Episode 10: Justin Yun

 [music]

[00:00:17] Jasmin Habezai-Fekri: Welcome to All Inclusive. Podcast about game development and the diverse people who make it. My name is Jasmin. I'm a [unintelligible 00:00:23] environment artist from Cologne, Germany,

[00:00:26] Ashley Wade: My name is Ash, and I'm an environment artist in North Carolina, USA.

[00:00:30] Jasmin: Today's special guest is Justin Yun. He's a 3D animator at People Can Fly. Thanks so much for coming on today. I'm so excited to have you on, Justin.

[00:00:39] Ashley: [unintelligible 00:00:39]

[00:00:41] Justin: That's like you.

[00:00:43] Jasmin: It's like another instance of these guests that we have, where when we started the podcast, I wanted to have Justin on so badly because not only because he's a good friend, but we worked together and he has such an interesting path to becoming a 3D animator to where he is now. I really wanted that we give him the platform to share his wisdom with us today.

[laughter]

[00:01:07] Jasmin: I'm so glad you agreed.

[00:01:08] Ashley: What deep knowledge.

[00:01:12] Justin: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited. I've always wanted to be in a podcast so this is really exciting. Just for you to invite such a random person like me, I definitely feel--

[00:01:23] Jasmin: Come on, you're not random.

[00:01:26] Justin: This is truly an All Inclusive podcast, I have to say.

[laughter]

Justin: We have laugh tracks too, right?

[00:01:34] Jasmin: Yes, of course. We'll edit it in.

[00:01:39] Justin: That'll support my bad jokes a little bit.

[00:01:41] Ashley: Jumping into that first topic, could you tell us a little bit about how you got into innovation in the first place?

[00:01:51] Justin: Yes, of course. I'll try to keep it short, but as I mentioned earlier, I like to ramble a bit and I like to get into detail so I'm going to try to keep it as simple as possible. First of all, something to say about myself is that I've always been somebody who just likes to start things and just gets interested in a bunch of things but I always drop out of things. I can never keep up and I gain interest and I lose interest. That's always been something that I did all my life, all my family members could tell you that.

When I was in college, I started in cinema. I did that for a couple of years and I thought maybe this wasn't for me so I tried the opposite.I did some science, some math, some business courses, psychology, sociology, everything, and nothing ever really clicked. I ended up giving up school, in general. Education, I felt like it wasn't for me. I just started working full-time doing waiter jobs, window wAshleying, customer service, and a bunch of things.

Eventually, I got fed up with it. I remember that in my family background on my mom's side, who are all in Korea right now, they are all artists or a lot of them are artists. I thought maybe I have some of this art blood in me. Maybe I could like utilize that to explore art in general. I started doing some drawings and I got really into that. For the first time in my life, I was actually trying to see if I could hold on to something and just keep practicing and practicing. I was doing a lot of 2D drawing. I wasn't that great, but I was still motivated and determined to get somewhere with it. It was also an experimentation to see if it's really for me.

Then at some point, I discovered Blender and I started looking at tutorials for Blender and did 3D modeling and stuff. Then I found out about animation and rigging and all that stuff. I was just amazed and this is so awesome and I wanted to continue that and I've been doing that for several months. That's when I realized that this is something that I may want to pursue.

From there, I started looking into schools, and a lot of these schools that I applied for needed a specific portfolio and a test at the end. I was working towards those portfolios and really dedicated, putting all my time into it. I got rejected to a lot of these schools. It was quite depressing when you can't even make it to the first level of something. I just kept going at it and finally, I got accepted to a school called [unintelligible 00:05:02] which is a one-year intensive animation program, specifically animation.

It was a really cool school there. We had three semesters, four months each, and we focused on animation. Then, second semester we looked a bit at rigging and technical animation and game engine and stuff. Then, third semester was a fun one because we got to make a full game with the whole school basically because, in our school, there was different departments. We had the game design, level design, scripting department, we had the modeling, and more like 2D art department, and then we had the animation department.

Obviously, I was a part of the animation team and we were making a game, but the thing about the third semester that was the highlight for me was that we had a ton of mentors that were invited by our teacher. I got paired up with a mentor that we got along really well and he really inspired me and motivated me. He really pushed me to become the best that I could. For me, this school, I had waited so long to get into a school. This was my all-in. I was going to put my 100% dedication. I wanted to make sure that this was all worth it.

With the mentor, we worked really hard to make my demo reel. At the end of the semester, there was a showcase to show all the other mentors on what we've been working on. From there, I got to meet [unintelligible 00:06:52]. A lot of people know him, he made frame-by-frame animation on Facebook in the AnimChallenge. After meeting him there, he really liked what he saw and he contacted me and he hired me at Ludia Games and he was my lead animator. From there, that's basically where my adventure begins.

[00:07:15] Ashley: Nice. Rewinding for a second, you said that you were-- Here we go on a tangent. No, it's on a tangent.

[00:07:23] Justin: [laughs] Sorry. That was my agent.

[laughter]

[00:07:26] Ashley: You said that there was a test for school? What was the test about?

[00:07:33] Justin: One of the distinct tests that I could remember was for this three-year program. It was a lot of drawing actually. A lot of the bigger programs where it's a lot longer, they require you to do drawing, modeling, animation. Like Jasmin's school, just a very broad thing. They needed to test me for everything. The part that I struggled with most was the drawing test. I can't remember. It was so long ago, but they asked me to draw the same thing. There was an image and then they asked me to draw the exact same thing one to one.

I guess that's to see if I'm able t look at reference and imitate it, I guess, and little tests like this, like start from this square and create a scene with it or something. It was a hard test, to be honest--

[00:08:45] Jasmin: It is hard, very different.

[laughter]

[00:08:47] Ashley: That sounds pretty hard.

[00:08:49] Jasmin: [unintelligible 00:08:49] in my school because when you referenced [unintelligible 00:08:55], I wouldn't compare that level at all. The good thing was we had it specific to what we want to do. They were if you want to do 3D, do 3D. If you want to do 2D, do that. I just focused on what I wanted to do and I think everyone else did that as well. It was easier in that sense because we didn't have to show skills in any other aspect, but that sounds like a pretty rough boot camp to do everything. [chuckles]

[00:09:20] Justin: The worst part is it's not a prestigious crazy big school. It's just a local college. I thought it was quite absurd. I'm glad I didn't make it, I guess, because I got into the industry in one year instead of doing the school for three years. I'm quite happy with the results.

[laughter]

[00:09:43] Ashley: Then you said that even before you went down the art education route, you were fiddling with stuff and Blender and doing your own self-study and stuff like that. How long did you fiddle around with stuff for before you went to school or was it just like, oh, I fiddled around with it for a couple of months. Then you were like, oh, I really want this. Then you went on to pursue art education or what was it with that?

[00:10:12] Justin: I can't remember the exact, exact timeline on how this work because I know that all this exploration was, I guess, within a year or eight months, I've been really exploring that. I think, while I was preparing for the portfolio, I also got into doing Blender because maybe, for the portfolio they asked me to do something 3D or something. Then I guess I like searched up what are 3D softwares and stuff. Then that's where I found out Blender. Then that's where I realized, oh my God, I'm really bad at drawing, but I could do stuff in Blender. [chuckles] I just continued from there.

[00:10:55] Ashley: It's funny that you say it that way because that's how I got into modeling too, is that in school, my classmates were more into the drawing, 2D animation side of things. They had drawn for years and years and years at that point. Then I hadn't really. I drew but not really as intense as them.

Then when it came time for me to take my leg first, 3D modeling class, I didn't expect to sink into it the way that I did, but it felt good because everyone else is struggling and I wasn't struggling as much, which I know is toxic. It felt good to be good at something when you were bad at the thing that everyone else is good at. I want all the artists who are bad at drawing to rise up. That's what I'm saying. [laughs]

[00:11:45] Justin: I know how you feel. A lot of people that I know who are in like 3D school, they hate animation courses. It's the course that they hate the most just because animation is just so- it's hard. It's really hard. Everything is hard for sure. I personally think that animation is quite hard because there's a lot to think about. There's a lot of suffering through animation too. I feel like it takes more time to master animation just because there are so many little details, not only do you have to understand body mechanics and actual appealing, motion, and stuff, but you also have to learn proper posing, make things appealing, all the art stuff from drawing and stuff like rhythm and shapes and things like that. You need to understand that for animation as well. It's like a big jumble of a bit of science and a bit of art and stuff and just mixed together. I know a lot of people in school don't really like it. I know Jasmin didn't like it. [laughs]

[00:13:01] Ashley: I was complaining a lot [chuckles] when we were working together about this point. You know why? Because there was a lot of lacking in terms of how we were being taught because seeing you doing animation, I was okay. This is amazing. This was super inspiring to see how well you are and how passionate you are about it, but I think the way some schools maybe teach us lacking that level of what you explained like that, how deep it actually goes. It's not just about opening Maya and moving some key frames, which was basically what we covered. That's where my passionate hate came from but this is not about that I hate animation. I admire animation and I think it's an amazing aspect of the films we see and the games we see. I give you gladly the award because it's the most difficult discipline. [chuckles]

[00:13:59] Justin: I think it's the entry-level that's daunting for a lot of students. It takes more to put a character in, and then move it, and then press all a little bit like the technical stuff from the software compared to, not to trAshley on modeling or something, but you have a box or a circle, and then you could start sculpting it and explore and come up with something like really cool just by messing around and, obviously, using the knowledge that you have in art. In animation, it's hard to just open a scene and just do whatever. Then like, hope it works because there's a lot of reasons why your animation can look bad and I think that's what like scares a lot of the students, to begin with. Once you get through that, it doesn't get easier. [chuckles] I think your workflow gets cleaner and you start to get a bit faster and stuff.

[00:15:07] Ashley: That's motivating to hear for sure. Especially, I think for people who want to get into animation and the starting phases and go for that.

[00:15:14] Justin: Don't give up. [chuckles]

[00:15:15] Jasmin: It a cool [unintelligible 00:15:15]. [laughs]

[00:15:16] Justin: You got this. [laughs]

[00:15:20] Jasmin: Moving on a second topic, you already touched upon this already that after you graduated, you went to Ludia and work there, and then you started at Square Enix after that as a solo animator. This is where we met, actually, and this comes with a lot of responsibilities already. I think that's your second job in the industry. What was it like having that position for you?

[00:15:45] Justin: First of all, when I was hired at Square Enix, I was hired as a junior animator, basically. I didn't have much experience. I only had maybe one year experience at that time. It was a pretty big role for me to fill in. I'm still very grateful that they entrusted me with this role too. I'm sure you feel the same way too, since you were are only environment artists and being a student and everything. There's like a lot of pressure, but we agreed that our team was very helpful and really there to support us and make sure to let us know that we're doing a good job and we're doing exactly what we need to do and stuff.

Although I'm alone as an animator, the fact that it's such a small team, it was really nice because everyone's there for you. You can talk with the game play programmer and the designer and the art team and even the producers. Everyone was there for you. You're never really alone, even if you're alone in your craft. I think that's where that's where our solidarity and our friendship comes from too, because everyone's a solo something. It's just like, "Hey, we feel the same way about everything." We're just connected that way, I guess.

[00:17:15] Ashley: It was really amazing to see because you don't expect that, I think, from a big studio. You hear Square Enix is going to be like 300 people working on a project. I'm not going to know anyone who does anything outside of my realm and that's it. Then being able to have such a close connection to everyone on the team and also learning a lot of things, even though there wasn't, maybe somebody else does the exact thing as you, you were still learning a lot in many other aspects and many other fields and get a complete different outlook on game development and not just focus on your own craft all the time, 24 hours a day.

[00:17:54] Justin: For sure. That's the thing that I really enjoyed about Square Enix. It was a huge challenge too. It's not just about animating. I had other responsibilities, making documentations for everything animation-related, working with the art director to create the animation pipeline, and the rigging pipeline, dealing with outsource, just communicating with other departments, which is hard to do. It's a skill that you acquire, just trying to understand what the programmers are talking about or what the designers are talking about. These are all skills that I probably wouldn't have learned until further on in my career. The fact that I learned it quite early. It was less about working at Square Enix was less about improving my craft as an animator, but more about improving my communication skills and just becoming a game developer and not just a game artist.

[00:19:06] Jasmin: I think that's really great. Nonetheless, did you have any specific ways how you looked for mentorship during that time? Because, obviously, you improved in a lot of other areas, but I'm sure you also wanted to grow as an animator and hone your skills in that regard.

[00:19:21] Justin: Of course. That was one of the reasons why I felt like I had to leave Square Enix because it was still very early on in my career and I needed more mentorship. The ways that I seeked mentorship was, First of all, we had an amazing art director and our art director has a background in 2D animation. He was a 2D animator in the past before everything else.

He helped me out a lot, not necessarily understanding the technical problems of Maya and stuff or technical issues of like animations, but more in the sense that he understood shapes, he understood rhythm, he understood how to plan a shot and all these things. That was really, really helpful. He was a really, really helpful person for that.

I also spent a lot of time talking with one of the senior animators at Square Enix on another team, his name is Dan [unintelligible 00:20:25] and we did a lot of weekly animation challenges together. That helped a lot too because after every weekly animation session, we would try different challenges and different types of animations and we would spend a couple of hours at the end of the week just giving each other feedback to help each other out to improve.

These are the type of things that you need to put in that extra work to seek, especially when you're a solo animator and, obviously, we had fantastic artists on our team. Even if they don't necessarily know animation, they could still support us in the more artistic, the mentality of it, the mindset of an artist and stuff. That was really helpful, and then I also had online courses on the side. It was a very jam-packed experience for the mentorships. [chuckles]

[00:21:25] Jasmin: For sure. I think it was really admiring to see how you had that determination and energy to do all this on the side because having a new job and being new in the industry and wanting to have mentorship and doing such a big task on an interesting project and learning new things, it's a lot at the same time. I think that also comes hand in hand with imposter syndrome. We've talked about this numerous times on the podcast but I think it'll be interesting to hear from you. Did you have to deal with any imposter syndrome or did you know or what was it like for you because that's a lot of responsibilities laying on your shoulders during that time and a lot to do, basically, and deal with?

[00:22:09] Justin: Yes, for sure. Imposter syndrome, I feel every artist or everyone in life has some sort of imposter syndrome taunting them. For me, as a solo animator, there was a lot of pressure because my work was the only work that they have right now so if it's bad then it's bad. Nobody's there to help me correct it or anything, but that's a general pressure as solo dev or solo artist or whatever. As I mentioned, we had a very supportive team to tell me, "Oh, no, it looks great. What are you saying? Don't be crazy or anything." I realized that most of this imposter syndrome is usually self-induced pressure and we tell ourselves that it's not good when other people think that it's not that bad.

To this day, I wish I had more experience when I was at Square Enix. I wish I was more of a senior by then just because not only that my animation skills would have been better but also just my creative perception, I guess, just being able to think about things that I'm not able to think about right now just because I'm still fresh in the industry. Somebody with 10 years of experience, they might be able to unlock these things a lot quicker than me. I feel like I still have this imposter syndrome where I feel I could have done better but it's all in the past now and I've learned ways to overcome those feelings.

[00:24:08] Jasmin: Catching on to that, what ways did you find because we're always on the lookout on some neat tips [chuckles] and tricks to apply and I'm sure our listeners would love that as well. What is your top advice to overcome or at least deal with imposter syndrome?

[00:24:25] Justin: Personally, I don't think I could ever overcome it but there are ways that over time and experience that I've found to deal with it and to cope with it. I think the main thing is to be able to identify and acknowledge that you do have imposter syndrome. One of our friends, Ernesto, he was telling me the other day that he feels he's not even good enough to have imposter syndrome, to begin with. I'm just, "Whoa, whoa, hold on, that's imposter syndrome right there/ Chill, you are good enough and it's not based on your level of experience, anybody could have imposter syndrome.

Somebody who's not even an artist can have imposter syndrome. It's pinpointing that, and then starting to tackle the things that are triggering those thoughts. Personally, I like to talk about it and I think that's super important. I'm very fortunate to have a partner who's there for me and who's there to listen, even if she doesn't totally understand the way I'm feeling, she's still there to help me, tell me that I'm just putting these thoughts in my head and stuff. Another way is to talk with seniors because a lot of seniors had the same experience or still feel the same way and just knowing what they're going through and the tricks that they've learned throughout the years helps a lot and it's very reassuring.

Of course, you could also seek professional help because there are some people out there like therapists who are there for you. Even if they don't understand what you're exactly going through, they understand how the human mind works and they understand how to teach you, how to manage and cope with these kinds of things because we don't learn that at school. We don't learn how to cope with these stressful thoughts and stuff at school. Therapists are there to help engage that mindset. There's one more thing. Sorry, I'm taking up all the mic time. [chuckles]

[00:26:44] Jasmin: No, it's fine, it's your stage. [chuckles]

[00:26:48] Justin: There's one more thing that I found really helpful is to just test yourself with simple exercises. What I do when I'm ever feeling I'm not good enough because we all have bad days, there are some days that I come into work and I try to animate the whole day or something or almost the whole day. I'm trying to animate and I just can't do it. Something about today is just not working and you just fighting it all day and it just gets worse and worse.

A lot of other people, I know [unintelligible 00:27:25] from Pixar, he said it himself too that sometimes he has his off days and sometimes he can't properly animate. This is a thing and it happens to a lot of artists. The way is that I do simple exercises to remind myself when I'm able to animate, and also when you do small bite-size exercises, it gives you that sense of accomplishment.

One cool thing is let's say you have one year of experience at your job and then you're feeling this imposter syndrome, you could do a simple exercise like a bouncing ball or a head turn or an emotion change or something like that, just something really simple and quick that you can do within a day or less, three hours or something. Then just do that and then save it somewhere. Then maybe two years later when you're feeling the same way, you just do the same exercises and then you can compare it. You can see that, "Oh, wow, I did the same thing and the same amount of time but it's better." The posing is better, the animation feels smoother, the arcs are there and the polish is in there and the speed is there.

This helps you just get motivated and just feel there's a sense of improvement. It's kind of like when you look at yourself every day in the mirror or I guess a good example for you, Jasmin, with your new dog, it was a baby before but now it's an adult or it's older and it's bigger now but you're seeing it every day so you don't notice that growth. For those who saw it when it was a baby, and then saw it two months later when it's big it's like, "Oh my God, it grew so much." It's good to find ways to see the changes because you're not going to notice that you're getting better on a day-to-day basis but if you have a comparison, then it can help you. That really helps me get motivated again and to feel I improved.

[00:29:33] Jasmin: That's such a lovely thing to do, actually. It's so simple yet effective. I didn't even think about that.

[laughter]

[00:29:40] Jasmin: `Even just model something super basic in texture and be like. "Yes, see I can do thislike[unintelligible 00:29:47] my head or next time I'll just look at [unintelligible 00:29:50] and be like-

[crosstalk]

[00:29:53] Justin: Everybody out there, just look at your dogs and remember how they were small and now they're big.

[00:30:05] Jasmin: I think this is a nice part of the show to take a little break, so we're going to stop right here.

[music]

[00:30:36] Ashley: Welcome back to All Inclusive, before the break we talked about how Justin started as an animator in the industry and what it's like being a solo animator and moving on to our third topic. I wanted to ask you about your relationship with personal work.

[00:30:54] Justin: All right. My relationship with personal work. It's complicated.

[00:31:01] Ashley: I don't know.

[00:31:02] Justin: My personal and work, just work and personal work balance. I used to do a lot. As I mentioned earlier, there was the weekly animation challenges that I would do with Dan. I spent a lot of time doing game jams too and looking into schools and doing schools and stuff and just doing art for fun. It was really fun and great at first because I wanted to improve and I had this constant need to level up, but at a fast-paced, mainly because I wanted to stay relevant in the industry. I wanted to make sure that if I-- Worrying about the future, just like thinking if I don't keep this up, then I'm going to not be good enough for-- Like if I ever lose my job or something just to make sure that I always have a role

Right now I don't have children, but if I do, then I want to be able to constantly support them and stuff. There's a lot of stress that comes in and that's what was driving my need for doing personal work. I think that also links to when I was studying drawing, and then going into school and starting to work and everything. The ball was always rolling for me so I never got used to just slowing down. That was what was driving my personal work, and then you have COVID situation, and then it's harder to balance work and personal work situation where you're just always at the computer.

There is this thing, we're not working from home anymore, but we're living at work now. I think that's definitely something we need to watch out for. Personal work was just like hurting my mental health in general too, I find. Not to say that people shouldn't be doing personal work, but for me, at first, it started as like, "Oh, this is so much fun," but it transformed into something that I felt more like I was doing it for my career or something rather than doing it for fun and stuff.

[00:33:27] Ashley: It's so multilayered and complicated too because there is so much pressure. When you first start working, if you are in any sort of range of like your 20s, 30s, or whatever, there's an expectation put there for you to work super, super hard now so that you set up yourself for later or whatever. Which I don't think that's necessarily bad advice, but I think if taken a little bit too far, it can be really damaging because [crosstalk] as for me, for sure, especially if you're a path in life with your career, whatever, is a little bit off the beaten path or whatever, if things took you a little bit more time or you took a detour or whatever. I know, for me, with personal work, it's a complicated cocktail of me being interested in this thing that I'm doing because it's fun and I think it's going to be awesome. Then, me being afraid, you were mentioning me being afraid that, "Oh, man, if I don't constantly work on my skills, then I'll get behind and no one will want to hire me, and then I won't be competitive anymore." Then mixed with, "If I don't do any work and if I just kind of relax after getting off of work, then I'm not doing enough. I haven't deserved rest yet. What are you doing? Go find something to do." Then if you're on social media, that's a whole other bear because you constantly see people posting their works in progress, posting their finished projects, posting their new jobs, or whatever that they just start, and it feels like there's so much pressure to perform right now. I think that can easily feed, and it has for me, it can easily feed into a negative sort of relationship with personal work because that line--

[00:35:41] Justin: You're no longer doing it for fun.

[00:35:44] Ashley: Yes, and what do you do things for fun, I think it's a little bit more sustainable, question mark, that way because it's driven truly from your own passion about a thing and it separates us all from being an obligation, but it's really hard to, I think, get there and maintain that with personal work. I admire people who don't feel the need to do personal work. For me right now, it feels like, "Ah, it's so nice that so-and-so isn't doing personal work, but that could never be me." That's how I feel about it. [chuckles] Other people can do it, but you have to keep working at it.

[00:36:30] Justin: I, for sure, felt that way for a while, but in the past year, I've learned to take control of my life and to make the decision to not do personal work because before it was like I was driven by wanting to stay relevant and just feeling like I have to do something because everyone's doing something. Especially because I'm part of the AnimChallenge team. Lately, there's like over 200 submissions all the time and I have to vote for which one I find is the best one and stuff. I'm looking at so many of these and it's really-- I look at them and like, "Wow, this is really cool. I should be doing my own cool thing." I should be participating in the challenge and stuff like that, but it was hard, but I had to take a step back and slow down because I never had the chance to, and now it's making that realization and finding new hobbies away from the computer--

[00:37:33] Ashley: Yes. [crosstalk] [unintelligible 00:37:35]

[00:37:35] Justin: Just doing personal work that pleases me, just doing it because it's fun without thinking too much about it because we do eight hours of work, and then jumping onto personal project. It's a lot for your brain and my body's been feeling that strain too, just slouching over at the computer all day.

[00:37:58] Ashley: Oh, man. [unintelligible 00:37:59].

[00:38:00] Justin: It's just like yelling at me like, "Hey, stop it." [chuckles] I'm just like, "Oh, okay." But you can't stop, you're just so focused.

[00:38:10] Ashley: Yes, this is an obvious sign to anyone listening to stretch your wrists right now.

[00:38:16] Justin: Oh, yes, and your spine, do some yoga.

[laughter]

[00:38:22] Ashley: Makes him very--

[00:38:23] Jasmin: I think it's so good you took a conscious choice to not do personal work because that is some willpower [chuckles] right there. It's really difficult and also difficult, I guess, to not feel guilty when you're doing that decision because I feel super guilty doing that. I am okay with not doing personal work right now because I know it's a new job and I need to focus on that, but I still feel guilty for not doing it. Sometimes just sit after work at my computer and I'm like, "Okay, what do I do now? I've got time," but I also want to sit here, I should maybe just get open do another thing or find a hobby or follow my hobbies that I have, but then as like Ashley said when you see other people doing stuff, even though it's completely unrelated to you, it shouldn't be an influence on you, what the people are doing. It's hard just shut that out from your brain.

[00:39:16] Justin: Yes.

[00:39:17] Jasmin: It gets super toxic. I think, to a point where you don't get like in this state of like frozen mind and you just don't do anything. Sometimes I end up not doing anything fun that is outside of art and then just sit there and scroll Outstation or Twitter. I'm like, I could have done something in this time, but I don't feel like it because I don't want to do personally. It's like a vicious cycle in a sense that you just don't end up doing anything like fun or not even not fun. Like being [unintelligible 00:39:45], I don't know.

[00:39:46] Justin: Yes, I think it's different to especially how-- For you, for example, you built your career while you were at school, basically. You built like a group of followers everything while you were at school. School is the best time to do that because that's the mindset you're in because you need to make sure that you've put your foot in the door in the industry and everything. Then, once you start working, you start realizing these little things like, "Why am I still--" Obviously, it's important to keep improving and everything, but you don't have to do it at the rates that you were doing in the past. That's totally fine. You deserve a bit of rest too. If anyone is telling you that like, "Where's your personal work? You haven't posted anything, " that's toxic. We know what we do.

[00:40:41] Ashley: Absolutely.

[00:40:44] Jasmin: I wish I could print that out and put that out because I get messages like that, believe me or not. It's been very--

[00:40:48] Ashley: [unintelligible 00:40:48]

[00:40:50] Jasmin: [chuckles] Yes. It gives me anxiety. I don't even have anxiety about it lately. I'm fine. I'm doing my thing. I'm just chilling. Then, I get a message like, "What are you working on right now? Is there anything you can show? Please, tell me that you're working on a new project?" I'm like, "I'm actually not." What do you want from me? It's very scary. It makes me feel like I should right now do something because somebody is expecting me that I am doing.

[00:41:20] Justin: It's not even a bad-- They're not trying to roast you or anything for that. It's just like, "I love your work. You must be working on something because you haven't posted in two months?" It must be a huge, I don't know, AAA project, some crazy stuff. I don't think it's in bad intention. Maybe there are some people who say it in bad intention. It really sucks that you get messages like that. I hope that people will understand that we have our own lives to take care of too and mental health is always more important than personal work and pleasing social media and stuff.

[00:42:04] Ashley: I agree. Stares at myself while I say this, it's so easy to just be busy for busyness' sake. That's something I'm trying to work on with myself because my hobbies have a degree of skill to them. I need to find a hobby that either I don't care about skill with it, or it's not as big of a deal or whatever, because I think that maybe if you like the feeling of getting those achievements and stuff, it can be easy to sink into something artistic or whatever that still makes you feel like, "I'm improving, blah, blah, blah."

Doing things that will help you just check out in a sense and not really worry about things like that and just let yourself be a human because the better that you can take care of your brain and yourself, the better work that you'll do. It really is more about having a more well-rounded approach like getting some exercise and drinking some water and not just coffee all the time and stuff. It's really a whole thing that you have to watch-- yup, take a sip.

[laughter]

That's really important.

[00:43:27] Justin: Now we're both drinking at the same time.

[laughter]

[00:43:30] Ashley: It's really important to [unintelligible 00:43:33]

[00:43:36] Justin: I find that it's a reverse psychology thing too because some people do really enjoy always working on personal work and stuff. I don't want people to think that just because a lot of people are starting to talk about mental health and things, that they should stop doing personal work because it's hurtful for them or whatever. I think if you're enjoying it and you feel like this is for you, then by all means continue doing an amazing job. For those who feel forced to do that, I think it's important to be aware that-- It's okay to slow down and take a break sometimes. Don't worry about it too much.

[00:44:22] Jasmin: Moving on to our last topic of this episode since working remotely is the biggest topic right now and in the past year, what was it like for you going from working on-site within a studio and then starting a complete new position off-site from home? Is there anything that you realized was particularly difficult or something that was better than you experienced before?

[00:44:48] Justin: For me, what I loved about not only Square Enix, but just being in an office was just the human interaction and just being around people and taking small breaks to just chat with the person next to you, little things like that and just communicating and human interaction. That's definitely something that I miss, but I don't think that work from home is bad either because I think my job is going perfectly fine remote as well. I don't know. I like to be at home too. I'm like a home dweller. Just being at home is nice and cozy.

It's not putting a toll on me or anything. I like social interaction, but I still consider myself as an introvert. I like to stay in my bubble too. The hard part about starting a new job remote is-- First of all, the onboarding is hard for sure, and having casual talks is barely existing. Of course, you have to take that extra step to try to get that casual talk going. We can't do like we used to do where we would go karaoke-ing and stuff. Particularly, in my situation, because everyone on my team, all the animators on my team are spread out all over North America, so it's even harder to get that friendship outside of work thing.

Obviously, I try my best to have little conversations, but it's not the same. One thing that I noticed was a bit harder was getting information or getting feedback for animation because we have our weekly animation reviews and stuff. That's fantastic. My team is so good at giving feedback. This is something that I was seeking when I was looking for a new job. When we're not having the animation reviews, maybe I'm working on something and I would like to have some feedback, one of the only ways I could get feedback is just posting it on our Slack channel and just waiting for somebody to answering.

In a situation we're at a studio, we can just poke the person next to us or a lead or whoever and ask them like, "Hey, can you give me feedback?" Or maybe they'll pass by and they'll be like, "You should try to fix this or whatever." Now, I just have to post it on Slack and wait and then hope that somebody answers because we're all animators, we're all artists. Sometimes, we're so focused on our work that we don't even look at Slack for the whole day. You just post it and hope that somebody opens Slack at some point. Then, if they do, then they'll give fantastic feedback.

If they don't, then you don't know when it's going to come. You're just either waiting, working on another thing or you're like, "Should I need to finish this? I have a deadline, so I'm going to just keep working on it and hope that it's the right direction." That's not the best way to approach things, but sometimes that's the case because you can't just wait and be idle. At that point, I would suggest to actually poke people individually and be like, "Hey, do you mind giving me a quick feedback on this and stuff?"

If you forget to do that or something, or if you're not in the mood or whatever, then you might be waiting for a bit longer and there's that latency for feedback. Apart from that, it's fine. I enjoy having a remote team. It's not as hard as I thought it was going to be, but there are these little faults, I guess.

[00:48:49] Jasmin: I relate to that a lot because I'm also working complete remote and my team is in the US and we have a couple of people in Europe. It's quite difficult as you said, to have that social interaction like we had before. My first big social interaction I had with live studio and stuff like that was at Square Enix and having that in comparison to being at home and just being on the same spot I've been in the past three years feels weird. Even being in the same room, but having a new job, it's really odd, but it has a lot of benefits like you said.

You have this team that gives you feedback. You have this opportunity to grow, even though you are remote, but you just have to go that extra step. I think you are pretty good at that because you also seeked out mentorship and all these extra things in your previous jobs. I think it's a skill that you can acquire as well that makes you come out of your shell, I guess a bit more as well. If you're put in this position, you need feedback and you need to put in that extra mile into making connections with people. People are always open to that. It's just taking that step.

[00:50:00] Justin: Yes, it's just that extra obstacle being in the way.

[00:50:04] Jasmin: Yes, exactly.

[00:50:06] Justin: Ash being a freelance artist, you must know this feeling, right?

[laughter]

[00:50:11] Ashley: Yes, working. Since I haven't had the experience yet of working in-studio versus working strictly-- I've only worked from home. I've never been able to pop over to someone and be like, "Hey, can you take a look at this?" and then they come tread over again and look at my stuff. It's like there is a little bit warp, a longer time, that I have to wait sometimes and part of the trick is trying to make sure that I'm staying occupied all day in the waiting time because there's just is going to be waiting time with work from home situations.

Someone could be in the meeting, or-- for me in my situation right now, the people that I'm working with are on the west coast, so when I'm walking up starting my day, it's at 6:00 AM for them. Even if I start doing something and I need feedback on something right now, it's like, "Oh, you're asleep." I can't expect a message back right now so then I have to find something else to do and things like that but yes, it's definitely been a learning experience.

Then also, I think this goes for all work-from-home situations, you realize just how much more important it is to communicate well, communicate something quickly and communicate something well, when you're having an issue with something because if you don't then it'll cause more confusion which will make things take longer which is bad for everyone because they have a meeting in five minutes that they have to go too, and then still your problem isn't solved and stuff like that. It's been teaching me to be a little bit better with how I describe a problem that I'm having and making sure I take pictures of the thing to help or whatever. Just making sure I'm communicating more properly with a work-from-home situation because it just hits different.

[laughter]

[00:52:25] Justin: That's the hardest part, miscommunication through these-- there's a lot of that. Especially, because there's so many ways that people chat too sometimes. I like to put a lot of exclamation marks and smiley faces and stuff-

[00:52:38] Ashley: Yes.

[00:52:39] Justin: Some people don't and sometimes you're not-- to them, they're just saying-- in their head they might be saying, "Hey, how are you?" but when they type, it's just like, "Hey, how are you? Period.

[00:52:51] Jasmin: Yes.

[00:52:52] Justin: And you're just like, "Um, rude."

[laughter]

[00:52:57] Ashley: For sure.

[00:52:58] Jasmin: So true.

[00:53:01] Justin: It's cool to hear a different perspective from somebody who wasn't in-house before. I think it's really good to learn from you as well in that sense.

[00:53:15] Ashley: Yes, I think for me, with the freelance stuff that I'm doing now being all remote and stuff like that, it really is only for the preparing the future freelance gigs or any sort of in-house situation or whatever because then I will have been working on communication skills, so when I'm in an in-house situation, I'll be that much more exact when it comes to expressing certain problems that I'm having on a thing or whatever. I personally have just found that the more questions I ask and the sooner I ask for help and stuff, the better because if I don't, then it's wasting everyone's time, and I'd rather not do that.

Plus something that I'm also trying to remind myself and maybe it'll be good for other people to hear it, is that for me right now, when it comes to the stuff that I'm doing, the only thing I'm trying to worry about is putting forth my best effort and then showing that as soon as possible as soon as I get to the [unintelligible 00:54:31] Then after I send it to my leader for approval, it's out of my hands in a way because it's not a singular process, it's not just you working on something, someone is checking you and stuff like that. There's a lot of trust that comes with that.

I trust my league to tell me that, "Hey, you just need to do this this way." Then it's like, "Okay, cool. I'll just do it this way." I've been working really hard to separate myself a bit from the process because otherwise, it could be-- I don't want to say hurtful but it can be rough going through and iterating on a thing over and over and over again but if I tried to look at it, I'm just going to put my best foot forward and then show it and then let me know what's up. I'll just try to do this. Trying to see it that way, I think has been helpful. It's hard to do that, I think maybe, but I think it's a thing that's worth doing. People are there to help, especially if they brought you on [inaudible 00:55:41] in the first place, everyone wants you to succeed. This is a team sport.

[00:55:49] Justin: Yes.

[00:55:49] Jasmin: Yes, I think we all forget super quickly that-- I think we said that a lot of times too, that we don't have to know everything and we're not alone in this and game development as a whole, it's such a team effort, you don't ever just do something 100% by yourself except if you worked [unintelligible 00:56:06] that's another topic [chuckles] but I feel like on a team like we are, it's different. You know I'm going to have to be Hercules and take everything on your shoulders and be like, "I'm going to wing this by myself."

It's not how it works, and I think you forget that quickly and think that people expect so much from us, but no, they just want us to be honest and do our work and do our best and that's what we're doing anyway, we should just calm ourselves down and trust in us so there's a bit more ethic. [chuckles]

[00:56:37] Justin: Yes, I think in a sense, this whole remote thing, it's great because it's teaching us these little things that we wouldn't have learned like proper communication and stuff. In a way, obviously, it's been pretty bad, for the whole year and a half or two years even, I've lost count, but at least we got something from it. We learned something from this whole remote situation thing.

I know another topic for remote working especially is focus and I know a lot of people who struggle with focus just because they're-- not unfortunate obviously, but they have children in the house running around, playing around, they have, I don't know, a very needy dog or needy cat or anything like that. Sometimes focusing during this work-from-home situation can get a bit hard. For me, I don't think focusing is the hard part because I don't have that many distractions around me, but it's really the opposite actually, I get over-focused.

I feel like since I'm working from home and stuff and sometimes my clock is not even showing or something, I just end up working too much and I had a hard time differentiating when I should stop and when I shouldn't. Just because I'm at my desk, I don't need to leave the studio or whatever. I'm just over-focused and just working, working, working and next thing you know, it's midnight and you're just like, "Whoa, time passed fast." That was one of my biggest issues. That was quite hurtful for me when I started working from home but luckily, I have a partner that constantly reminds me like, "Hey, you should stop now, it's time to go to bed now." It's like, "Oh, crap. You're right," and kind of pulling me out of the chair.

I also have a cat that-- on a schedule. She comes to me and starts meowing at me and stuff and then jumps on my table and then goes on my keyboard and my mouse. It's kind of like that break, "Okay, come back to reality now. Give me attention human." I pick her up, I put her on my lap, pet her for a bit until she's like, "Okay, that's enough," and then she leaves and I'm like, "Okay, back to work." That helps me take breaks and just separate-- just remembering it's important to take breaks. Maybe even have a timer.

There's something called the Pomodoro that a friend of mine showed me and it's this thing where you work for 20 minutes and you take a short break and then you work for 20 minutes-- short break like 2 minutes or 5 minutes short break, drink some water and it's a reminder. It's supposed to help you stay productive. Productivity isn't my issue, it's just being too focused, that's the issue. For some people, it might help. Yes, for me it definitely has been a problem. It would be nice to be at an office again just to have that break, yes [chuckles]

[01:00:10] Jasmin: Right, I think we now reached the end of this episode. Just to quickly summarize what we talked about, Justin went over how he got into the industry, and I think it's super interesting how you didn't have a superlinear path, but you tried out several things, and then after a while, you found your passion for animation, and then really put your all into that to get into the industry as quick as you could, which I think is very impressive, within a year. [unintelligible 01:00:40] at such a crucial position, being a solo animator such an early stage in your career.

What I think is really important for people to take away from this is that you can make the best out of it. It teaches you a lot of different skills in a lot of different areas, and gives you such a more, I think, more broad look on game development, and being like Justin, seeking out for mentorship yourself, being active outside of work, trying to educate yourself beyond your work desk, if that makes sense, is super crucial to still keeping up your skill level, and being ready to tackle a new job because then after that, you found another position that gives you that type of mentorship on-site, and that you don't necessarily need to seek it out so much anymore.

Which then leads us to our last topic, where you also then decide to actively not do personal work, and take time for yourself, and try to engage in other activities that don't revolve around work, necessarily. I think that's a super interesting approach because we don't really hear about that much, that it's okay to not do personal work. If you, obviously, want to, as you said as well, it's okay, do it. We support you in that, but we also support you in not doing it and taking that well-deserved rest, which I think is a really good thing to keep in mind for all of us in this case.

Yes, thank you so much for coming on, Justin. We were really excited to have you, and sharing all your insights with us. We will share all the social media links where you can find Justin in the description of whatever you're listening on right now. You can find his animation work on Twitter, and yes, you should definitely check that out. Yes, thank you so much for coming on today. I hope you had a lot of fun talking with us because I'm sure we both did.

[laughter]

[01:02:34] Justin: Thanks so much for having me for real. I'm really happy to be here.

[01:02:39] Jasmin: Thank you.

[laughter]

[01:02:41] Ashley: Oh, yay. If anyone listening would like to suggest someone to join us on the podcast, someone who is a great positive force within their community along with being great at what they do, please send us an email at allinclusivepdcst@gmail.com. That's allinclusive, no spaces, P-D-C-S-T@gmail.com. They can be a 2D artist, 3D artist, animator, tech artist, QA person, art director, literally anyone. They just to be cool and nice. That is it.

[laughter]

[01:03:15] Jasmin: Thank you everyone for listening and joining us for our 10th episode of AllInclusive. We hope that you had just as much fun listening to us as we do the talking. You can find us on a couple of different social media channels. You can find these in the links of the description box below, and that's going to include Twitter, Youtube, and Spotify. A little disclaimer, we will do a summer break after this episode and will rock on right back in September with a brand new episode of AllInclusive. I hope you all have a great summer, and hopefully, see you very soon. Thanks again, and we hope you'll join us for another episode of AllInclusive.

[music]

[01:03:59] [END OF AUDIO]