The Allan McKay Podcast

Tarsier is an independent game studio situated in Malmö, Sweden. They are the developers of Statik and the award winning Little Nightmares franchise.  Founded in 2004 as Team Tarsier, the team eventually changed their name to Tarsier Studios when they released their first two projects involving SCE properties in 2009. They’ve shipped the following games: Little Big Planet (1, 2 and 3), Rag Doll Kung Fu, Tearaway Unfolded, Little Nightmares (1 and 2), Statik, The Stretchers. In this Podcast, Tarsier’s creative team talks about the inspiration behind their award winning Little Nightmares franchise, adapting production to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of games in VR. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/305/.

Wes Ball is a Director, VFX and graphic artist. He’s directed The Maze Runner trilogy and currently has several projects in development, including the next installment of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Wes graduated from the Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts. In 2003, his short film A Work in Progress won a Student Academy Award  from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His animated short Ruin got the attention of executives at 20th Century Fox and earned him his first feature directing job: The Maze Runner. After the success of the film, Ball started his own production company OddBall Entertainment. In this Podcast, Allan interviews Wes about the passion, perseverance and courage that it takes to be an artist, the importance of building and maintaining authentic relationships, and offers an inside look into his creative process and the vision for the future of filmmaking. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/304/.

Dottie Starling is a Visual Effects Supervisor, CGI artist and digital modeler. Through both her freelance VFX career and her work with production houses such as Cinesite, Asylum, and Wildfire VFX, Dottie has worked on countless blockbuster motion pictures including Titanic, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, 007's Die Another Day, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Ocean’s Thirteen and Tropic Thunder. Dottie has also worked with digital effects on the Academy Award-winning 12 Years a Slave, Oldboy, Selma, and the New Orleans-filmed television series Scream Queens. She has recently finished supervising Amazon’s original series Underground Railroad directed by Barry Jenkins. In this Episode, Allan McKay interviews VFX Supervisor Dottie Starling about the path to becoming a Supervisor, the most crucial skill for the job, the challenge of creating visual effects that support the story (and the director’s vision), as well as her experience supervising Amazon’s original series Underground Railroad directed by Barry Jenkins. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/railroad/

Kode Abdo -- AKA BossLogic -- is a graphic artist from Melbourne, Australia. He first started drawing when he was 6 years old. After transferring his skills to a digital platform, BossLogic was able to expose his work to a wider audience, a move that came with great success. As an artist, he has his own style of visual stories. His thirst for knowledge is something that never goes away, so he keeps challenging himself and building the building blocks to get to where he needs to be. He loves doing collaborations with other talented people, learning from their take on design. BossLogic has created official posters for some of the biggest blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far from Home and Aladdin; for studios like Marvel, Disney and Warner Bros. He has collaborated with the Russo brothers, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jim Lee. After a shoutout by Jake Gylenhall on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he ended up creating a poster for Gylenhall’s Broadway Play Sea Wall / A Life. In this Podcast, Allan and BossLogic talk about the power of the origin story, the permanence of the imposter syndrome in every artist’s life, perfectionism as the destroyer of creativity and hustling for a good cause. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/303/.  

Matthew Encina is a content creator, educator and creative director with over 15 years of experience of directing, designing and animating.  He previously served as the Chief Content Officer at The Futur and a Creative Director at Blind. He has taught through video content, articles interactive workshops, and as well as speaking engagements, helping grow The Futur YouTube channel to over 1 million subscribers. He focuses on the subjects of creativity, organization and process. Matthew studied Graphic Design at the Art Center College in Pasadena, CA. In this Podcast, Allan and Matthew talk about embracing growing pains, leaning into your fears and surrounding yourself with mentors that challenge you to get out of your comfort zone. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/302/.

How do you land your dream job at your dream studio? You start by having a killer reel. The more you look at the history of the studio, the more you can understand who they’re looking to hire. If you look at what this studio does a lot of, that’s going to dictate what their needs may be. Your reel needs to reflect that. Be the one person that’s 100% aligned with the type of work that your dream studio does, so you can stand out. When you put yourself in the shoes of the person hiring, you make yourself memorable. So research the place you want to work for. If this is your dream job -- you have to align your work with them 100%. In this Podcast, Allan McKay breaks down the science behind a great reel that can land you your dream job, at your dream studio. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/301/.

Michael Janda is an executive level creative leader with more than 20 years of experience in both in-house creative departments and agencies working with some of the greatest brands in the world. In 2002, he founded the creative agency Riser, a nationally recognized agency creating high-profile work for clients including Disney, Google, ABC, Fox, Warner Bros., NBC, TV Guide and numerous other notable companies. The company’s 3 year growth rate of 235% in 2013 resulted in a ranking on Inc. 5000 (#1657). Riser’s work quality and successful business practices yielded some of the most coveted awards in the industry including Webbys, FWA, Awwwards, AIGA and Addys.   After selling Riser in 2015 and becoming its Chief Creative Officer, Michael orchestrated a rebrand of the agency as EKR. In collaboration with the other partners, he successfully migrated Riser’s clients and acquired new notable clients including Google, National Geographic, ABC, Intel and Netflix. In addition to his robust experience managing creative and marketing teams, Michael is the author of the book Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff They Don’t Teach You in Design School, but Should. Since its publication in 2013, Burn Your Portfolio has been one of the top selling books in the industry and has been published in English, Russian, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified. Burn Your Portfolio’s success has resulted in opportunities for Michael to be a keynote speaker at AIGA, Advertising Federation and University events across the nation, as well as at other events. Allan McKay is an Emmy-Award winning Visual Effects (VFX) Supervisor and Technical Director. He is responsible for many visual effects sequences including hit projects like Transformers, Blade, The Last Airbender, Star Trek, Superman, Flight, The Equalizer, and dozens of other films, as well as many of the top video games worldwide including Halo, Destiny, Call of Duty, Bioshock, Prototype, Half-Life, Team Fortress 2, and dozens of others.  Allan has over two decades of experience working in the visual effects industry for many leading studios such as Industrial Light & Magic, Pixomondo, Blur Studio, Atomic Fiction, Prime Focus, Ubisoft, Activision and dozens of others. In addition to his VFX work, Allan runs many online courses, as well as a mentorship with over 1,000 members. Throughout the past two decades he has appeared as a speaker at events in over 15 different cities including Paris, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Singapore, Helsinki, as well as master classes at SIGGRAPH. His hit podcast is rated in the top 50 podcasts in the careers section of iTunes where he interviews many award winning artists and directors in the creative industry, focusing on both creativity and drive, as well as boosting your career and success within the creative industry. In this Podcast Michael interviews Allan about his decades-long career in visual effects, the lessons of perseverance and failing up, the importance of communication skills, as well as some social network hacks to get the attention of VIP’s.   For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/300/.

Glenn Stearns was born to alcoholic parents, diagnosed dyslexic, and failed 4th grade. He fathered a child at the age of 14 and graduated high school in the bottom ten-percent of his class. While some of his friends lost their lives to drugs and alcohol, and others spent time in prison, Glenn's path intersected with mentors who gave him motivating examples of how to not meet the fate of his friends and instead take control of his destiny. He took that life-changing encouragement and ran with it. Glenn became the first person in his family to attend college and graduated with a degree in economics from Towson University. Inspired by stories of people who took risks and achieved their grandest ambitions, he then moved to California where he slept on the kitchen floor of a one-bedroom apartment that he shared with five other recent grads. While waiting tables, Glenn continued to search for new opportunities to rise above his humble beginnings.  At 25, after working as a loan officer for 10 months, Glenn formed his own mortgage company Stearns Lending. By 2010, Stearns Lending reached nearly $1 billion a month in funding while experiencing record growth. Stearns not only survived the 2007 mortgage-lending crisis, it emerged as one of the top lenders in the country. Glenn attributes his resilience to putting “people before profit” and having transparent integrity in lending standards. Since 2010, Stearns Lending has funded over 150-billion dollars in loans, making the corporation America’s #1 Wholesale Lender in 2013. The company has helped nearly 1,000,000 families achieve home ownership. In 2014, Blackstone purchased the majority share of Stearns Lending for an undisclosed sum. Glenn is also the founder of Anivive Life Science, Stearns Wholesale, Stearns Holdings, Stearns Ventures, Artemis Holdings, TriVerify, TriMavin, United Housing Services, Inc., and Mortgage Services Providers Holdings. He is an investor in Indi.com and Lender Price and the largest shareholder of California-based Infinity bank. In 2011, he was inducted into The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. This Award is given to individuals in recognition of personal and professional success despite humble and challenging beginnings, in addition to personal initiatives and accomplishments in giving back to others. In 2013, he became the youngest Member elected to the Horatio Alger Association’s prestigious Board of Directors. Glenn and his wife Mindy are very active in the community having been honored for their dedication to community service and philanthropy with Muhammad Ali’s Parkinson’s Foundation “Couple of the Year” Award, Starkey Hearing Foundation’s “American Couple of the Year,” Orange County’s “Giving is Living Award” and the Orangewood Children’s Foundation’s “Golden Heart Award”. In this Podcast, Glenn shares his wisdom about getting out of your comfort zone and leadership, resilience and failure; his thoughts about “overnight success” stories and the boundaries between mentors and friends, as well as his definition of the American Dream. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/299/.

When it comes to VFX Work, Bryan Hirota has seen a lot in his career, from his first VFX job at Visual Image to currently being a VFX Supervisor at Scanline VFX. He’s worked at studios like Pixomondo, Prime Focus VFX, CIS Hollywood, Blue Sky - VIFX. His projects include The Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Godzilla vs Kong, The Suicide Squad, Aquaman, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, The Green Lantern, Tree of Life, Watchmen, Tropic Thunder, Pirates of the Caribbean, X-Men, Armageddon, The Relic and many more. In this Podcast, Allan interviews Bryan about his experience working with Zack Snyder on Justice League, reworking the film for the 2021 Cut for HBO Max, Scanline’s shots on Godzilla vs Kong, as well as Bryan’s advice for VFX Artists and Supervisors. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/298/.

Platige Image S.A. is a Polish VFX company that specializes in computer graphics, 3D animation and digital special effects. It was founded in Warsaw in 1997, by Jarosław Sawko and Piotr Sikora. The studio employs a staff of over 150 artists, including directors, art directors, graphic designers and producers.  Over its 20-year history, Platige has built an impressive portfolio of short animations, cinematics, commercials and feature films with titles like Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots and The Witcher; Wonderwoman; Lars von Trier’s Antichrist and Melancholia; Cathedral, Fallen Art and many others. Their work has garnered numerous prestigious awards and distinctions, such as a BAFTA, an EFA, a Goya Award and SIGGRAPH Awards, as well as nominations for an Oscar, the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In this Podcast, Allan interviews Platige’s VFX Supervisor Matt Tokarz and VFX Producer Krzysztof Krok about their experience working on The Witcher for Netflix and the fact that Platige owned The Witcher’s IP. For more show notes, visit www.allanmckay.com/297/.