This week's creative tip: have a place to ask for constructive feedback. Earlier this month, Hashtag Paid hosted a creator marketing event and they were kind enough to let me try out my whacky idea of animating stop-motion live. I posted the animation on my free Patreon page and asked for honest feedback - good and bad. I received about two dozen really insightful, constructive comments that helped me see a few blind spots in my work. I've been singing the praises of having a small community...

This week's creative tip: start with what you have. When I first made short form video 9 years ago, I didn't have any film equipment. That meant I couldn't do elaborate setups or anything beyond what I could capture on my phone. And that was a good thing! I had to use what was around me - like good lighting in my bathroom mirror, which was also an obvious setting to make something magical. What started as using what was around me became a trademark style: boringly average, realistic clips...

In the world of ads, there's a spectrum of time/effort/cost. On the high end is multi-million dollar TV commercials and on the lower end is someone talking to their phone camera. As an artist whose job is to create ads for brands, I'm often torn along this spectrum. The artist in me wants to make the highest quality, creative work. While the marketer in me recognizes that candid, lower-lift content can actually perform better on social media. Here's my favorite way to structure brand deals so...