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| Digital Reign Interview: Jeff Schader |
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I have always been intrigued by the creativity artists display. And one of the most fascinating creative minds I have come across is that of Jeff Schader over at The Skins Factory. It seemed like a perfect fit to invite Jeff to share his story with us. I'm so glad he agreed.
Jeff ... welcome to Digital Reign.
Hi Stephen. Thanks for inviting me to participate.
First, tell us a little about yourself. How did you come up with The Skins Factory concept / what is your primary role?
I live in beautiful South Florida with my girlfriend Laura (who’s graduating Law School in May), my 5 cats and a dog named Kenzie. It’s quite a ‘zoo’ I know, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Florida is a beautiful place to live if you don't mind a little humidity and the occasional ‘extremely big wind’.
The Skins Factory concept came about when I was hired by another company back in early ‘99 to create and head-up a skinning division for them. I developed the division from the ground up, hired the artists, art directed the projects, and handled some of the business development. When the parent company self-destructed at the end of 2000, I decided to take a stab at doing it on my own. The Skins Factory was incorporated in December 2000 and I’ve been doing it ever since. I absolutely love what I do. How many people do you know can say that and truly mean it? Like any job, it can be frustrating at times but I wake up every day ecstatic to be doing what I’m doing.
My primary roles at The Skins Factory are CEO/President, Art Director and all of the Business Development. I’m a bit of control freak when it comes to my company, so I handle almost all of the ‘day-to-day’ workload myself. I rely a lot on my Creative Director, W. Bart and the rest of the design team, who are some of the best interaction designers in the business. I’d like to take a second and give some props to Roman, Lowen, Adil, Tony and Andreas, who keep the world’s desktops and software applications looking mighty good. We have a lot of artists but the ones I mentioned have been with TSF from either the beginning or close to it. Our Webmaster is another powerhouse. Gorman was one of the founders of DeskMod – one of the top skinning communities of its day.
So tell us about The Skins Factory…
We’re one of the world's premiere interface/interaction design studios. Our services include; interface design, skin development, brand and identity creation, web design and other miscellaneous graphic arts. One of the things I’m most proud about is the quality of our client list which boasts the likes of Microsoft, Motorola, Disney, Intel, Bank of America, Target, Electronic Arts, ATI, NVIDIA, Warner Bros., AT&T and many other top Fortune 500 companies and entertainment giants. I think having a client base like this after only five years is a testament to the dedication and quality we deliver every time we’re contracted to do a job.
How did you get started in graphic design and skinning?
My creative background is actually in music. I sang in bands for about 7 years, here in South Florida and in Los Angeles. After 7 years I pretty much figured out I wasn’t going to be gracing the cover of Rolling Stone magazine so I turned my creative direction elsewhere.
I’ve always gravitated to creative outlets. Even as a young kid I was busy drawing up maps and coming up with creative ways to Dungeon Master for my friends when we’d play Dungeons and Dragons. As I got older I got into wood sculpture, worked in one of the largest art supplies store (Pearl’s Art Center) and spent 2 years in the Broward Art Guild entering my work in shows.
So you can see from the start, music and art were two very passionate areas of my life. Skins brought both of those passions together in one very dynamic package. How I got interested in skins was through a friend of mine (I was waiting tables at the time in Fort Lauderdale) from work who told me all about how I could download music and play it back on my computer. The first music application I used was this little player called CD Stomper. While it had the most hideous mascot, this ugly little caveman, it also had this very cool “skinning” ability where you could download certain art files changing the way the player looked. I was introduced to Winamp shortly after, which was light years better in terms of quality and choice of skins an end-user could download. Sonique and K-Jofol were both applications that introduced quality ‘organic, freeform’ skinning that just blew me away. After that I was hooked.
As far as graphic design goes, I don’t handle the actual physical creation of our work. I do all the lay outs of the screenshots and promos on our site and I mainly function as The Skins Factory's Art Director. I work very closely with our artists. I’m the artistic troubleshooter/nit picker, pixel assassin and the overall pain in the ass. I’m the one who sends them back to the drawing board when work needs improvement or doesn’t meet client specifications. In general it is the collaboration that I feel helps them become better artists. Artists need to be directed, much like actors do. So the job function of “Art Director” to me is very important in our line of work.
Do you have any formal training in art or design, or does your creativity just come naturally?
I have zero formal training. I think formal training is important in a lot of ways but in the end you either have it or you don’t. School can’t teach you how to have an imagination; it can teach you how to harness it. Real artists aren’t created in the Art Institute; they’re created in the womb.
What three words best describe you?
I think I’m too complicated an individual to be described by three words. So I’ll just throw some out that I feel best define me: aggressive + creative + passionate + ambitious + generous + honest + abrasive + intense + loyal and a little bit phobic.
What is your most famous piece of work?
How do you define fame? Is it the most downloads or the most recognizable piece of art? Our Quicksilver Windows Media Player skin shipped with Windows Media Player 9 and I think the player was downloaded over 200 million times. The skins we’ve done for Nero are on over 160 million desktops. The skins we’ve done for Alienware skin suites are fan favorites and the Official Terminator 3 Windows Media Player skin is the second most downloaded skin on one of the biggest skin sites. I’m not so worried about which is our most famous as long as people enjoy our work. That’s the most important thing, well that and making sure our client is happy. The rest is just gravy.
Do you have a favorite piece of art, and why is it your favorite? And just for fun ... your favorite website?
I’m not sure if people will understand why I’m saying this, but I’ll say it anyway. If I had to say what one of my favorite pieces of art was that wasn’t work-related I would have to say my 2002 black BMW 530i. It is beautiful industrial design. It is creativity and elegance wrapped up in a single shape. Art isn’t just on a piece of stretched canvas or sitting in a window in Photoshop. It’s everywhere we look. Art is about releasing a feeling within you or someone else.
Who (or what) inspires you?
If I was going to be perfectly honest and forthcoming I would have to say my past inspires me the most and serves to guide my future. The arts, my parents, people and things inspire me but who I am today and where I’m going has a lot to do with where I was and who I was. From my teens to my late 20s I was definitely lost. I had no idea what I really wanted to do with my life. It’s frightening to feel like that -- to know you want to do something with your life but to not know what it is. When I started my company, I finally felt like I had found that missing piece I had been searching for. It’s why I’m so determined to succeed at it and so ambitious. When you do find what you’re searching for, hold on to it and never let go.
Can you give us a "scoop" ... something nobody else knows is coming?
The Skins Factory is going to be branching out in a big way. I can’t really say more than that at this time. I’m also getting married for the first time. But it’s not official until May 18th.
Where do you hope to be five years from now?
Professionally, going in the same direction I am now. The goal is to extend my company’s success and reach even more people with our artwork. I’d love to make The Skins Factory a household name but I don’t think we’ll be taking out any Super Bowl advertisements any time soon, so we’ll have to keep plugging away… one desktop at a time. Personally, I’ll probably have a child, so I hope the world gets its act together more by then.
Have you won any awards for your work?
I entered the Terminator 3 Skin Suite in a contest for ID Magazine, however we didn’t win. My Creative Director has won awards when he worked for another company. I consider every time we land a high-profile job (or any job for that matter) an “award”. It means that a company believes enough in our studio to trust us with the success of their project. It also means we were chosen over other companies who are in the same field we’re in and to me that’s the most important award there is.
What do you do for fun and relaxation?
Believe it or not I find working fun. That goes back to the answer I gave you when I said, “I love what I do”. Also spending time with my girlfriend, family and our pets, swimming in our pool and watching movies are things I enjoy doing. I devour movies. I also just bought the Xbox 360, which I’m having a lot of fun with. It’s a little humbling though getting spanked by kids who are half my age. Just the other night I was playing Call of Duty 2 when I got shot in the face and heard one of the players ask his friend over the Xbox Live headset “are you taking Kelly to the prom?”
Do you have any thoughts about online art commuities? Any favorites?
The art and skinning communities serve an as an important outlet for a lot of our releases. They’re also where I have found most of The Skins Factory's artists.
Skin sites like Skinz.org, Customize.org, and Deskmod.com were really where I got started downloading skins so I have to thank them -- without them I wouldn’t be where I am today. These days, I mostly frequent DeviantART. I pulled all of our work from DeviantART in protest for the way the founder, Scott Jarkoff aka Jark was treated, but I still visit to download my themes and check out what the artists are coming up with.
A trend I’ve noticed in the last few years is a lot of artists seem to spin their wheels creatively. I see long time artists who haven’t changed their style much in the last 4-5 years. Artists who opt for playing up to the fan base and download counts by releasing the ‘same old, same old’ instead of trying to reinvent themselves or to come up with something that is ‘state-of-the-art’ in style and design. I guess it’s a safe way to be but it is not something I would tolerate with our interface designers. It’s also why I don’t consider other skin studios that have copied our business model a threat. We pride ourselves on ‘raising the bar’ and in some cases ‘creating the bar’. To grow as an artist (or a business owner) you have take risks, even if you fail.
Has your work ever been stolen by a "ripper" and if so, how do you protect yourself now?
Nothing aggravates me more than our hard work getting ripped off. I typically go to the ‘artist” (I’m using the term loosely) or the site where our work is up and tell them to take it down. Sometimes I’m nice about it other times I’m not. If people knew how many hours we spend on our work only to see it butchered by some hack they might understand why I get so furious about it. What I won’t do is ‘scar’ up our work like I see a lot of icon artists do. That’s what I call those lines they place over the images. I’m not going to desecrate our work like that just to protect it. We also don’t watermark our images in our portfolio.
Ever suffer from a lack of creativity? If so, how do you get over that?
Since I mostly do the promos and screenshot layouts for the company I don’t suffer from it as much as my guys may. Sometimes I’ll get in a rut doing layouts or writing copy, but when I do, I’ll ask for some advice from one of the artists who have a fresh take on it. When you stare at something long enough you can lose perspective, which is why it is vitally important to have an Art Director or someone creative enough to help you work through it.
If after reading this article, someone wanted to contract you for new work, what is the best way to get in touch with you?
sales@theskinsfactory.com
Is there anything we haven't asked that you want to tell us about?
I’ll be happy if people haven’t fallen asleep and accidentally slam their faces on their keyboards by now. I’ll just say thanks for having me and we’ll see you on your desktops real soon. Regards.
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| Posted By: Stephen (1 May 2006)
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