program I was in is no longer funded unfortunately.

 

[staceyrebecca]

OH I think Colbert Puppet is brilliant! I think what you've been doing is right on track. Just keep up with your instincts.

Buck--I think almost every big break is a total fluke.

 

[Butterscotch]

My thoughts: When I was looking to hire puppeteers, I did a ton of research. I hired Ravagefrackle to build our puppets and he was fantastic. With every puppet he made, he sent me a video of the puppet performing a song that was characteristic to the puppet. I found that this really important for me as a potential employer in the decision-making process. Those videos really showcased his talent as a puppeteer and it was an easy decision after seeing them. So, I would recommend having a video collection of your work.

 

[mrhogg]

You can call ad agencies and request a list of their "Creatives" contact info at the agency. You want to target specifically "producers", "art directors", and "art buyers".

I'm actually a web developer/programmer/designer by day, for the rent payments, so I'm well familiar with the structure at the ad agencies. I need the killer package to send them to immediately get their attention, though. That's the time-intensive and tricky part.

Thanks for the link for the printers. I'm probably going to go with a small booklet that'll hold a DVD, so it'll be a nice handheld thing that won't require a person to be around an internet connection when they get it, and to be able to see it at high resolution without waiting for the download.


Part of my problem with the identification is that if I say "I'm a Flash developer" to a lot of people, that greatly increases the chance I get work within a week or two. If I say "I'm a puppeteer," that's more interesting, and maybe gets me something down the road, but nothing now. And rent, sadly, is not a thing down the road. And if I say "I'm a Flash developer and a puppeteer," that gets confusing.

 

[staceyrebecca]

So when you send them the pacakge, are you going to put in there both that you're a puppeteer & Flash developer?

I wonder if separating them would get you called sooner for the flash stuff. Puppetry, in my mind, overrides Flash as far as what's going to stand out about you.

 

[mrhogg]

No, I just mean in response to one of the earlier comments about taking every opportunity to push yourself as a video puppeteer. There's crossover for me, as agency folks will have a potential desire for those services, so it makes sense to make a point of mentioning them, but the far safer bet is to say "I AM FLASH." I worry that if I hit it too hard with the puppet angle, I'll lose some of the Flash work, which is keeping the roof over my head at this point.

This actually happened to me recently. Someone e-mailed me, saying that they know I'm not doing web stuff anymore, just puppets, but if I could pass a freelance opportunity on to someone still doing work, that would be great. In this instance I was able to get their attention, and am currently doing work for them, but who knows how many people are simply not contacting me because they don't currently have a need of puppets, and think I'm no longer in the market for web work.

That is, I suspect, a rarer concern, and one made trickier by virtue of the fact that I'm freelancing. Might be easier if I had a full-time job, but in that case I'd have less time to try to build-up the puppet stuff. Also this is made trickier by the fact that I'm trying to transition in many ways within the same industry. If I were an accountant switching to puppets, that might be an easier thing. Who knows.