Michael Janda is an executive level creative leader with more than 20 years of experience in both in-house creative departments and agencies working with some of the greatest brands in the world. In 2002, he founded the creative agency Riser, a nationally recognized agency creating high-profile work for clients including Disney, Google, ABC, Fox, Warner Bros., NBC, TV Guide and numerous other notable companies. The company’s 3 year growth rate of 235% in 2013 resulted in a ranking on Inc. 5000 (#1657). Riser’s work quality and successful business practices yielded some of the most coveted awards in the industry including Webbys, FWA, Awwwards, AIGA and Addys.  

After selling Riser in 2015 and becoming its Chief Creative Officer, Michael orchestrated a rebrand of the agency as EKR. In collaboration with the other partners, he successfully migrated Riser’s clients and acquired new notable clients including Google, National Geographic, ABC, Intel and Netflix.

In addition to his robust experience managing creative and marketing teams, Michael is the author of the book Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff They Don’t Teach You in Design School, but Should. Since its publication in 2013, Burn Your Portfolio has been one of the top selling books in the industry and has been published in English, Russian, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified. Burn Your Portfolio’s success has resulted in opportunities for Michael to be a keynote speaker at AIGA, Advertising Federation and University events across the nation, as well as at other events.

Allan McKay is an Emmy-Award winning Visual Effects (VFX) Supervisor and Technical Director. He is responsible for many visual effects sequences including hit projects like Transformers, Blade, The Last Airbender, Star Trek, Superman, Flight, The Equalizer, and dozens of other films, as well as many of the top video games worldwide including Halo, Destiny, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Prototype, Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, and dozens of others. 

Allan has over two decades of experience working in the visual effects industry for many leading studios such as Industrial Light & Magic, Pixomondo, Blur Studio, Atomic Fiction, Prime Focus, Ubisoft, Activision and dozens of others.

In addition to his VFX work, Allan runs many online courses, as well as a mentorship with over 1,000 members. Throughout the past two decades he has appeared as a speaker at events in over 15 different cities including Paris, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Singapore, Helsinki, as well as master classes at SIGGRAPH.

His hit podcast is rated in the top 50 podcasts in the careers section of iTunes where he interviews many award winning artists and directors in the creative industry, focusing on both creativity and drive, as well as boosting your career and success within the creative industry.

In this Podcast Michael interviews Allan about his decades-long career in visual effects, the lessons of perseverance and failing up, the importance of communication skills, as well as some social network hacks to get the attention of VIP’s.  

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/300/.

Glenn Stearns was born to alcoholic parents, diagnosed dyslexic, and failed 4th grade. He fathered a child at the age of 14 and graduated high school in the bottom ten-percent of his class. While some of his friends lost their lives to drugs and alcohol, and others spent time in prison, Glenn's path intersected with mentors who gave him motivating examples of how to not meet the fate of his friends and instead take control of his destiny. He took that life-changing encouragement and ran with it. Glenn became the first person in his family to attend college and graduated with a degree in economics from Towson University. Inspired by stories of people who took risks and achieved their grandest ambitions, he then moved to California where he slept on the kitchen floor of a one-bedroom apartment that he shared with five other recent grads. While waiting tables, Glenn continued to search for new opportunities to rise above his humble beginnings. 

At 25, after working as a loan officer for 10 months, Glenn formed his own mortgage company Stearns Lending. By 2010, Stearns Lending reached nearly $1 billion a month in funding while experiencing record growth. Stearns not only survived the 2007 mortgage-lending crisis, it emerged as one of the top lenders in the country. Glenn attributes his resilience to putting “people before profit” and having transparent integrity in lending standards. Since 2010, Stearns Lending has funded over 150-billion dollars in loans, making the corporation America’s #1 Wholesale Lender in 2013. The company has helped nearly 1,000,000 families achieve home ownership. In 2014, Blackstone purchased the majority share of Stearns Lending for an undisclosed sum.

Glenn is also the founder of Anivive Life Science, Stearns Wholesale, Stearns Holdings, Stearns Ventures, Artemis Holdings, TriVerify, TriMavin, United Housing Services, Inc., and Mortgage Services Providers Holdings. He is an investor in Indi.com and Lender Price and the largest shareholder of California-based Infinity bank.

In 2011, he was inducted into The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. This Award is given to individuals in recognition of personal and professional success despite humble and challenging beginnings, in addition to personal initiatives and accomplishments in giving back to others. In 2013, he became the youngest Member elected to the Horatio Alger Association’s prestigious Board of Directors.

Glenn and his wife Mindy are very active in the community having been honored for their dedication to community service and philanthropy with Muhammad Ali’s Parkinson’s Foundation “Couple of the Year” Award, Starkey Hearing Foundation’s “American Couple of the Year,” Orange County’s “Giving is Living Award” and the Orangewood Children’s Foundation’s “Golden Heart Award”.

In this Podcast, Glenn shares his wisdom about getting out of your comfort zone and leadership, resilience and failure; his thoughts about “overnight success” stories and the boundaries between mentors and friends, as well as his definition of the American Dream.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/299/.

When it comes to VFX Work, Bryan Hirota has seen a lot in his career, from his first VFX job at Visual Image to currently being a VFX Supervisor at Scanline VFX. He’s worked at studios like Pixomondo, Prime Focus VFX, CIS Hollywood, Blue Sky - VIFX. His projects include The Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Godzilla vs Kong, The Suicide Squad, Aquaman, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Green Lantern, Tree of Life, Watchmen, Tropic Thunder, Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, Armageddon, The Relic and many more.

In this Podcast, Allan interviews Bryan about his experience working with Zack Snyder on Justice League, reworking the film for the 2021 Cut for HBO Max, Scanline’s shots on Godzilla vs Kong, as well as Bryan’s advice for VFX Artists and Supervisors.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/298/.

Platige Image S.A. is a Polish VFX company that specializes in computer graphics, 3D animation and digital special effects. It was founded in Warsaw in 1997, by Jarosław Sawko and Piotr Sikora. The studio employs a staff of over 150 artists, including directors, art directors, graphic designers and producers. 

Over its 20-year history, Platige has built an impressive portfolio of short animations, cinematics, commercials and feature films with titles like Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots and The Witcher; Wonderwoman; Lars von Trier’s Antichrist and Melancholia; Cathedral, Fallen Art and many others. Their work has garnered numerous prestigious awards and distinctions, such as a BAFTA, an EFA, a Goya Award and SIGGRAPH Awards, as well as nominations for an Oscar, the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

In this Podcast, Allan interviews Platige’s VFX Supervisor Matt Tokarz and VFX Producer Krzysztof Krok about their experience working on The Witcher for Netflix and the fact that Platige owned The Witcher’s IP.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/297/.

We have these barriers that we put on ourselves because we set our reality to be around these limitations. We tell ourselves we can’t do something. Or that art doesn’t pay. Or that the industry sucks. These are the constraints -- or excuses -- we put on ourselves to dismiss the possibility of what could be real. That becomes our reality. So how many things like this are you telling yourself? 

Most of you don’t want to step out of your comfort zone. But if you do get triggered, it might be good to lean into those uncomfortable spaces and pains. When you dismiss ideas, chances are you just don’t want to put in the work. 

It all starts with asking the right questions and setting the right goals:

• What if it were possible?
• What would it look like?
• And what would I need to do to get those results?

In this Podcast, Allan talks about examining your limiting thoughts and resistance, setting higher goals, building winning habits -- and overcoming those barriers that once seemed impossible.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/296/.

In this Podcast, Allan McKay talks about the key takeaways from his interview with Hugo Martin, the Creative Director of DOOM and DOOM Eternal, about the benefit of getting out of your comfort zone, how to be a creative leader, and how to rise above the chaos -- and to succeed.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/295/.

Lotta (aka Charlotta) Forssman is a VFX supervisor based out of NYC. For nearly a decade, she has been part of Molecule VFX and has worked on shows like Ballers (HBO), The Good Cop, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Master of None (Netflix). She has been a Supervisor for Apple TV’s Dickinson since Season 1.

In this Podcast, Allan and Lotta talk about the path to becoming a VFX Supervisor, how to communicate with other creatives about visual effects; her experience as a woman artist in the industry and some of her projects, including DICKINSON for Apple TV+.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/294/.

The Unreal Fellowship is a 30-day intensive blended learning experience designed to help experienced industry professionals in film, animation, and VFX learn Unreal Engine, develop a strong command of state-of-the-art virtual production tools, and foster the next generation of teams in the emerging field of real-time production. 

During the program, Fellows learn Unreal Engine fundamentals, model ingestion, animation and mocap integration, lookdev, lighting setups, and cinematic storytelling.

Brian Pohl is a Technical Program Manager at Epic Games. He helps artists and clients get the training they need to integrate the Unreal Engine into their creative pipelines. Pohl also acts as the academic Dean for the Unreal Engine Fellowship Program.

In this Podcast, Allan McKay interviews Brian about virtual productions and the tool Unreal Engine provides, as well as the Unreal Fellowship, a training program that teaches artists the fundamentals.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/293/.

Marty Neumeier is a best-selling author and speaker who writes on topics of brand and design. Today Marty spends most of his time lecturing all over the globe about the role of creativity and innovation in the creation of relevant and meaningful brand experiences. 

Marty has written several best-selling books including The Brand Gap which outlines how to bridge the distance between business strategy and design; ZAG which introduces “onliness” as the true test of a brand strategy; and The Designful Company which offers leaders a blueprint for building a culture of innovation through design thinking. ZAG was named one the “100 Best Business Books of All Time.”

In 2013, Marty published Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age, a deep dive into the future of workplace creativity. He then wrote The 46 Rules of Genius as a “quickstart guide” to “Metaskills.” His latest book The Brand Flip is the long-awaited sequel to The Brand Gap. It offers a simple formula for addressing the changes brought by social media and the rising power of customers.

Marty was also commissioned by Google Brand Lab to write the Dictionary of Brand, a relational glossary containing 500 interconnected terms in brand strategy, advertising, design, innovation and management. The Dictionary of Brand is the first step in creating a “linguistic foundation” -- a set of terms that allow specialists from different disciplines to work together in a larger community of practice.

When Marty is not lecturing or writing, he is facilitating inspirational workshops or providing consulting services to companies the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Skype, Twitter and Patagonia.

In this Podcast, Allan and Marty talk about the difference between brand and personality, which skills make up the best leader, the importance of empathy and the power of a well-written email.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/292/.

Rhett Dashwood (aka Mankind) is an award winning Creative Director with experience in a broad range of creative media, including digital, animation, branding, print, film making and concept art. He has worked with the following studios and agencies during his 15+ years in the industry: Emery / Frost, Tribal, AKQA, Exit Films, DDB and many more. He is currently Creative Director of Dashwood. 

As a Digital Artist, Rhett creates work under the name of Mankind. On his Instagram page (@Mankind), Rhett publishes his own art and curates the art of other digital artists. His YouTube channel is dedicated to everything art, including his expertise on crypto art and NFT’s.

In this Podcast, Allan McKay interviews Rhett Dashwood (aka Mankind) about the hot topic of crypto art and NFT’s, the history behind it and the post-COVID-19 surge; how to start selling your digital art -- and why the cliche of a “starving artist” is on its way out.

For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/291/.