Allow Yourself to Get to Know Your Crew Members
Corporate management and HR have often preached that it’s important not to get too personal with your personnel. Well, that model is changing, and it needs to change, especially at the “corporate” level where being cold and impersonal has long been considered an important management skill. Artists are probably the most sensitive of all human beings, and while I know some business management people would rather stick pins in their eyes than coddle an artist, well, artists need coddling sometimes, especially if we want them to produce fantastic work.

Coddling aside though (I’ll get back to that later), getting to know individual artist’s personalities and particular skill sets can help you to avoid the “one size fits all” approach to supervising/managing. One size does not fit all! No way! While some of your crew may do fine with a certain style of input and support, different folks need different strokes. This is extremely important to be aware of, when we, as supervisors, need to cast hundreds of scenes to hundreds of artists.

Knowing which artist should get which scene is really a fine art and an immeasurably important aspect of getting a big animation project done. And convincing each artist that he/she is working on the scenes that he/she should be working on is another one! Really knowing your artist’s sensibilities, life’s goals and particular propensities is key here. In some cases these specializations will leap out at you and it will be obvious. There are always certain artists whose skill sets are glaring and plain for all to see. But many an introverted artist will suffer silently while the scenes they should be working on are cast to the brash, pushy, charismatic, but not necessarily more talented artists.

The only way to avoid this is to know your crew intimately. Working on the surface, and making the obvious choices when casting animation scenes, will sometimes not uncover the gems that are concealed deep below the surface! Should we encourage these meeker individuals to stand up for themselves, and help them to develop a spine? Of course we should. Speaking up and being heard are learnable skills. But artists are artists, and some square pegs will simply never fit into the round hole. We need to keep our eye out for these unpolished gems, far beneath the surface of our animation crew. Spend time around your artists first thing in the morning, during breaks, at lunchtime or after work when people are socializing, and observe how they interact. Listen carefully to individual stories, questions and concerns, and make mental notes on what makes them tick.

Of course, in a supervisor’s role allowing one’s self to get closer to the crew can be difficult, absolutely, especially when it becomes time to let people go, of course. Nobody really likes that job (although I’ve met some chilly characters that almost looked like they did… brrrr-r-r!). But look, let’s get real. Everything within reason. There is a time and a place to keep an objective distance too, but the best managers/supervisors know how to walk the tightrope and always be honest, real and a true friend to their crewmembers.

Downplay the Hierarchy
I know, this goes against the grain of almost every corporate management handbook, which will generally emphasize the importance of maintaining the hierarchy, but this too is changing in modern corporate culture, as more and more bosses discover how harmful it is to alienate the worker bees. Laziness, lethargy, negative gossip, work stoppages and ugly uprisings are inevitable when the folks doing all the grunt work are being relegated to irrelevant slave status and disrespected by their upper management.

The best animation directors I have ever worked with (myself included) understand that even the lowliest production assistant’s opinion can be as valuable as anyone else’s. Like the old story of the mail clerk down in the bowels of the massive corporation giving the ceo the idea or inspiration to change the world and make billions in the process. Asking a lowly animation assistant what he or she thinks about how a scene is going, will elevate his/her spirits immeasurably, and can therefore be highly beneficial whether his/her input is relevant or not! But often, their insight is truly valuable and worth listening to.

The more that management distances itself hierarchically from its underlings, the more dispirited and grumpy those underlings will inevitably become. And when you are trying to produce a positive, creative, effervescent product that sparkles with life, dispirited and grumbling just doesn’t work! Warm up to the lowly workers who are in the trenches doing the grunt work. If you know what’s really best for overall productivity, the days of playing King of the Castle are over. Let your crew know that you are boss, but also let them know that you are one of them, and be a real friend. Don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and do some of the grunt work with them from time to time also. They will appreciate you more, and be a lot more willing to go the extra mile if they know you are too.

Keep Your Artistic Crew in the Loop
Artists are inquisitive, sensitive creatures. They hate having the feeling that they don’t know what’s going on around them. If too much time passes without sharing some facts about the production with your crew, they will develop a feeling that things are going on behind their backs, and are far beyond their control. To some degree, this is true, and needs to be true. Management can’t share every little detail of the production, and, out of necessity, may even need to conceal some things. If you’ve been in that position, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, take my word for it!

In any case, the idea is to share enough that the crew feels like they are informed, and a part of the “inside” of the production. They feel privileged and empowered to know a little bit about the budget, the clients, the schedule, and especially having an accurate overview of how the production is really rolling along. I have found that the more your crew knows about the inner workings of the production, the more pride they take in it, and the more likely they are to make that extra effort when the deadlines looms closer, the going gets rougher and you need everything your artists can give you. So it is a really great idea to have some sort of regular weekly or at least bi-weekly production updates, along with screenings of work in progress whenever possible.

This may sound really obvious, but it is amazing how many studios will plod along for months and months without screenings or production updates, only to be shocked and surprised to find out that their crew is feeling alienated and disenfranchised. This is a huge part of the art of communication within an animation studio, and it dovetails neatly into my next suggestion, if we consider sweetening up the production updates with a little human touch.