FAILURES AND SUCCESSES OF 2015

This year has been an amazing year at Already Been Chewed although it has not been without its ups and downs.

AS A STUDIO WE...

1. Faced adversity when we lost our largest client at the beginning of 2015 and several regular clients spent A LOT less than years prior. Previously we were in a constant state of growth and for the first time ever, had to overcome ups and downs of incoming work this year. Shout out to Business Manager, John Davidson and Account Developer, Donny Smith for helping to back fill our schedule with some of the most exciting projects in the history of ABC! Many of these projects will release in 2016!

2. Successfully launched an Apprentice program. We’ve had 2 Apprentices this year that have taken on the 6 month crash course of gaining work experience at Already Been Chewed. Our first apprentice, Chris Dykes, moved here from Full Sail University and after completing his Apprenticeship, landed a job here in DFW doing motion graphics for a production company. Mark Wilson, is our 2nd apprentice and he’s over half way through the program and has big things planned for 2016!

3. Learned a lot from each other this year and pushed our knowledge of Cinema 4D much further than in years past. Thanks in part, to our lead animator, Bryan Talkish, for accelerating the learning curve around here.

4. Grew as a team, developed the work environment and surprised ourselves with how much we are able to accomplish together when under tight deadlines.

5. Took a lot of risks. This year we went out on a limb in many ways, got creative, got desperate, and tried a bunch of things that didn’t work and a bunch of things that did work. Most notably was showing up in person at several agencies to rooms full of people who appeared to be absent of any sort of a cerebrum. I’m quite sure they are wonderful people after hours. However, one agency was very concerned that they could not work with us because they kept asking “So we see you do a lot of :30 seconds spots. Are you able to create :15 second spots?” … um, yeah. Never mind and thanks for taking up space in this meeting room. Another meeting we had someone say to us “oh. I’ve worked here for 1.5 years and we’ve never created anything new. We just implement the brand guidelines that were created years ago by someone else and we just resize Ads for all the various formats” :-o

6. Added a lot of new bucket list clients and projects this year… don’t want to leave anyone out by trying to list them so just enjoy browsing the website and motion reel for a glimpse. Stay tuned for a lot of new work to release early in 2016.