Spotlight is a series that features a past or current client of mine as they share a bit of their story, their talents, their question, their learning with you. You might learn something from their journey, or you might just discover an amazing new business!

Collin McRae Leix is an illustrator and animator based in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She oozes both creativity and thoughtfulness in everything she does (at least as far as I can tell!), and her animations reflect as much. Collin discusses her journey as an artist and business owner, what keeps her going, and what she's up to next:

1. What drew you to the work you're doing now?

In a larger sense, animation was a coming together of my painting practice and my violin. I’ve played violin since I was 5, and also always drawn and painted. But in grad school, I learned about alternative musical notation and this whole amazing world of people connecting beautiful drawings with systems of making sound. So people started bending the rules of what musical notation can look like, and bending the rules of how to read music. Sorry to start off with something obscure - stick with me! I’ll show you one, then tell you how it came to lead me into animation.

Here’s an image of an early one that was really striking to me: Murray Schafer’s ‘Snowforms’.

Vancouver Chamber Choir Murray Schafer Snowforms.jpg

He was flying over Greenland in 1971 and was struck by all of these forms of the land, and how he could turn to these when composing for a symphony. So the choir interprets what they see, with a few directions as guideposts.

Here’s one take of it:

"As the urban populations of the world grow, the forces and charms of nature are more distanced from increasing numbers or people. But I do not write such works out of nostalgia; they are a very real part of my life... Snowforms began as a series of sketches of snowdrifts, seen out the window of my Monteagle Valley farmhouse.

I mean wow, right?

This is obviously not the most precise form of notation, but that’s ok. I loved graphic notation for the fact that there is a suggestion there, often in conversation with the world somehow, and then your intuition can take over in some ways. So I made one. It was a map of the river that went through my hometown of Peoria, Illinois. When I would play it for my classmates at the University of Michigan, I would ask for someone to move their finger slowly along the river for me to follow. This was too much work, and they joked that I should just make time-based work. So I did. :)

So I was entering into animation from a perspective of fine art. I was lucky enough to study classical oil painting with some incredible teachers, and then study more conceptual art at the University of Michigan. As much as I’ve learned from this community, I still always had this feeling that there was something else for me. The community around animation was perfect for me that way - it’s more like being in a band than flying solo, and feels really comfortable. People share techniques, pass each other work, and help each other out in a huge way. I'm finding a lot of others who live in the space between the 'fine art' and the 'animation' worlds, there's a lot of great overlap and some beautiful, challenging work.

Then the third element of what drew me into animation is related to this last point:

animation inherently invites fun. It’s kind of a calorie-dense type of expression. One little gesture can say volumes.

On top of the expression you already have in a drawing, you have this whole new dimension of expression in the way things move. Movement can tell you way more about what substance something is made of than the way it’s visually rendered. Like in the way something could bounce - that speaks to our intuition to tell us it’s made of jello or concrete. Animation can denote this depth of feeling that I didn’t see coming. Wow. I really fell in love.

2017 Motion Design and Animation Reel - Little Hill from Little Hill - Collin Leix on Vimeo.

What do you like most about your work?

I love the fact that I can interface with all of these new facets of the world. I mean, take the SWOG video (below) for example. This is about cancer research. I got to help clarify a message about cancer research, and transform it into a new form that’s endlessly shareable. What?! That’s crazy. I feel like I can be helpful. I’ve always been very interested in communication (as you can see by my wordiness), and now I’m in the business of communication. Which I also didn’t see coming. It’s very exciting, and I get to learn about these new facets of the world all the time.

SWOG Animated Explainer Video from Little Hill - Collin Leix on Vimeo.

What have been the biggest “a-ha” moments in your business journey so far?

In my business journey… hmm…

Honestly, I’ve been an animator full time for three years, and just this past summer was the first time I actually owned the fact that I AM on a business journey at all. That it’s not gross or embarrassing to own that I am a business person, and not just an artist who will sheepishly accept payment, only if you force it on me.

Does that count? Haha, actually claiming and loving that I am on a business journey at all!

Interface from Little Hill - Collin Leix on Vimeo.

Any big goals on the horizon?

Yes! I’m actually working on something terrifyingly big. It’s an animated short film I’d like to make about something deeply personal. I’m not entirely ready to dish about it yet, because I’m actually planning on doing a Kickstarter and I want to organize it and all that. But it’s largely about this cello I found at a thrift store, which has a label inside that says it was made in 1800. This instrument led me down a path with some big surprises - and ultimately made me see this separate huge heartbreak I’ve had in my life quite differently. That’s all I’ll say about that for now.

But I’ll also show you a sneak peak into a storyboard image. This would be tracing back the tree that the cello was made from, to the 1600’s in Germany. Cellos need to be cut from a piece of wood with at least 200 years of growth, so I pictured it being from about that time period. I’ve named the cello ‘Hansel.’

This is the beginning of an illustration that I’d offer as a poster on the Kickstarter:

How do you overcome the hard stuff? What motivates you to keep going?

I’ve been motivated by different things in different periods. This is so dark - but at one point I was motivated to keep making art by the fact that if I died right then, I know some well-meaning person would want to show some of my art at my funeral, and I cringed at the thought of anything I’ve made representing me. Dark, right? It’s not really the case anymore. I’m getting closer to making things that I wouldn’t cringe at that much.

It took a while, but I’ve worked hard at getting really specific about what slows me down. Often it’s worrying about what other people think. (Shocker, right?) However, I am totally set free by the concept that other people don’t really care that much. That sounds negative, but it’s actually incredibly liberating.

A quote I live by:

“Nobody’s thinking about you. Everyone’s thinking about themselves, just like you."
― Helen Fielding, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Isn’t that wonderful? Don’t you feel clean and free? I do.

But in general, I always overcome the hard stuff through connecting with other people. I always have to talk it out with someone close to me. My friendships (and I’m lucky to include family members as ‘friends’) mean more to me than anything.

53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival Trailer, Kumao and McRae Leix from Little Hill - Collin Leix on Vimeo.

How do you manage your time when working for yourself? Do you have any routines or morning rituals that you swear by?

Two Words: Tomato Timer. It’s a simple productivity technique that chops the day up into 25 minute segments of time. I organize my whole day by putting little circles next to my to-do’s. One circle is one timer. Here’s an online version: https://tomato-timer.com/#

More about that: https://cirillocompany.de/pages/pomodoro-technique

I also lucked into a great community of other creative entrepreneurs who hold each other accountable - a group of incredibly inspiring bosses here in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and also a community of bosses I know online, like YOU Katie! If you, dear reader, wish you had something like that, reach out and ask someone. If you don’t know other creative entrepreneurs, start by introducing yourself in a Facebook group like the Being Boss fb group, tell your story, and see if you can find some kindred spirits on there.

For whatever reason, it appears that we’ve all been programmed to think nobody else is as lonely as we are. Nope. Everyone else is. It’s always worth reaching out.

What do you hope to be known for in the long run?

Katie, totally cutting to the core with these questions! So good! I don’t think of myself as dark, but here I go again - I read this as what I’d like to be known for after I’m gone. I guess I’d like to be known as someone who told the truth, a good friend, wife, sister, (mother?), someone who made people feel connected & less alone, and as someone who made artwork that stirred some feeling in other people’s gut. That’s it. That would be enough for me.