We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kurt Vinci a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kurt thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Success seems to be a trial and error process. It also helps to think about our own personal definition of success. For me, each small win is another step to the end goal of making cartoons for a living. With each small victory, even if it’s simply learning a new tool, that’s a way of measuring progress objectively. An example of this is when I was really young, maybe six years old, I drew my first flip book. After seeing a commercial for South Park and seeing that simple art style, it really inspired me to make something, and the feeling I got from bringing a drawing to life made it clear that this was what I wanted to do everyday. Fast forward to today: my friend and I co-directed and produced our first animated pilot and it’s being seen by people from around the world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

After years of making flip books for myself, friends and family, I gradually branched out to learning various programs for video editing, Photoshop, and eventually animation. At the same time, I was also learning about music theory while teaching my self instruments like the guitar. I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time, but all of this experience was going to come in handy in the future.

After meeting my friend Seby X Martinez back in 2017, we discovered that we both have a similar creative background in the way I just described. The main difference is that his focus was more on storytelling and mine was more related to the animation side of things. We would occasionally work together on paid and unpaid projects over the course of several years until eventually forming a production company called “Negative Kitty.” Our team’s biggest accomplishment is our animated pilot, “Beef Creek.” The desire to make original cartoons is the core driver for the company, and it’s why all of our clients love the animated projects we create for them. Our passion for this stuff carries over into everything we work on.

Any advice for managing a team?

The best thing to do is treat everyone with respect, and if something isn’t going the way you planned, demonstrate how it should be done with a level head. This is where being knowledgeable in everyone’s department comes in handy. It’s been said that having too many types of skills is a guarantee to not be great at anything, but for a director, it arms you with the ability to communicate with your team about all of the details. If you can communicate more effectively, then there will be less friction and resentment in the long run.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Besides the art itself, it’s all about showing it to as many people as possible. We made an 11 minute cartoon. If we decided that we were going to be the only people who could watch it, then the chances of it ever getting funding for more episodes would be slim. Outside validation is not only necessary, but it’s a reassurance knowing that our work resonates with people.

Also worth noting, back in 2020, I wanted to volunteer to help the Bernie Sanders campaign, but I didn’t want to knock on doors and all that. Instead, I created a short cartoon of Bernie as a bird, making the case for Medicare for All. My good friend Morgan Luzzi (from the bands “Pet Fox” and “Ovlov”) made all of the music. This was our way of trying to contribute. The political group “The People for Bernie Sanders” liked what we made, so they shared it across all over their social media. I continued making more of these videos, creating a short series and occasionally getting their input. The videos were received well, and some comments even stated that their voting decision was either swayed or reaffirmed. This was a rewarding experience.

Beef Creek is screening at Horror Fest International on October 19th with some amazing animated shorts including the latest work from John R. Dilworth (creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog)!

Keep an eye out for Beef Creek and follow me (@kurtvinci) and Negative Kitty (@negative_kitty) on Instagram if you’re a fan of indie animation!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/kurtvinci
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/kurtvinci/
• Other: https://negativekitty.com

Image Credits

They’re all snapshots of my work. The names of the works are the file names. The Beef Creek image could be credited to Negative Kitty.