Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Barton Damer . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Barton, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

3D animation studios are infamous for burning out artists. It’s very common for young artists to be “done” by the time they are 30 and looking for a new career path because they were in toxic work environments, often sleeping at work for weeks to hit deadlines. At Alreadybeenchewed.tv, we want an environment where artists and employees can thrive and raise families if they choose! We work very hard to respect the personal time and lives of our team – avoiding long hours and weekends as much as possible! As a result, we’ve had great artist retention and have a staff of senior level designers and animators that have been doing this for 15+ years!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Barton Damer started out as a solo freelance artist creating motion graphics and 3D animations. As he began to work with Brands like Nike on sneaker releases, he started to build a team to help expand his capabilities and deal with the growing demand for creative services from his studio, Alreadybeenchewed.tv.

12 years later, Already Been Chewed (ABC) have worked on product launches for some of the most iconic brands in the world including Louis Vuitton, Tiffany and Co., Nike, Adidas, New Balance, the UFC, the NFL, the NBA, marvel, DC comics, and Disney.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Alreadybeenchewed.net began as a blog back in 2008. At that time, I was posting inspirational motion graphics, digital artwork as well as posting some of my own work. The blog had become a good resource inspiration for a pretty good size community. As I was beginning to land bigger client and work nights and weekends on freelance gigs, it started to become clear that I was turning down dream gigs and it was making financial sense to quit my job and go out on my own.

I already had a really good Google SEO because of the blog so I ended up transitioning that over to my portfolio website and got rid of the blog over time.

Today, we are an international team of 17 people working at AlreadyBeenChewed.tv

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

When I was a solo artist and beginning to land larger clients, I had an opportunity to bid against multiple agencies for a big contract with a well-known brand. I knew I was going against agencies that were larger than myself but I was also confident that the creative I would bring was going to me much better because of the brands I was already working with and the creative solutions I would bring to the table.

I also knew that I did not want to be “the cheap guy”. So I made sure to bid high in case I did land it, I could afford to hire freelancers. My bid came in higher than the other agencies but the Brand went with me anyway!! After developing creative for that first year with them, they won awards and the advertising space for all of the work that we did together.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.Alreadybeenchewed.tv
• Instagram: Alreadybeenchewed
• Facebook: Alreadybeenchewed
• Linkedin: Alreadybeenchewed
• Twitter: Bartondamer
• Youtube: Alreadybeenchewed

Image Credits
Photos by @ta_visuals on IG