Turning Fan Art into a $30,000 Animation Project

A seven year journey that eventually turned into a dream project with a friend from New Zealand.

Working with Friends

An early animation collaboration between Latham and Kirk

In 2014 I was playing a video game called Rocket League with my friend and animator named Latham Arnott.

For any of you that don’t know, Rocket League is basically soccer with rocket powered cars. It’s got a huge following, and is big in the Esports community. Some of the prizes for players go up into the hundreds of thousands!

Latham and I met in 2011 through a website called Dribbble where we chatted and collaborated on some personal animations for fun.

Around this time, we had been working together professionally as a team on client projects. We had just finished up a large animation campaign for Welch’s Fruit Snacks (seen above).

Trying to get Hired

Posted to Dribbble in 2012. One of Latham and my first collabs

At this time, Latham and I would share a lot of personal animation we’d do together, and then get an email from a brand asking to work together based on what we had shared. For instance, we had been hired about 4 times based off this one gif of a bicyclist we made together.

So with that in mind, I pitched the idea to Latham of making a simple animated loop of one of our favorite cars from the game Rocket League; driving and flying up to hit the ball.

Latham was enthused, but purely for the joy of animation. I, on the other hand, had high expectations that if we made this, we’d catch the attention of Psyonix (the developers of the game) and they’d hire us.

Naive? Maybe. Hopeful is the word I like to use.

Big Fish Small Pond

We planned a bit, but I basically just drew the “Octane” car and some assets and kicked it over to Latham to rig up and make a fun, bouncy, playful animation. Overall, the process was simple. Here’s a few images of that process but it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

But here’s the thing, there wasn’t a lot of people making fan art of Rocket League yet. If you compared it to super popular franchises like Super Mario or Zelda, there’s hardly anyone making artwork for Rocket League. So it’s a bit easier to be seen. I guess it summarizes to “big fish in a small pond”. There wasn’t a ton of people searching Rocket League, but when they did, they’d find us.

Disappointing Results

Ouch!

The results were… well, I think we got about 200 views on Vimeo. And probably 50 likes on a dribbble post.

I think we met Latham’s expectations, he had fun. And for me, it was disappointing. Mind you, I was younger with a bigger ego back then. I thought we should have the world served to us. It was probably a healthy humbling experience to be met with no results for a while.

But hey, we had fun during the process, so what more could we ask for? It was sort of a pipe dream anyway to just wave your hand and magically get work, right? 🪄

Years go by and we forget the project fully. Sometimes I get a random email from a child on Twitch or Youtube asking to use the car as their avatar, and then swearing at me when I say, “no”. 

Suddenly an Email Arrives!

Original Email

Fast forward to 2021, seven (!!!) years later, my inbox beeps.

I immediately glow with a giant grin, “I was right”. I was so excited to go to Latham and say, “I told you so!” as if some how all along, I knew 7 years later we’d get this email.

$30,000 (United States Juicy Dollars)

The crazy part of this is that not only did this client see the work, but they wanted us to do something very similar for the introduction of their Rocket League Championship (RLCS). The RLCS event is viewed by hundreds of thousands, if not millions each year as their virtual World Cup, if you will.

They asked if we could recreate a similar video to our fan art but make it a bit longer for the end credits.

I anticipated the budgets… would it be $500? Would they have maybe more, $2,000?

Nope! They had.. tens of thousands. They had enough to allow us to take a full thorough stab at the work and give it all the attention, love, and detail it deserved. Albeit on a tight deadline!

So, Where’s the Animation?

Here we are with the final results. We made two shirts, a desk mat, and two animations. If you want to see the full case study with process breakdown, there’s a link below. Stylistically, the client gave us a lot of freedom and Latham and I got to link back up after a few years of not working together to reunite around a game we love.

Planting Seeds

I talk about this situation often to students or people new to freelancing.

I once heard Andy J Pizza say something along the lines of “you have to plant seeds” – you don’t know when they’re going to yield results, or if they ever will, but you have to plant them early and wait patiently.

It may have been manifestation, or it may have been much more practical where eventually, at some point, an art director is going to search “Rocket League” on Behance. And when the timing works out, we will be ready.

From there on, I’ve been a lot more confident that it’s worthwhile to keep making work I truly care about and want to do. That way when those seeds blossom in the future, I’ll be happy with the results.

So what are you waiting for? Go make something and wait for a decade. I’ll be rooting for you 🌱