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Meet Ryan Bramwell of SPILLT in RINO District

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Bramwell.

Ryan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have always had a strong passion for design and animation. I began working in the television industry as a motion graphic artist in broadcast design. Essentially, this niche industry of television focuses on the design and animation ranging from television show logos and packages, all the way up to commercials and television network designs. I was enamored at creating a look and brand for these large scale brands. I moved to New York around 2004 working with a company which focuses on large scale image campaigns for channels such as Nickelodeon, HBO, and Showtime. I was extremely lucky in that our industry was exploding with using motion design and animation as a growing media for television. Here, I learned the intricacies of content branding as was able to work with a team of extremely talented editors in a graphical supporting role.

From there, I moved back to Denver in early 2006, my hometown, missing the mountains and the city life. I began freelance animation and design for many different design boutiques, networks and agencies in LA which evolved into a long term role with Playboy. Content aside, it was a chance to work on one of the world’s most known brands and combine my technical skills with the broadcast side of content development. I worked remotely from Denver, traveling to LA frequently and began picking up other projects in my freelance role. It was an amazing time of stylistic experimentation in television and was right before the internet began using video as what we now know as a constant media delivery system.

The company began naturally as more work came in. A small team of myself and two others began the company, SPILLT in 2007. It was initially just two designers (myself and another) and a producer doing all the work. I remember our first office being in a residential condo for the first four years to save on costs as most of our clients were out of state. Luckily, we were accepted to be under a well know sales rep in the broadcast industry which helped bring in a lot of jobs for FX, National Geographic and TLC. He helped us finally place a firm root in television. The company stayed the same size for a few years until we began to seek larger and longer-term partnerships. During this same time, we had a few more talented artists and a new management team to help us grow.

At this point, it was apparent that choosing the right people to help grow the company became the most important attribute in our growth. We added another Creative Director and Executive Producer to help us maintain new projects, and we made contacts with new talent to help grow our style capabilities and roster to fulfill the needs of each project. For the past 6 years, our company has experienced explosive growth and I look back and think that the right people were available at the right time to help us in this manner. We have been extremely lucky to have such talent throughout the years and I feel that this has been the driving force of growth.

Currently, our company is 11 strong, with curated talent collaborating with us from all parts of the world. We have a strong group of artists that are masters in multiple technologies and artistic style. Myself, well over the course of 12 years, I have taken more of a supporting role to our team to allow for the next evolution of the company. I continue to focus on bringing in more great work to the local industry.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I don’t think any company has a smooth road as it matures. We have had to overcome a lot of challenges over time. As a creative service industry, which has a degree of subjectivity, I feel like three key challenges have faced us.

One would be obtaining a pedigree of talent which we collaborate within competing against coastal companies and the emergence of other local firms since our open. Although Denver has some amazing talent locally, it is still finite comparatively to other creative hubs. We are always looking!

Two, obtaining jobs and curating new relationships has always been a steeper slope for us due to our location. One of our main goals has always been to bring bigger work into Denver and we are challenged by staying in front of clients when we are not right down the street. With this is a challenge of perception in regards to our skill set and ability to perform a job. Many times we are showing potential clients our demo reel of work completed in the past. This work is judged, at some level, on what we have done, rather than what we could do. Our main challenge here is to move the conversation to future potentials of the next project.

Lastly, there is the challenge of the continual devaluation of our industry practices. With technology changing so rapidly, clients have been asking for more with streamlined budgets. More education needs to take place in terms of projects’ costs within realistic timelines. Every project we do must answer this question, typically skirting a fine line of profit or loss, even though the project is visually stunning. We must always find a way to make the client experience the smoothest, under budgetary constraints, all while creating the highest quality style.

SPILLT – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our company, as I have an amazing business partner, Ed Rhine is called SPILLT. We are a motion design and animation agency which focuses on all methods of progressive design in the brand, television, film and digital worlds. This essentially means everything not shot with a camera (i.e., logo animation, sports graphics, film titles, animated videos, educational and entertainment media) is in our realm. Our industry is a niche. So, what I like to say is every time you turn on your device or TV, notice how each TV show, channel, product or game has its own unique look. Notice the videos you routinely watch with those animated figures or that really cool sequence you see before your favorite HBO series. That is our industry and there are a ton of talented artists all around the globe that we are lucky to be a part of.

We specialize in a multi-style approach to high production value design and animation. We collaborate with other production studios, audio companies, advertising agencies, brands, television networks, and storytellers to craft visually engaging content on all media. This ranges from photorealistic product visualizations and visual effects all the way to character design and animation. We are known for being the first motion design company in Denver. What sets us apart is that our team puts both our creative work and our clients’ experience on level ground.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
My proudest moment as a team was realizing our passions for film titles. We really wanted to break into this amazing part of our industry. We began crafting a unique title sequence in-house first during our spare time. This led to a meeting with Netflix and, in turn, we have completed a few amazing projects with them, recently and most notably The Remastered and Dogs Series. This work can be seen on our website and on all of your screens! To see our team’s passions grow into a tangible project and then see the pride in their eyes as they watch it at home purely cannot be beaten.

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Lee J Stonehouse – www.leejstonehouse.com

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