The Allan McKay Podcast – Episode 1!

FINALLY!!

Ok it’s here, after planning and building up to a podcast for two years and having people kicking my ass to do this, The Allan McKay Podcast is now live.

After shooting 25 episodes of Artist Insight Series, and having two editors assigned to getting the episodes out, only five ever actually made it online. Traveling around and assembling teams of people to both shoot and edit the episodes proved to become quite painful to do. I have had hundreds of people ask me to do a podcast over the years and although I had been a bit shy to the idea, recently at Blur while working on Halo a few people consistently brought this idea up that I should relaunch Aritst Insight Series again as a podcast.

Now, I have been working in the background on a few other things and it just seemed like the right timing to bring it altogether. After all there are a few other types of content I want to create that a podcast seems like the perfect platform for.

I am really excited about this as this is a chance for me to build a home to start putting a lot of my content through. And, if you all find this to be extremely insightful and detrimental to your careers and lifestyle, then I will be putting out a heck of a lot more of these over the remainder of the year, and onward!
I have to say this is definitely experimental, I love podcasts I listen to them daily and because of that I am daily inspired! But one thing I have consistently learned, is that their first twenty episodes everyone definitely stumbles through figuring things out! So there will definitely be some growing pains as I get into my groove.
What you will gain (or at least I set out to TRY to do!) from this Podcast is:
I want to bring the best, the smartest and the most talented people together and give insight into their creative skills, how they made it, pitfalls in their career and how to avoid them. Ways to work faster, smarter and more effectively. I also want to help build a community of talented people who all want to better their careers and their lives. It doesn’t matter whether you are in visual effects, video games, commercials or you aren’t in these fields at all. The content here is aimed to help you and gain access into people who’ve had many major successes, as well as give you ideas how to improve your own career too. Some of the subjects I want to cover are:

• How to be a stronger artist, to gain your passion back
• Building your brand, and 10x your career
• Learning to bid on projects and attract studio work
• Marketing yourself so that studios and employers will come to you rather than you seek out them
• Creating a strong presence when approaching work
• Working faster, more effectively, avoiding burn out and appreciating downtime
• Setting goals, short term and long term
• Creating a secondary passive income
• Learning to learn better, pick up skills faster and think on your feet
• Networking and building your inner circle of strong contacts
• Group panels with both studios, productions and collective minds on various important industry and career subjects

There are literally hundreds of great subjects, as well as great people already lined up, but first I need to know whether this is something that YOU want, or if I’m alone in this in wanting to create content to better our careers and our skills! Check out the first two epsiodes:

Episode 1: The art of freelancing, and becoming a digital gipsy

This episode is essentially on mastery on the freelance front. Taking full control of your career and seeing the opportunities in front of you to say YES and break out into a successful career. I share a lot of personal stories about my successs, as well as doubts, fears and also failures myself and also others around me have experienced. More to show how to do things right, how to plan carefully and think ahead. There are ways to shotgun your career, even if your end goal is to have a secure staff position and focus on stability. There is a lot of great content in here, and because there is so MUCH content, it’s definitely a bit of a lengthy episode but with a lot of really solid advice and content given to you rapid fire!

Episode 2: Carlos Anguiano on ILM, Digital Domain, Rhythm & Hues and Disney

I’ve worked with Carlos at Industrial Light and Magic, Blur Studio, Digital Dimension and an assortment of other places over the years. Carlos has had major success in his career as both a Pipeline Developer and Character Technical Director. He’s been a major influence on many of the leading studios as well as making great impact with his own pipeline software Mango. Carlos and I discuss his career at Pixomondo, Scanline, Digital Dimension, Rhythm & Hues as well as at Disney, during the time of the Pixar acquisition. This is a great discussion with a lot of great insight into his successes and especially from more a technical and creative background!

I have an important favor to ask, which I don’t do often:

1) Please listen to one or both episodes
2) Then PLEASE leave a review on iTunes.
3) Please share this, if you find it valuable and think others will get some insight from this.

I will read EVERY review and, based on that feedback I’ll either stop or keep doing this podcast.

If you seem to like them, I promise to do at least 6 episodes in the next 1-2 months. And trust me: I have some amazing people lined up and ready to go, as well as a lot of really valuable content (working remotely and how to approach clients to get to work either from home or other locations. Also interviewing some of the lead recruiters in the industry on what they look for when hiring artists, I’m doing a few group panels with guys at Pixar and Digital Domain. There’s lots. It’s going to be cool, trust me. Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on iTunes or in the comments below.

All that said, here’s the first two episodes! I really hope you enjoy them.

Show notes for Episodes 1 and 2
Feedback is always welcome, I will definitely try to flesh out future notes more so bare with me as these episodes it’s been more about ‘getting it out there’ and I will definitely spend more time on creating detailed notes, links and resources for the future episodes.

Notes will be up by end of the week!

Connect with Carlos Anguiano: Carlos Anguiano’s Blog