Meet Christian Haynes

We recently connected with Christian Haynes and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Christian, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I think I get my resilience from my parents. They’ve always taught me to work my hardest at everything I did. Growing up, I was a bit of a rebellious kid and I would only put the bare minimum of effort into tasks that I was given. I at first didn’t really understand why I had to put more effort than was required into things. I think it may have been because I didn’t see the consequences of my actions and would always assume that other people would take care of my problems. But then the time came when I didn’t have anyone to fall back on and I really had to take responsibility for my own actions. That really inspired me to take my parents’ advice to heart and really apply it to my life. I always had the dream of working in the animation industry, but the choices I had been making all my life had made that difficult to achieve. After I graduated from film school, I struggled to find industry work and ended up working odd jobs in order to make a living. I wasn’t really happy with where I was in life and I soon made the decision to follow my passions. It definitely wasn’t easy, but that’s really where the resilience came in. Despite my circumstances, I always kept my goals in the front of my mind and wouldn’t let anything stop me from pursuing them. Fast forward to present day, my dream of creating a pilot episode for an animated series I created back in 2014 called “Zack In Time” is now in production with the hopes of being completed in early 2024. It has been a very difficult journey, but one that has grown me in so many ways that I never would have imagined before starting it.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am the writer, director and creator of “Zack In Time”, an upcoming independent 2D animated series. What I think is most exciting about the project is that it’s being entirely independently made. Growing up, I had the mindset that I would have to graduate college, graduate from a master’s program, earn a full time job in the animation industry and then work my way up the ladder before being able to create my own show. But as time went on and my passions grew, I just couldn’t wait for that entire process to be completed, I wanted to work on my own ideas right away. So I took brief gigs in the film industry as a production assistant for commercials or a quality control operator for home media during the day and would work on “Zack In Time” during the evenings and weekends. At first it was a struggle and I didn’t have a lot of hope that anything would come from it. But I kept my passion alive and continued to work hard on it. I met up with my friend from college Paige Powell-Revis, who worked as an animator on my senior thesis version of “Zack In Time”, and brought up the idea to her to develop the short film version into a full-length series. She immediately agreed and we were able to assemble a small crew of artists to develop official designs for the characters, props and backgrounds. It was a slow process, but over the next couple of years, we were able to onboard more artists, animators, writers, designers, actors and composers to help the project move forward. Now we have a full crew who are working hard to bring the world of “Zack In Time” to life!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think the first quality that was the most impactful on my journey is passion. Growing up, I always had a love for animation and storytelling and I would express that in various ways. As a kid, I would watch animated films and draw my own versions with my crayons and paper. I would make up my own characters and either write my own short stories about them or create my own comics. Making comics eventually led to storyboarding and storyboarding eventually lead to amateur filmmaking. I would say that another quality is hard work. Nothing comes for free especially when it comes to pursuing a competitive field like the entertainment industry where you really have to stand out from the crowd. I learned early on that you can’t put the bare minimum of effort into something and expect to be at the top of the pack. It’s a quality that I’m still working on, but looking back at how far I’ve come, I realized that I’ve gotten to where I am through hard work. The final quality I would say is perseverance. It’s easy to give up when things get too hard and there have been plenty of times that I wanted to quit pursuing my dream because of how difficult the journey became. But every time I wanted to give up, the passion I had for the project would bubble up and I couldn’t help but persevere and continue moving forward. The advice that I would give to others who are early in their journey is to find out what they really want to pursue in life and then take the necessary steps in order to achieve that goal. It will definitely be a tough road ahead, but once you take that first step, it will all be worth it!

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
I think that the number one obstacle that I’m currently facing while making “Zack In Time” is the fact that it is an entirely independent and volunteer based project. We don’t have a big studio behind us to back this project at the moment and my producer Paige and I have been paying out of our own pockets to pay for production costs. On one hand, we love the fact that we can be independent and tell the story that we want to tell without any interference. On the other hand, it makes the making of the project go a lot slower since we’re working around our crew’s schedules. What we are doing to try to overcome the challenges is that we try to stay patient and enjoy the process. It’s both of our dreams to work on an animated project and we feel that the process of working on this project has given us a little taste of what it could be like in a professional setting if the show were to get picked up by a studio or animation company. We also want this project to be a bridge for current or recently graduated students as they try to find work in the animation industry. We’ve actually had interns on the projects who have moved on to big animation studios and we’re so proud of them! The reason why Paige founded her company “Imhapie” was to give aspiring writers, designers and animators the opportunity to test their skills before heading into the workforce. With the project, we hope that we can inspire others who may think that they don’t have a way into the industry that they can prove themselves if they trust in their skills and put in the hard work to pursue their dreams!

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Luke Scribner Ashley Hladycz Rebecca Link Shea Beck

Suggest a Story: BoldJourney is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Resilience
Portraits of Resilience

Sometimes just seeing resilience can change out mindset and unlock our own resilience. That’s our

Productivity
Perspectives on Staying Creative

We’re beyond fortunate to have built a community of some of the most creative artists,

Confidence
Kicking Imposter Syndrome to the Curb

This is the year to kick the pesky imposter syndrome to the curb and move