Meet Manuel Roman

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Manuel Roman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Manuel below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Manuel with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

My work ethic came from a genuine drive and interest in the craft and to become like my various heroes. My first hero was my Dad. As a kid I would sit quietly and watch, observe him paint… I didn’t know at the time but I was basically in an apprenticeship for painting. He was always so patient with me and would answer any of my questions with the heart of a teacher. My first memories of this were probably around 5 years old. My Dad was in the 101st Airborne Division and later went to Austin Peay for Art & photography. Also my Dad being from Puerto Rico, there was always music playing… from Santana, latin jazz, salsa. He played drums so I grew up loving the energy drums and congas had especially when we would have family jams. Art & music were always a part of my life early on, but the work ethic came from applying what I learned from painting to everything else. In painting you can’t let the mistakes frustrate you. You have to be patient, you keep working the paint, even step back if you must, but come back with a free mind and see things for what they are. The drive to be as good as my dad and being allowed to make mistakes in art, knowing that you can keep going fed my dedication to get things right. He painted portraits, so the bar was pretty high, the goal was to take a tiny photo and make a realistic rendering of it. If it didn’t look like the person, we would keep painting until it did.

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 started painting signs with my dad when I was about 9 years old. As I got older my Dad got a gig painting album reproductions for Tower Records here in Nashville. It started out as maybe four 6’x6′ album covers a month to paint. But they added more signs to the building and it became around 12 signs. Some that were around 15 foot tall. I helped him and developed my painting skills doing album covers with my dad all through college. We did this for many years until digital printing became the new way of signs. This is when I went from wanting to be a painter/cartoonist to a 3D animator. Taking the techniques I learned and applying them to digital. So I studied TV production/animation, art & music at MTSU. I played bass in the jazz band and studied songwriting and classical guitar.

After graduating, I worked as an animator & storyboard artist for an advertising agency. Then I worked as a video editor at WKRN News 2. This started my Video Editor path. In a strange way, all of the different skills came together when I became a video editor. All of the art, music, technical skills, audio, video… I ended up using all of that experience when I produce and edit videos.

Having so many interests, I’ve been fortunate to work on projects that I enjoy. I’ve done work for music, wrestling, attorney ads, racing and automotive shows. Most notably was a show called Pass Time where I edited the show, created the 3D graphics and worked as the scoreboard coordinator during the 100+ episodes. I also had the pleasure of working on a show called PowerNation for nearly 6 years getting to make some of the coolest car builds look like eye candy for TV.

I have worked a lot with country music being here in Nashville. Recently I was the Senior Producer for Circle Network. I created graphics, wrote, produced & edited promos. Some of which I did the voice-overs. There I created the promos for shows Talking in Circles with Clint Black, Big Kenny’s Crank It Up Garage, Dinner Drive with Kyle Petty and Opry Live. Currently I create graphics for Opry Live and do simple voice-overs for the 5 second billboards before commercial break. So you can see my work and hear my voice randomly for 10 or 5 seconds at a time during the show. Kinda neat when you see your work during a show with someone like Garth Brooks or Carrie Underwood.

Being a creative person in Nashville, almost everyone plays music here. And there’s so many talented people. I love being around those people and have several talented friends. Stacy Hogan (Sin Shake Sin) and Denny Smith (The Great Affairs & Former) are some of the guys that I look up to and they’ve been so encouraging to get me out and play music. Before 2020, I played acoustic shows, just me and a guitar… covering my favorite 90’s & early 2000’s rock music with some classics sprinkled in. My influences are Glen Phillips, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, The Killers, Billy Joel, The Police, Genesis, Tom Petty & Bryan Adams Also played bass in a couple of bands, but then the world changed. Since then I’ve done a lot of Facebook live videos of me playing songs to keep the singing & playing chops going. I’m in the process of writing songs and will be going back out there to play some more acoustic shows, which I’m excited to get back to doing.

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 discipline & dedication to mastering your craft is key. Nothing can replace the hard work… or a saying that my friend Grant Cooley (painter & artist) & I used a lot, “the pushups”. I get that from martial arts, do all of “the pushups”. But then, as I learned from Bruce Lee, once you’ve mastered your craft, now it’s time to deconstruct it, be open minded & start to strip it down to what actually works, what is useful or what is hindering and learn for other styles to incorporate into your own personal style.

Being open minded and learning from others has been huge. If just stay in your bubble you don’t grow. But when you are open minded, you can see the beauty and art in different things, ideas, beliefs… you also get to meet different people that you wouldn’t have if you stayed closed minded. I truly believe we need more of that in this world.

If you ever think to yourself, “I’m bored”, you’re being boring. I hear this from adults all of the time. When I was I kid, if I said that, I would be directed to all of the various things that I could practice to get better at. I’ve kept that train of thought all of my life and it’s like a Pandora’s box… because the more you learn, the more you realize is still left for you to learn… and that list keeps growing. Needless to say, I’m not short of any hobbies & that’s why I’m able to do many different things.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

When my dad was overseas for the military, he bought a book on Karate. I became obsessed with the techniques and would try to practice what was in the book. My dad set a bar for me saying, if I could do these certain moves and get good at them, he would let me join a martial arts class. That positive encouragement, not pushing me into something, but nourishing my interests, inspired me to be driven and succeed out of my genuine passion and interests. This led me to getting my black belt and studying the teachings and philosophy of Bruce Lee. His book The Tao of Jeet Kune Do changed my life. It opened my mind up to being able to learn from everything, discard the useless and take what works and apply it to art, music, life and it took my work ethic to another level.

There are so many quotes from that book… “Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation.”, “If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”, “The art of Jeet Kune Do is simply to simplify”, but I love this one…

“The artless art is the art of the soul at peace, like moonlight mirrored in a deep lake. The ultimate aim of the artist is to use his daily activity to become a past master of life, and so lay hold of the art of living. Masters in all branches of art must first be masters of living, for the soul creates everything.” -Bruce Lee

There is such a wealth of knowledge in that book and I believe anyone who wants to better themselves should read it. Bruce Lee was a sage beyond his time.

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Manny Roman

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