Jumping off cliffs

I've just jacked in the day job primarily because it wasn't allowing me enough time to do stuff that matters.  Yes I'm opening myself up to the inevitable verbal assault from everyone I can think of that "in these recessive times a job is a job and a bird in the hand..." etc.
 
Sometimes I think we could all take a healthier example from birds than some hackneyed hunting analogy.  Where would those birds be if they never took the risk of throwing themselves out of the nest in their first efforts at flight?  Probably they'd end up in more hands than they'd care to!

The thing is this:  The creative industries operate on a system that economists have no model for.  My cock eyed optimism settles it's gaze on Travis Knight - stop motion animator and my current fixation.

Travis Knight is very pretty

The Will Vinton Studio (Who?) took a punt on him in the 1990s.  A boy with no credible experience in the field looking for something to do with his time after the bombing of his first album (it's not relevant so out of reverence I'll hear no more about it here)

Following the turn of the century when advertising and production projects all over the world fell through the floor, Vinton was a few frames away from going to the wall and in a moment straight out of a Hollywood fairytale, Phil Knight, Travis' father; stepped forward with the money to save it.  The ensuing changes to the board - including promoting Travis to it - ignited the rockets under Laika.

Laika, for those of you at the back, is the other stop motion production company.  One of the first to shoot in stereoscopic 3d, they did so a very long time before Aardman ever took that gamble and they have not gone unnoticed. They've traded on the reputation of 2009s outsider bet: Coraline, and poached most of the people  responsible for Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride and are looking likely to swamp The Pirates Adventure with Scientists (or "band of misfits" for the anti-intellectual market) this autumn with Paranorman.  A project that seems to have a lot of geeks like me very very excited..

Just goes to show.  There's precious little point in making long term career plans.   I expect Will Vinton had a pretty decent plan once and while he's not exactly come out of it badly.....