Lynda Interviews BrandenMeeting Branden| 00:04 | (music playing)
| | 00:13 | Branden Hall: I have always loved programming
because it lets me take what's in my head and
| | 00:21 | craft reality around that.
| | 00:24 | It's exactly like what you see in The Matrix.
| | 00:29 | It's a cheesy way of putting it, but I
loved it, where I sort of looked into the
| | 00:33 | screen and kind of fall in.
| | 00:37 | I love that with the tools that we
have now, both in programming and everything
| | 00:43 | else I do, I can think of an idea,
see it in my head, and then bring it to reality.
| | 00:53 | There is just this deep magic there for me,
and I love being in that state where
| | 01:01 | I am just making. There is this flow there
that I think anybody in a creative profession
| | 01:09 | recognizes, where you
literally fall into your work.
| | 01:18 | Lynda Weinman: Hello, I am Lynda Weinman,
co-founder of lynda.com, and I am so excited to be
| | 01:22 | here today with Branden Hall, who is the
chief software architect and co-founder
| | 01:27 | of Automata Studios in Washington D.C.
| | 01:29 | Branden Hall: Thank you.
Lynda Weinman: Welcome.
| | 01:31 | Branden Hall: Thanks. I am really excited to be here.
| | 01:33 | Lynda Weinman: Well, Branden you and I go far
back, because I think we figured out that we
| | 01:37 | Lynda Weinman: have know each for about twelve years.
Branden Hall: Yep.
| | 01:40 | Lynda Weinman: And long ago, I had started the first
conference in the world that focused on
| | 01:46 | Flash. At that time, it was Macromedia
Flash, then it became Adobe Flash, and I
| | 01:50 | remember meeting you when you were
a young software engineer before the
| | 01:53 | conference had even begun, and you, at
that time, were working in Flash and doing
| | 01:58 | some very cutting-edge work.
| | 02:02 | Tell us a little bit about how your
career has evolved from those early days as
| | 02:06 | a Flash developer to what you're doing now.
| | 02:08 | Branden Hall: It's been a very
interesting ride, to say the least.
| | 02:11 | I started learning Flash because the
woman I was dating at the time, she and
| | 02:18 | I had a very sort of adversarial
relationship, and anything she learned I had to learn too.
| | 02:23 | It was really good for both of us.
| | 02:25 | She was learning in Flash, and I
had a real interest in animation.
| | 02:30 | I loved making flip books and
things like that as a kid, in addition to
| | 02:32 | the programming.
| | 02:33 | So it seemed like a
perfect thing for me to learn.
| | 02:36 | I started playing and got involved
in the online community, sharing, making
| | 02:41 | tutorials, things on those lines, and
that led me into a career doing what I've
| | 02:47 | just been doing in my off time.
| | 02:49 | Since then I have founded two different
companies doing this and my current one,
| | 02:55 | Automata Studios, is now five years
old, and I am incredibly lucky to have
| | 03:00 | actually founded it with my best friend.
| | 03:02 | He and I met him when we were eleven, both
learning how to program, and somehow here
| | 03:09 | we are now making stuff for
amazing clients and just having a blast.
| | 03:15 | Lynda Weinman: How did you get
interested in programming to begin with?
| | 03:18 | Branden Hall: I got interested in
programming because of just some amazing people in my life.
| | 03:23 | I think it actually goes back,
oddly enough, to even kindergarten.
| | 03:27 | My kindergarten teacher somehow got a
hold of some old computer, I think a
| | 03:32 | mainframe of some kind, and put it in
our school in some closet, and we were
| | 03:36 | allowed to go back there and play on
it on occasion and learn how it worked.
| | 03:40 | Because I didn't grow up terribly
wealthy. We didn't have a computer for a long
| | 03:47 | time, but my parents were always
looking to help feed my interest.
| | 03:51 | So at one point, at a construction site
where my dad was working, there was an
| | 03:55 | office and they were throwing
out all of their old computers.
| | 03:57 | They were old Apple IIe's. And my dad
filled the whole back of his truck with
| | 04:01 | these beige boxes and brought them home,
and it was like Christmas times ten for me.
| | 04:07 | We got one working and that was mine,
and donated the rest to my middle school.
| | 04:12 | And my orchestra teacher was actually
the one who was really interested in the
| | 04:19 | new computers and he had programmed some.
| | 04:22 | He gave me all these books on Basic and
I started making games, and it got me
| | 04:28 | even further into math, because I
would go into math class, I would learn how
| | 04:30 | to do something, and then I
immediately apply it to try to make more things with games.
| | 04:36 | Then with just great relationships,
like that I have had with Keenan.
| | 04:41 | His dad was a professor of computer
science at Howard University, and so he was
| | 04:46 | already seriously into it.
| | 04:48 | We would go home after school
sometimes and literally have little programming
| | 04:52 | competitions between the two of us.
| | 04:53 | We had this one little program called
Probots where you would write little
| | 04:59 | robots that would fight in Pascal.
| | 05:02 | And so one of us would spend all the
time on the computer writing the robot. The
| | 05:05 | other person would be sketching the
notebook for when it was their turn to code.
| | 05:09 | I have always had that. I have always had
amazing people in my life that helped shape this desire
| | 05:17 | to build things, because really that's
what all comes down to, because I love creating.
| | 05:22 | It just so happens that I was lucky
enough to be born in this era, where I have
| | 05:26 | a job where the things I think
up in my mind, I can make real.
| | 05:31 | Lynda Weinman: Yeah, very true.
| | 05:34 | What's it like to own your own
studio and be able to do projects of your
| | 05:38 | choosing, I imagine?
| | 05:41 | How do you choose your projects,
and what's that been like to be a
| | 05:44 | businessperson as well?
| | 05:46 | Branden Hall: That's probably been my
biggest challenge, and it's why I partnered with
| | 05:50 | Keenan, because I definitely can be
kind of, at times, the ADD artist type, just
| | 05:56 | bouncing all around,
wanting to do kind of everything.
| | 06:00 | So it's been a real
challenge forming a business,
| | 06:03 | but you're correct that the whole
reason we made the business was not to make money;
| | 06:09 | it really wasn't about that at all.
| | 06:11 | It was about essentially
building freedom for ourselves,
| | 06:14 | the freedom to do the kinds
of projects we want to do.
| | 06:18 | It's been amazing of the last few years,
because as we've grown, we have been
| | 06:23 | able to say no, which is a wonderful
power to just simply say, "This isn't the
| | 06:29 | kind of project I want to do.
| | 06:31 | This isn't something I believe in."
Because when all the projects you work on are
| | 06:36 | things you believe in, they just keep
getting better and better and better, and
| | 06:39 | you get more and more opportunities.
| | 06:41 | It's not a power we had at first.
| | 06:43 | At first we were doing jobs that we
didn't necessarily believe in, but we had
| | 06:47 | that goal in mind and we were
constantly working towards it.
| | 06:51 | In terms of, on the business side, as I
said, it's been a challenge, but it's
| | 06:56 | also been one where we've been able to
look at what the status quo is, look at
| | 07:02 | how businesses are run, and at times,
take the advice of others on how business
| | 07:09 | has to work and other times say
"No, it doesn't have to be this way.
| | 07:13 | We want to do it our way.
| | 07:16 | We want to run a really humanistic business."
| | 07:19 | We actually just recently got an HR
firm to help us out for that, since we are
| | 07:25 | hiring new people, and it's been
wonderful to kind of tell them "No, we are not
| | 07:30 | having set nine-to-five hours.
| | 07:32 | It doesn't work that way.
| | 07:33 | We want our hours to fit into people's lives.
| | 07:36 | We want it so that my business partner
leaves early a couple of days a week to go
| | 07:40 | volunteer at an animal rescue."
| | 07:42 | I leave early to go do, to help coach
my son's tee-ball class, and we all have
| | 07:47 | all of these other interests.
| | 07:49 | So we are trying to build a company
that is part of people's lives, not
| | 07:54 | something that they do to go
live the rest of their life.
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| Generative art| 00:00 | Lynda Weinman: I mean I see another theme
in your career, that you've been attracted to
| | 00:04 | the arts as well.
| | 00:05 | You were saying you had this interest
in animation early on, and a lot of your
| | 00:09 | projects have been so
tied to a visual component.
| | 00:13 | So can you talk a little
bit about the genesis of that?
| | 00:15 | Branden Hall: Certainly. I have to
there give full credit to my parents.
| | 00:20 | They are both artists, and my
mom has her degree in native arts.
| | 00:24 | We tease her. She has a degree in
basketweaving, and that's really what it is.
| | 00:29 | So my house, growing up, was always
filled with pottery and stained glass and all
| | 00:34 | these amazing things that they have made.
| | 00:36 | My dad was a leathersmith for years even.
| | 00:40 | I mean they are at the level that they
even taught themselves how to smelt gold
| | 00:45 | to make their own wedding rings.
| | 00:46 | I mean that's a level of sort of
makerhood of the arts I can only aspire to.
| | 00:53 | So I've always loved that
that aspect of things.
| | 00:56 | It's not a cold, hard, pure-logic thing
for me. I am always wanting to make
| | 01:02 | beautiful, wondrous things.
| | 01:04 | And for me, this is such a wonderful
industry because of that, because I can
| | 01:10 | take both the logic problem-solving
part of my brain and the aesthetic part and
| | 01:17 | really combine them myself.
| | 01:19 | If I was born in an earlier age,
I might have been an architect or
| | 01:23 | something along those lines and I
would have missed out on the making, and I
| | 01:28 | love the making.
| | 01:29 | Lynda Weinman: Now you were talking about it
incorporating generative art, and I'd say that's
| | 01:33 | another theme that I see in your career.
| | 01:35 | So what is it that attracts you to
generative art, and describe what that is?
| | 01:39 | Branden Hall: Certainly. Generative art is
using the computer to make decisions that would
| | 01:44 | normally be up to the artist, and it's
something that, working with people like
| | 01:50 | Joshua Davis and Erik Natzke, they got
me interested in it, seeing the things
| | 01:58 | that they were doing.
| | 01:59 | But than also, I am just simply
fascinated with math and always have been and
| | 02:04 | love things like fractals and chaos and
the math of nature, and that's, so much of
| | 02:10 | that is how nature works.
| | 02:13 | I love their approach of building
something and then living with it.
| | 02:19 | Since I love to teach just about as
much as I love to create, I've had a really
| | 02:25 | good time teaching both of them, and a
lot of other people I meet, skills so that
| | 02:30 | they can go further with what they are doing.
| | 02:33 | A couple of years back, Erik and I
were at a conference in Winnipeg, Canada,
| | 02:38 | in the winter.
| | 02:40 | It was a warm snap, so it was only
about 10 below when we were there.
| | 02:44 | But we so loved what we were doing
and we so wanted to just collaborate on things,
| | 02:48 | we stayed an extra day, and he and I
just basically hung out at the bar there.
| | 02:53 | And he was teaching me how he does the
beautiful aesthetic things that he does,
| | 03:00 | and I was teaching him some of the
nitty-gritty things about programming that
| | 03:03 | he didn't know.
| | 03:06 | I just, I love doing that, and I love
helping them to create beautiful artwork,
| | 03:12 | just by giving them the
skills to see what they do.
| | 03:14 | It is the same thing as the La Plaza
project, BLOOM is what that was called,
| | 03:19 | because we made this tool for them and
then they sent us back what they made, and
| | 03:26 | I just got this amazing grin on my
face. And I was pulling the whole team over,
| | 03:29 | like, "You guys, you have to see this.
| | 03:31 | I just gave them, they just put dots
on the screen and they--oh my god!
| | 03:35 | This is so amazing!" And that's one of the
things I love with the generative art
| | 03:38 | is you're building it yourself,
yet you are still--you can still be
| | 03:44 | surprised by the stuff you make
yourself, just by seeing the different
| | 03:49 | decisions that are made.
| | 03:50 | It's kind of a--for me,
it's a creativity multiplier.
| | 03:54 | It's a way of taking my ideas and
giving up a little bit of control and saying,
| | 04:01 | "I know the things I want, but for the
things I don't know I want, let's let a
| | 04:06 | little bit of the math that controls the
universe have fun, and see what happens."
| | 04:12 | A lot of times it goes nowhere. A lot
of times it's not something that I find
| | 04:14 | interesting or is beautiful or--it
doesn't work. But as Josh says, by living
| | 04:21 | with it, you can find amazing things.
| | 04:24 | It's like combining painting
and a treasure hunt all in one.
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| The Endless Mural and the tools of the trade| 00:00 | Branden Hall: The Endless Mural project was
in many ways inspired by work that Josh and I
| | 00:05 | had done in the past with a
framework we built called the HYPE framework.
| | 00:09 | The whole point of which was to bring
the fun back to Flash. So much of what I
| | 00:14 | talked about in the early days of Flash,
| | 00:17 | it was fun, because it was so simple,
because you could really quickly dive
| | 00:22 | in and start making visual things
and iterate them. Whereas I think with
| | 00:27 | ActionScript 3, so much power came
to Flash, but it lost a lot of that ease of use.
| | 00:33 | What was a gentle slope for
learning has now become a wall.
| | 00:36 | It just kind of got pressed up into a wall.
| | 00:39 | And while that's fine from the
technical standpoint--the new things that the
| | 00:43 | language brought were incredible--
| | 00:46 | the fact that there wasn't this
learning curve anymore saddened me. I loved
| | 00:51 | seeing people play,
and there wasn't as much of that.
| | 00:57 | So Josh and I worked
together to come up with HYPE.
| | 01:00 | I wrote the majority of the code,
and Josh acted like essentially, the
| | 01:05 | first product user.
| | 01:06 | He was constantly testing it to see what
was working, adding ideas, and we built
| | 01:11 | the different behaviors
and all the pieces together.
| | 01:14 | It's a really fun project, and it's led
to a lot of different places, because
| | 01:18 | people have seen it aesthetically
and seen what we can do with HYPE.
| | 01:23 | It's led to a number of interesting
projects, including the Endless Mural.
| | 01:27 | With the Endless Mural, we had to take
these ideas and turn them into HTML5 and
| | 01:35 | Canvas for Microsoft.
| | 01:36 | It was a very short project.
| | 01:38 | We had five weeks from the first
day I was told about it to the launch.
| | 01:42 | And that was--it was definitely
brutal at times, because while I've done some
| | 01:47 | work with the HTML5, I'd never done
anything that was at this caliber, where it
| | 01:52 | really was meant to be something that
was good in its own right, not just good
| | 01:58 | in--oh, but it's not Flash.
| | 02:00 | It had to be just awesome in its own right.
| | 02:03 | And for my own sake, like even though
it was made for Microsoft for IE9, I was
| | 02:08 | going to do this right and it
was going to work in everything.
| | 02:11 | It was going to work in Chrome;
it was going to work in Firefox.
| | 02:14 | So I tried very hard to hold myself to
a higher standard on this, and my whole
| | 02:18 | team worked incredibly hard to make it
something that, as I said, is really fun
| | 02:25 | and excellent in its own right. And
people do right-click on a lot and say oh is
| | 02:30 | this, is this in Flash? Wait a minute.
This isn't Flash?
| | 02:33 | The play between Flash and HTML5 is
really a per-project one for me. I'm not
| | 02:42 | terribly interested in the overall
politics over whose winning or not.
| | 02:47 | For me, that would be like the
politics of hammers versus screwdrivers.
| | 02:53 | I don't care. They are just tools.
| | 02:55 | For me, it's just about choosing the
appropriate tool for the job and not
| | 03:00 | getting religious about it.
| | 03:02 | There's so many people arguing
over it on both sides who have purely religious arguments.
| | 03:09 | Flash is bad. It's proprietary. Or then
they come for the HTML5 stuff.
| | 03:13 | It's not going to be ready until 2022,
and it's different in all the browsers.
| | 03:17 | Well, that's fine, but when you are
actually on the ground building things, what
| | 03:21 | matters are the details, the details
about the job you're building, about your
| | 03:25 | client, about what they
have, what they are using.
| | 03:28 | And for me, it's just, it's the same
thing I do when I go down to my woodshop.
| | 03:31 | What's the appropriate tool for this job?
I've got eight difference saws, handsaws.
| | 03:36 | This isn't even getting into the power
saws. But they all have appropriate uses.
| | 03:41 | I wouldn't use my like Japanese
pullsaw to cut metal, but I have a hacksaw.
| | 03:45 | Great! I will use that for cutting metal brace
and then putting inside of bookshelves.
| | 03:50 | And for me, that's all it comes
down to, is knowing your tools.
| | 03:55 | The biggest mistake I think people
make is they just take other people's word
| | 03:58 | for it when it comes to the tools they use.
They don't sit down and just build stuff.
| | 04:03 | If I'm not working on a project, again
in my woodshop, nine times out of ten, I'm
| | 04:08 | there making sawdust.
| | 04:09 | I am playing with something.
| | 04:11 | I'm trying to figure out, okay, what's
the best way to use this hand plane.
| | 04:14 | I am starting to getting obsessed
with hand planes and how to use those, and
| | 04:18 | that's something can literally take a
lifetime to master, and I am all for it.
| | 04:23 | People, I think, need to start taking
that same approach to digital tools if--
| | 04:28 | always worked to master them, because
it's fundamentally the sharpness of the
| | 04:33 | tool and how sharp you are with the
tool that ends up dictating how great or
| | 04:40 | not the thing is that you're building.
| | 04:42 | A lot of the stuff we had to do
with Endless Mural, we had to build our own tools.
| | 04:46 | We ended up building library just for
doing the animation, just for drawing
| | 04:50 | things to Canvas very rapidly, because
what people like to compare Canvas and
| | 04:54 | Flash, Canvas is much more low-level.
| | 04:57 | Canvas is initially just like the
drawing API in Flash or the bitmap data
| | 05:01 | object, and that's it.
| | 05:03 | It doesn't have all of the
user interaction objects.
| | 05:07 | It doesn't have the way that you
can stack and add and remove objects in Flash visually.
| | 05:13 | It's a very raw canvas, and that's it.
| | 05:16 | So when we came into the project, the
very first thing we ended up having to
| | 05:19 | do was saying, what tools do we have in
Flash that we don't have in Canvas, and
| | 05:25 | let's build them.
| | 05:26 | So in many ways, a lot of what we did
was to take ideas that are native to Flash
| | 05:30 | and bring them to Canvas.
| | 05:32 | And other people have continued to do so.
My friend Grant Skinner actually took
| | 05:36 | a lot of the same ideas for a project
he did, called the Pirates Love Daisies,
| | 05:41 | and built this library called Easel,
which is this same idea for the library we
| | 05:46 | built for Endless Mural, which we
called Okapi, and took it even further.
| | 05:50 | And in fact, I've used these along on a
couple of projects now myself, because
| | 05:54 | it does make it easier to build with Canvas.
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| Collaborating| 00:00 | Lynda Weinman: I also notice that another
theme in your career is that you really seem
| | 00:04 | to love collaborations, like you are
a collaborator with your best friend
| | 00:08 | from grade school.
| | 00:10 | You are really active,
you were really active in the Flash community.
| | 00:12 | I don't know if that's still the case.
| | 00:15 | But tell me a little bit about how
collaboration has played into your career and your life.
| | 00:21 | Branden Hall: For me, collaboration is huge.
| | 00:24 | It's funny, there is actually a kids
book that I've been reading to my kids a
| | 00:28 | bunch lately, and one of the last lines
of it are, "Toys are fun, but friends are
| | 00:34 | much more fun," and that's absolutely how I feel.
| | 00:38 | I always say that line with a lot of
emphasis, because for me, there are only so
| | 00:44 | many original creative
ideas bouncing around my head.
| | 00:48 | When they really start bouncing is
when they've got something to bounce off of.
| | 00:52 | As soon as I start chatting with
someone about a creative idea, the fireworks
| | 00:57 | just start going off, and it's
been a huge part of my career.
| | 01:02 | There--at the beginning of my career, as
you said, I was extremely active in the
| | 01:07 | nascent Flash community, just as it was forming,
| | 01:09 | made some of their first mailing
lists and helped write some of the first
| | 01:13 | books and stuff like that, and I loved it.
| | 01:15 | I worked with anybody and everybody I
could. But I was also twenty, and I was not
| | 01:20 | necessarily the most socially adapt.
| | 01:22 | Much to their credit, a lot of my
friends saw past that, Joshua Davis in particular.
| | 01:28 | I met him at your conference in 2001 in
New York, and I am a bit embarrassed to
| | 01:34 | say, I walked up to him after his talk
and I said, "The stuff you do is just
| | 01:39 | absolutely beautiful, but your code is awful."
| | 01:42 | I said that right to his face.
| | 01:44 | I don't know how I did it, but very
much to his credit, he said, "Great, show
| | 01:48 | me how to make it better," and we have
been friends and collaborators ever since.
| | 01:53 | And so I am always looking to work
with more people, doing different things.
| | 02:00 | Sometimes it's on projects; sometimes
it's just on personal stuff, where we
| | 02:05 | are just making things; sometimes it
leads somewhere; sometimes it doesn't,
| | 02:09 | but for me, it's just fuel.
| | 02:12 | If I am sitting there by myself,
trying to come up with an idea, it rarely comes.
| | 02:16 | It's just, there's just
nothing there for me to play off of.
| | 02:20 | It's sort of an empty room.
| | 02:22 | But when there's someone else there,
another creative mind that wants to make
| | 02:25 | things, the magic just happens.
| | 02:28 | Lynda Weinman: What about
collaborating with clients?
| | 02:30 | Have you found that to be as fruitful?
| | 02:33 | Branden Hall: Absolutely.
| | 02:34 | A big part of how we run our company
is that we know what we know and what we don't know.
| | 02:41 | All too often, I think developers in
particular take over a project, and they're
| | 02:49 | sort of the high priests of it, the technology.
| | 02:53 | They are defining everything. And I hate that.
| | 02:57 | I really, really do, because if I am
working with a client in a field, they know
| | 03:01 | that field much better than I ever will.
| | 03:03 | I know my field.
I know what I do well. I know creativity well.
| | 03:07 | So, we will work with the client to
help bring their creative concept to life
| | 03:14 | and teach them what's possible and
what's not and let them play, because then
| | 03:20 | they have so much more ownership of the product.
| | 03:23 | It came out of their mind too.
| | 03:25 | And then secondly, they just end up
being that much happier with it, and it ends
| | 03:31 | up being just so much better, because
it's our creative and technical skill, and
| | 03:39 | their skill in their field and their
creativity, knowing what is best and works
| | 03:44 | best in their field. And that kind of
collaboration I think is what is, in many
| | 03:48 | ways, defines us as a company.
| | 03:50 | We always want to work
with our clients that way.
| | 03:51 | It's not a, you send us an RFP,
we build it, we hand it back.
| | 03:55 | We just don't work that way and if a
client wants to work that way, we say no.
| | 04:00 | That's not how we work.
| | 04:02 | We need you to be engaged and
help us make this the best it can be.
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| LA Plaza generative art collaboration| 00:00 | Branden Hall: The BLOOM
installation has been a wonderful project.
| | 00:06 | I got to work with this great team over
at Apologue, headed up by Tali Krakowsky.
| | 00:12 | She and I met on the speaking circuit.
| | 00:14 | I speak at a number of conferences a
year on interactive media, and she and
| | 00:19 | I had met at a few of them and started
to talk, and she approached us on this project.
| | 00:27 | They were doing these interactive
screens for this new cultural center in
| | 00:35 | LA, called La Plaza.
| | 00:36 | It's a Mexican-American cultural
center. And they were making what all the
| | 00:42 | screens would look like for inside and
out, that would be displaying the stories
| | 00:47 | of this place, promotional information,
et cetera, telling stories in a
| | 00:51 | public space in a very interesting way.
| | 00:53 | But most of that content is
relatively static text, and they wanted to
| | 00:58 | have really beautiful transitions
between them, but they wanted it so that it
| | 01:03 | had that magic.
| | 01:04 | They wanted it to be generative.
| | 01:06 | So even though it was all the spoke
animation, they wanted it to still be
| | 01:12 | different every time. And from seeing
the work that I'd done, approached Automata
| | 01:20 | Studios, my company, and we got to work.
| | 01:23 | And it was really interesting,
because so much of the work that's out there is generative
| | 01:28 | is entirely drawn by the computer.
| | 01:31 | It's, all the geometry, everything
that's made up in it is fairly simple.
| | 01:36 | It's just a lot them, a lot of
particles flying around, and things like that.
| | 01:39 | This was different;
| | 01:40 | this was hand-done animation that had to
then been made alive, so that it was--
| | 01:48 | and felt different all the time.
| | 01:49 | So what we ended up having to do was
to work directly with the animator to
| | 01:55 | build the animation and the pieces of
the animation in such a way that it could
| | 01:58 | be chopped up in lots of different
pieces, so we could programmatically
| | 02:03 | reconstruct them.
| | 02:04 | And I think my favorite part of the
whole project was we ended up building a
| | 02:08 | tool for them, because again, we didn't
necessarily have the aesthetic idea in
| | 02:16 | our head of what exactly that should look like.
| | 02:19 | We knew we didn't.
| | 02:20 | We have artist on the staff, but they
had this really clear idea of what they
| | 02:25 | should look like and how it should feel.
| | 02:28 | So what we ended up doing was building
a tool for them to actually design out
| | 02:33 | how they should work.
| | 02:35 | So we took the animation, we chopped
them up, we designed all these different
| | 02:38 | systems, so animation system, a fern
system, a vine system, a bush system, and
| | 02:46 | those could bring in all sorts of
different assets into all of them,
| | 02:49 | and then gave them a tool that let them
visually lay out the rules for each one
| | 02:54 | of the different templates they wanted to build.
| | 02:56 | So that way it was still different every
time, but constrained to the rules that
| | 03:01 | they set, and it ended up working amazingly.
| | 03:07 | We sent the tool over to
them and I think they had a cow.
| | 03:13 | They really just didn't get it at first,
and I had to really explain like this
| | 03:19 | is how this will work, because at
first the tool worked, but it couldn't
| | 03:24 | export anything;
| | 03:25 | they just kind of had to imagine it.
And so that that's always hard, but at the
| | 03:30 | end of it, as soon as we started
getting the preview parts into it, they
| | 03:34 | absolutely adored it.
| | 03:36 | And I think my favorite part of the
whole project was when they sent me back
| | 03:40 | over the first templates they had
made and I opened them up in the editor
| | 03:44 | and they were incredibly complex. And
I hit the Preview button and was just
| | 03:50 | awestruck with what they had done
with this relatively simple tool that I
| | 03:54 | had given them.
| | 03:55 | I love, I absolutely adore doing that,
giving tools to creative people and
| | 04:02 | seeing what they do with it.
| | 04:04 | That's I think one of the most
favorite parts of my job, because while we are
| | 04:11 | all creatives at Automata, we love
collaborating with others, and every time
| | 04:17 | we can make a tool that is--it's a
whole new kind of lever for our clients to play with.
| | 04:25 | It's a whole new way for them to lift
the world, to make it match their vision.
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| Digital making| 00:00 | Lynda Weinman: Well, I'm looking at this table
over here and I see that there are these gear
| | 00:06 | shapes, and I understand
that you've also made these.
| | 00:09 | So, tell me about how this got started?
| | 00:14 | Branden Hall: This is, I hope,
the beginning of something.
| | 00:17 | Again, growing up, my dad was in
construction and was always building stuff.
| | 00:22 | He had a big workshop in the
basement, and I always loved building things.
| | 00:26 | I do a fair amount of woodworking.
| | 00:28 | I'm always learning more and more about
that. But there is a frustration there,
| | 00:34 | because what I see in my head is
not necessarily what I can always create.
| | 00:38 | I am always looking to get better, but
when I make as many mistakes as I do,
| | 00:44 | working in the digital realm is
excellent, because you can just file the
| | 00:47 | Branden Hall: files off in some way.
Lynda Weinman: Undo.
| | 00:48 | Branden Hall: Right, undo or throw away
the files. When as I did recently, you make a
| | 00:54 | bookshelf and you're not happy with it,
| | 00:57 | getting rid of that body
is a bit more difficult.
| | 01:00 | So it's a much slower process, I
mean learning how to do woodworking and
| | 01:05 | making with my hands.
| | 01:06 | I don't get to dedicate
all of my time to doing that.
| | 01:11 | So I've been sort of lusting after
these new machines that let you more work
| | 01:18 | in a digital fashion.
| | 01:20 | In high school I was lucky enough to
play with the CNC machine for the first
| | 01:24 | time, and I've been obsessed
with having one ever since.
| | 01:27 | Where it's a machine where you have a
three axes of control and essentially a
| | 01:31 | router built on the end, so it can
cuts stuff out of plastic, wood, or metal.
| | 01:37 | And last year, yeah, last year, there
was a feature in MAKE Magazine about home
| | 01:44 | factories, and they were talking about
3D printers and mills, and they covered
| | 01:48 | this one particular mill, the
Lumenlab micro, and I loved the story.
| | 01:54 | It's two guys who were best friends in
North Carolina, and they decided we're
| | 01:59 | going to make something.
| | 02:00 | One of them was an electrical engineer,
one was a mechanical engineer, and they
| | 02:02 | just started building machines.
| | 02:05 | And what I have is the
fourth-generation machine.
| | 02:09 | Each generation would make the next
generation machine, and it went from
| | 02:14 | something that was horrifically
dangerous and that nearly maimed them a few
| | 02:18 | times to what I have, which is a
desktop CNC machine. And I am learning to
| | 02:24 | program it, but also I am having a
lot of fun doing things the wrong way.
| | 02:30 | So CNC really started in the 1950s
at MIT and they invented a programming
| | 02:36 | language then called G-code, which is very ugly.
| | 02:40 | It sort of looks a bit like Fortran and Logo.
| | 02:42 | It's not a very pretty
language, but it's very powerful.
| | 02:45 | The thing is is most people who have or
use CNC machines don't really look at that at all.
| | 02:51 | What they do is they go into a CAD
program and they design something and then
| | 02:55 | they feed that to a CAM program,
Computer Aided Machining, and what that does is
| | 03:00 | it turns the 3D program into all the
tool paths actually needed to cut it out,
| | 03:06 | and that's the G-code it spits out.
| | 03:08 | So I said, "Well, G-code
is a programming language.
| | 03:11 | I'm going to just start coding in that
natively and really understand how this
| | 03:15 | machine works at a very base level."
| | 03:17 | So these gears are about the fourth or
fifth experiment I've done just making
| | 03:21 | things for, first for the machine.
| | 03:24 | I made my own clamps for the machine,
because those--again they're all mine.
| | 03:27 | They're like $30 for these clamps.
| | 03:30 | I can build that and write code and
give it away and try to take sort of
| | 03:35 | the open source, build-it-yourself
ethic that I have with software to these machines.
| | 03:40 | And so far there has been a bit of
interest, and people really dig it, but like,
| | 03:43 | these gears were essentially an accident.
| | 03:46 | I started to trying to make a headphone
wraps, because my headphones were always
| | 03:52 | just a rat's nest in my pocket,
and I hated undoing them all time.
| | 03:56 | I'm an Eagle Scout, and I
still hated doing all those knots.
| | 03:59 | So, I started designing,
and they just weren't pretty.
| | 04:02 | I just didn't--I'm very
interested in aesthetics, but I don't have an art degree.
| | 04:07 | So I often have to really
struggle to make something I like.
| | 04:12 | And I was downstairs making a lot of
plastics swarf, it's called, the dust that
| | 04:17 | comes of the machine, and I finally
went up to my wife and I said, This just
| | 04:21 | isn't working, and I started talking
to her and I was thinking about the
| | 04:25 | knitting she's done before.
| | 04:27 | And I know I've seen funny gear-shaped
things that were used for making like
| | 04:32 | socks, and I was saying, "What if I made
like a circle and cut notches in it so
| | 04:37 | that you could sort of weave with your
headphone cable? Wouldn't that be kind
| | 04:42 | of neat?" And she goes, "You mean
like a gear, like your company logo?"
| | 04:46 | "Oh, why didn't I think of that?"
| | 04:49 | There's a reason why our
web site is Two Geeks and a Baby.
| | 04:53 | Branden Hall: So she's a geek as well and she--
Lynda Weinman: More collaboration.
| | 04:56 | Branden Hall: Exactly,
exactly. We're always making stuff.
| | 05:00 | So yeah, these are headphone wraps, but
they are also great toys and things to
| | 05:04 | fidget with, and it's hopefully the
first among many things I build.
| | 05:08 | I have nothing immediately in mind.
| | 05:09 | I don't know what I'm going to do
with it, and I love that, because I think
| | 05:12 | that's where the most truthful things
come from, is when you're just playing.
| | 05:19 | I mean for the longest time on my
personal website, the little tagline was
| | 05:24 | "Don't forget to play,"
because for me it's easy to do.
| | 05:28 | It's easy to just get involved in
solving the problems and getting things
| | 05:31 | done, but you need to just play, get
dusty, get dirty, make a lot swarf, that's
| | 05:38 | kind of sawdust, yeah.
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| Animation Station at the Smithsonian: a labor of love| 00:00 | Branden Hall: So, another one of our
projects was a pro-bono piece we did for the
| | 00:07 | Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the
Udvar-Hazy wing, out by Dulles Airport.
| | 00:12 | It's a new wing of the Air and Space
Museum that's essentially a huge hangar,
| | 00:17 | a series of hangars, with lots of
different planes and things about the history of flight.
| | 00:22 | It's a really amazing museum space.
| | 00:24 | And we have a good friend of mine and
my wife's that works there, and she had
| | 00:31 | this great idea to help teach
kids about animation as part of their
| | 00:38 | education outreach program.
| | 00:40 | So she approached me and said, "We
really want to do some amazing things with
| | 00:44 | stop-motion animation, but we have
these off-the-shelf systems that are too
| | 00:49 | complicated and cost too much money.
| | 00:51 | We need something that really gives
kids this really rapid experience, where
| | 00:56 | they can come up to it and make
animation in the really beautiful old-school
| | 01:02 | stop-motion way, but it be extremely
approachable and where they're able to
| | 01:08 | actually walk away with
their animation in their hands."
| | 01:11 | So we worked with them, we came up with
different ideas, we figured out what
| | 01:16 | budget they had for hardware, and
worked them over a number of months to build
| | 01:21 | out what ended up being a really cool project.
| | 01:24 | We do what we do because
this is what we love to do.
| | 01:29 | This isn't--we didn't start this
business, my partner and I, because we
| | 01:34 | wanted to be rich.
| | 01:35 | It was much more about freedom, the
freedom to do the things we love to do, and
| | 01:42 | this was exactly that kind of a project.
| | 01:46 | It really is that kind of work where
we would have done it if we were paid or
| | 01:51 | not, and we weren't in this
case, and that was perfectly okay.
| | 01:54 | We put all at the same energy and
perfectionism and creativity into this project
| | 02:02 | as we would in any other, and in fact,
it ended up paying back in the spades,
| | 02:08 | because we spent a lot of time trying to
figure out how to make this touchscreen
| | 02:12 | that we were using as responsive as possible.
| | 02:15 | But we didn't have any libraries of the
time for doing touchscreen work, but we
| | 02:19 | needed the kids to be able to swipe
through the timeline and add and remove
| | 02:24 | frames and copy things to
make it very, very easy.
| | 02:27 | So we gained all this experience for
working with touchscreens and raw touch
| | 02:33 | events to make really a compelling
experience, and then when we worked on one
| | 02:40 | of our next projects, the kids reader
for the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color, we
| | 02:45 | were able to take all of that knowledge
and immediately apply it for the exact same audience.
| | 02:50 | It's exactly for kids,
so we knew what worked, what didn't.
| | 02:53 | We had a good idea of how to
control these touch events.
| | 02:57 | So it ended up being a
great project for the client.
| | 03:00 | Our friend over at the Smithsonian absolutely
loved it, and the first day it was out,
| | 03:06 | it was an immediate huge hit.
| | 03:08 | They had an open house for their
educational outreach program the day after we
| | 03:13 | installed it, and it was busy the entire day.
| | 03:18 | Kids were playing with it the whole day long.
| | 03:20 | When I first saw the photos of it, I
was so happy and showed them all to the
| | 03:24 | team, and it was a wonderful experience.
| | 03:27 | But then even beyond that, just what we
learned from doing the project, it ended
| | 03:33 | up just being absolutely perfect, and
it's a big reason why we are always trying
| | 03:37 | to do that kind of work.
| | 03:39 | We just find work that fits in with
our team, that fits in with the way we
| | 03:44 | work, the technologies we are
interested in, and we go and work on them. Pro bono or not,
| | 03:52 | it really is just about the
passion we have for the project, more than anything else.
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| Tools and technology| 00:00 | Lynda Weinman: In terms of trends or
technological, new, upcoming technologies, is there
| | 00:09 | anything in general that you're excited
about right now, that is up and coming?
| | 00:13 | Branden Hall: I am--I don't know if I
am getting jaded or not, but the technology
| | 00:18 | doesn't excite me anymore.
| | 00:20 | It doesn't inspire me anymore.
| | 00:21 | It still excites me. I think it's
actually a better way of putting it.
| | 00:24 | I always love seeing new stuff
coming down the line, but I think all the
| | 00:29 | woodworking I have been doing has put
actually a different spin on it for me.
| | 00:33 | It's just a new tool.
The wood is still the wood.
| | 00:36 | You still have creative
output you're trying to do.
| | 00:40 | New tools are great, but if you haven't
mastered the ones that are there before,
| | 00:43 | you can't do anything great with it.
| | 00:45 | I made a very common woodworker mistake
of buying sort of the wrong tools first.
| | 00:51 | I didn't buy a lot of hand tools first.
| | 00:52 | I bought a couple of big power tools,
and a couple of them are just gathering
| | 00:57 | dust still, because I didn't really
know how to use things like a hand plane
| | 01:00 | or Japanese pullsaw.
| | 01:02 | And now that I am going back and
learning these things, I am kind of
| | 01:04 | understanding that once you know those
basics, everything new that comes
| | 01:09 | along, it's just another riff on the same ideas.
| | 01:14 | So like now, one of the big things
that's being pushed out there is HTML5 and
| | 01:18 | doing interactivity with HTML5 and
JavaScript and Canvas, and it's the same tune
| | 01:24 | that we've been playing with
Flash for many, many years.
| | 01:26 | And in fact, some of the most
innovative stuff I am seeing come out of that
| | 01:29 | community are actually from people
who have been doing it with Flash, which
| | 01:33 | makes perfect sense.
| | 01:34 | They have been doing interactive
media for ten years, so of course, when the
| | 01:38 | medium changes, they have the least to learn.
| | 01:41 | They only have to learn the technology.
| | 01:43 | They don't have to learn the creative skills.
| | 01:46 | So for me, the thing that's most
exciting are actually just the idea of more playmates.
| | 01:51 | There's more people that are coming to
these technologies now, because of the
| | 01:56 | fact that it's now open standards or
whatever is pulling them in. It doesn't
| | 02:03 | really matter to me. It matters that
there's more people doing the stuff,
| | 02:06 | making more beautiful things, because
that's more people to play with, more
| | 02:09 | people to collaborate with and whose
ideas I can help inspire and who can
| | 02:14 | inspire my own ideas.
| | 02:16 | So it's not about the technology.
| | 02:18 | The technology is just the tool, and
it's great to have another screwdriver, but
| | 02:23 | that doesn't change the fact
that the medium is still the same.
| | 02:27 | Lynda Weinman: I love it.
| | 02:28 | And I think my final question will be,
what advice would you have for others who
| | 02:32 | want to follow in your type of footstep?
| | 02:36 | Branden Hall: This is what I
have been thinking about a lot.
| | 02:39 | I have two small children, and I am
always trying to teach them the ideals, the
| | 02:48 | moire that or that I think of,
to use the high term, the maker.
| | 02:53 | I want them to make things.
| | 02:55 | For me, that defines my life.
| | 02:57 | I love making and I love teaching,
and I think that that's exactly what you have to do.
| | 03:03 | You make something.
You teach somebody else how you made it.
| | 03:06 | And in fact, when I look back for
sort of the larger patterns in my career,
| | 03:09 | that's exactly what I did.
| | 03:11 | I would learn how to do something in Flash.
| | 03:13 | I would like write a tutorial on
a message board on how to do it.
| | 03:17 | And it just that, that head of steam just
keeps building and building on that,
| | 03:21 | where it's been.
| | 03:23 | You have to do the work creating, and
I was extremely lucky in that sense,
| | 03:28 | because when I was starting, the bar was
very low. The bar was very low, because
| | 03:34 | the stuff wasn't possible before.
| | 03:36 | So I could sit down and build
something in an afternoon, put it online--
| | 03:40 | something that followed the mouse
around--and everyone online would just be
| | 03:44 | like, ah, that's amazing, it's
incredible, and these days that doesn't get
| | 03:48 | any attention at all.
| | 03:49 | So it's really easy to keep doing stuff
when every little thing you make every
| | 03:53 | afternoon gets a ton of attention.
| | 03:55 | It's easy. It's not that easy anymore.
| | 03:57 | It's--that time may come again in a
different medium, but it's not that way now
| | 04:02 | for doing online and interactive media.
| | 04:05 | So you have to push through that.
| | 04:07 | You have to make.
The more stuff you make, the better you get.
| | 04:13 | There was actually a really great thing
I saw recently from Ira Glass, the guy
| | 04:17 | that does This American life, and his
whole thing was that creative people as a
| | 04:22 | whole, what they
fundamentally have is their taste.
| | 04:25 | They know what's good, and that's why so
many creative people dislike their own
| | 04:31 | work for so long, because they
know what they see in their head.
| | 04:35 | They know what they think is good and
what their own output and when their own
| | 04:39 | output doesn't match that, they're
disappointed with it, quite naturally.
| | 04:43 | So I think the best thing you can do is
just to make a lot of stuff, just build
| | 04:48 | up the skills. Make and build
and teach and just keep doing that.
| | 04:53 | Let that be your driver and your inspiration.
| | 04:56 | And as best I can tell,
that's the path I took to get here.
| | 05:01 | Honestly, I don't know if I could
go back and trace it, but that's been the consistent theme.
| | 05:06 | I learn something new, I make
some things, and I give it away.
| | 05:10 | Lynda Weinman: Well, I think it's been
proven that if you not only learn something but
| | 05:14 | then do what you learn, that you've
learn it even--that that is the ultimate
| | 05:18 | Lynda Weinman: form of learning.
Branden Hall: Absolutely.
| | 05:19 | Lynda Weinman: It's to actually then teach
it and do it and practice it.
| | 05:23 | Branden Hall: Right, exactly there's so much,
where people--and I hate that whole like the
| | 05:28 | people that do do, and the
people that can't, teach.
| | 05:31 | I think that's crap, because the
best teachers I've had are the ones that
| | 05:34 | actually really do it.
| | 05:37 | And then, know that that part of
the importance of what they do is to continue to teach it.
| | 05:44 | We have lost over the last fifty years,
a century, the idea of apprentices.
| | 05:51 | We don't have that all in the digital
realm, and I think it's just a shame,
| | 05:56 | because that's, that's how you should work.
| | 05:59 | That's how you need to work, and we're
trying to--in my company, we were trying
| | 06:03 | to build that back up again.
| | 06:05 | We have some interns starting for
the summer and what we're trying to do is
| | 06:09 | to do an old-world style
apprenticeship with them, where they will be building
| | 06:15 | real-world stuff.
| | 06:16 | Some of that won't
necessarily be seen to the world.
| | 06:19 | There will be stuff behind the scenes.
| | 06:21 | I mean one of my favorite things is
if you go find like old set of dresser
| | 06:24 | drawers, you know if it's real, that it
wasn't fake, if you go and look on the
| | 06:29 | dovetail joints that are on the back
of the drawers. If they're sloppier than
| | 06:33 | the ones that are on the front, it
was made in a shop that had apprentices.
| | 06:37 | The apprentices did the dovetail joints
on the back of the drawers that people
| | 06:41 | wouldn't see, but they
still got real-world practice.
| | 06:44 | They still got to work with the master,
something who really knew what they were
| | 06:48 | doing, and learned from that.
| | 06:49 | So often these days, kids are confined
to doing the work in class, and from the
| | 06:55 | internship program, seeing people's
portfolio and stuff like that, the kids are
| | 07:00 | working hard, but they are just starting.
| | 07:02 | And I see their portfolios, and
it's not something that I could ever
| | 07:06 | promote professionally.
| | 07:07 | It's not something where I could take
those skills and immediately put it into
| | 07:09 | production work, but I can use parts of it.
| | 07:13 | I can use stuff that's behind the scenes.
| | 07:15 | I can have them work with somebody
who really knows what they're doing and move forward.
| | 07:18 | This doesn't have to be a go-at-
your-own, teach-yourself kind of thing.
| | 07:22 | Teaching yourself is incredibly--I
mean it's an incredibly powerful way of doing things.
| | 07:28 | The videos that you do and the things
along those lines, fundamentally though,
| | 07:32 | isn't teaching yourself.
| | 07:34 | You are having somebody who is an
expert in the field tell you how to do these
| | 07:37 | things. Combine that with a mentorship-
type program, and this industry is just
| | 07:43 | going to continue to be
more and more and more vibrant.
| | 07:47 | Find somebody who knows more
than you do and hang out with them.
| | 07:50 | If you are ever the
smartest person in the room, leave.
| | 07:53 | Go find another room.
| | 07:54 | Lynda Weinman: Yeah. Well, it's great to hang out in your room.
| | 07:59 | Thank you so much Branden
and it's been fantastic.
| | 08:01 | Branden Hall: Thank you so much!
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