“Living as we do in an age of noise and blunder, success is now measured accordingly…”
Daphne du Maurier
T here have been times when anyone visiting our website or following Lost Marble on social media will wonder why nothing much seems to be going on. There may not be any new examples of work or animation samples… or even any blogs or new content. Does this mean things are a bit stagnant, or simply that we are always taking breaks or holidays away from the office?
A holiday… we should be so lucky! Anyone who is self employed will understand the disparity between what others think being self-employed means (being able to take holidays whenever you want) and what the reality is (never being able to go away due to deadlines, delays, possibility of missing important work and no paid leave), so chances are, its not that.
The strange thing is, when things seem quiet, that’s quite often when we are at our busiest.
When in the middle of a big animated video project, or several projects, there just isn’t enough time to keep updating the website, or even posting to social media. Client work and their deadlines come first, so even though it isn’t the best practice for us to go quiet for a while, we have to prioritise what is most important. And we have a small team here at Lost Marble; sometimes even delegating these tasks doesn’t solve the problem.
When we aren’t in the middle of client work; a rarity, but sometimes due to delays from the client, work being checked by the compliance departments or waiting for voice-over recordings to be made there can be a small lull – it is important for us to stay ahead of current animation trends and learn new skills. Our main animator will spend hours trying to perfect techniques and practising new programmes at his disposal in order to be able to offer our clients the latest and best animation styles for their video.
At other times, we may be busy producing work for a client with a non-disclosure clause in the contract. Often, clients will request video work for internal use only, or for a product which they wish to launch but do not want shown on our website. Of course, we love to show off all that we do as we take pride in our work and like to be able to share what we have available for future clients. However, if requested, we would never jeopardise the good relationships we have with our customers, or even the success of the video we have produced for them, by showing it on our website or sharing it on social media when they have specifically requested that this does not happen.
