We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amario Andre a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Amario, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I think working on the March Madness campaign with Aflac was pretty meaningful as my first social commercial work, I’d say the project with the biggest impact though would be my short-film “Crimson Tower”, myself and my small team of three worked extremely hard to make that film happen. Endless nights for a whole year isn’t easy on anyone and it taught me alot about production and production management, for those who don’t know Crimson Tower is a 2D/3D hybrid animated film that is about 8 minutes long. It was intially started in my schools animation program being the longest hybrid film produced there, it expanded a bit with production and slated for film festivals outside the program.
The film won “Best Animated Film” at the Utah Film Fest and I wouldn’t trade what I learned from that film for anything, working in commercials is definitely amazing but doing my own project from beginning to end was extremely meaningful and provoking.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hey so, a little about me?
My name is Amario and I’m a 3D Animator, Illustrator, Video Editor and even Teacher based in Atlanta. I own a company called Black Lion Media specializing in comic-books and video-game design, and also work for an ad agency where I get to create some pretty cool commercials for different companies like; Aflac, Holiday-Inn, Alle and more.
I intially got into the industry through my families art school “Amario’s Art Academy”, it’s a comic-book based art school in Atlanta (First of it’s kind). Our goal in the school is to teach at a college level to grades 3-12 helping lower-income based students get experience working in the industry, our motto is Integrity Above Skill and that really drives the vision we have overall for the school treating most of our students like family.
My father used to work for Marvel comics and growing up he would teach me how to draw, I didn’t really appreciate till one day “SNAP” I realized how cool it was to make your own stories. My sisters are also artists/fashion designers so I grew up in a very artistic family, with sibling-ship there also breeded competition, I felt a need to be better than my sisters when I was a kid and eventually found my path in what I loved to do. The competition aspect was actually a good thing; I was young and it inspired me to learn and it was always light-hearted.
My sister’s tags here: (@azizaandreart / @istylelooks)
I’d say besides working in the industry I’m proud of my original content for sure, I have a couple of books in the workings but “Legacy 7” is a greek mytholgy book mixed with sci-fi and I’m pretty proud of that one.
I’d say also animating the Aflac duck is always pretty dang fun, he’s always up to some shenanigans and it’s definitely an honor getting to work on the brand :).
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Save, Save, SAVEE your work. In my field of 3D animation there will always be technical errors, and usually the only person that can solve that..is YOU. Make backups, make back-ups of back-ups..Make BACKUPS of the Backups OF THOSE Backups and then back up the back ups.
And then do it again.
Another lesson I’d say is valuing your time, there were clients that would rush me to get a job done that was worth way more than what they were charging and also having the man-power of at least 20 other people. Never again. Know your worth, set realistic expectations; things come up in terms of not anticipating the time? Let them know and set it, it is not worth the endless nights that you’d be staying up to get a “Looks good to me!”. Trust me.
Learn.
Learn from previous projects, what did you do right in talking with a client? What did you do wrong? Was my rates to high or to low, realize how long things can take for the future.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is actually FINISHING the work believe it or not. Art is meant to be shared, and you working on an idea for months on end and no one gets to see it because it’s still in that draft phase.
Its a travesty.
Finish your work heathens!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.amarioandre.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amarioandre/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amario-andre-5878789b/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/iThreeBit
Image Credits
Aflac – March Madness Campaign ‘Grandma TV Spot’ (Lil Rel Howery) Aflac – Crystal Vibes (Social Post) #DuckVibes