We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Bloom a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Melissa, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I have always felt that my purpose is linked to my creativity. Throughout my childhood into young adulthood, this meant creating every chance I got, whether that was making a store-bought craft, writing stories, or developing a skill like drawing. It took many years for that drive to create and my passion for skill-building to come together with a third factor: being of service. After years working professionally in the film and animation industry, I realized that I yearned for a deeper meaning behind what I was creating, rather than creating for the sake of it or for money. It was when I turned my focus outward to what I cared about in the world that I finally understood my purpose: to utilize my creativity and the skills I’ve acquired to reform the stop-motion animation industry with eco-conscious practices and processes. I believe that following our passions is what leads to our greater life purpose. The key is not to rush it and to enjoy the life experiences along the journey because they’re what will point you in the right direction.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am the founder of The Sisters Bloom, an eco-conscious stop-motion animation studio. Our mission is to create stop-motion animated stories without harming humans or the environment by replacing standard practices that are toxic and wasteful with innovative non-toxic and eco-friendly alternatives.
A lot of people don’t think about what goes into the stop-motion process to create the characters and worlds that are so fun to watch. Throughout the years, methods have evolved to create more camera-friendly assets. Toxic and wasteful materials like styrofoam, urethane resins, epoxy glues, and synthetic paints help achieve the polished look seen in most stop-motion projects nowadays. We believe the charm of stop-motion lies in its imperfections rather than striving to make it as perfect as 3D animation is. We focus on sourcing from manufacturers and distributors who share our values, innovating our own products like natural glues and paints, and choosing materials for our projects that have a closed-loop life cycle either by recycling or composting.
The production process is the same as all other studios: pre-visualization (script, storyboards, animatic, production design), production (fabrication of sets/props/puppets, cinematography, animation), and post-production (compositing, music and sound design, editing). The difference is that every step of the process is aligned with our mission of causing no harm to humans or the environment in our creations.
We spent the better part of 2023 renovating and restoring a 1949 cinderblock warehouse in downtown Kalispell, Montana to be the new home of The Sisters Bloom. We used as many non-toxic, eco-friendly, and natural materials and methods as possible, in alignment with our studio values. We have a dedicated sound room, where we record voice overs and our Return to Nature podcast, which showcases the people and companies reforming their industries with eco-conscious values. We upgraded from 1 animation stage to 6. And we have two separate fabrication spaces for creating puppets and sets. So this is an exciting time of expansion for the studio!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Going back to the question about purpose, I truly believe that following our passions as early and as often as possible is so important. I have always had a drive to do what I love in my day-to-day. For me that has always involved creativity. I was lucky enough to have encouragement from my family to keep on a creative path. I know some people have obstacles that make it harder to prioritize their passions, but standing by my passion for creating is the main reason I am where I am today.
Second, no matter how much schooling you have or how much you study on your own, real life practical experience is the key to growing your skills and getting jobs in the animation industry. The best advice I got from a teacher in college was to get an internship as soon as possible and start leaning on the job. If I hadn’t done that it would have taken me a lot longer to form connections and actually get hired in my industry.
Lastly, always following your interests, even if it seems like you are veering off a focused course. I spent years taking workshops, classes, and courses that seemingly had nothing to do with my career. But that breadth of knowledge and the experiences I gleaned are what ultimately helped me form the idea for The Sisters Bloom and what gave me the confidence to actually go for it.
We are all such different people here to do things our own way. It’s great to get advice from people you admire or to learn how someone else accomplished their successes. But ultimately it’s important to follow your own inclinations and know that doing it your way is always going to be right, even if others tell you it’s the wrong way.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Now that the studio has a physical space in Montana, we are able to take on larger projects and hire local crew. We’ve just started an apprenticeship program to train local creatives in the art of stop-motion animation so they can learn on the job and we can nurture the creative community here rather than bringing in talent from other cities.
This industry has really been contained to main city hubs like Portland and Los Angeles, so we’re excited to grow the stop-motion community in Montana, closer to Nature! We are also focused on connecting to clients who align with our mission, as each project is an opportunity to develop more eco-conscious practices that can one day be utilized by other studios and artists.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thesistersbloom.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sistersbloomstudios/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090615978969
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-sisters-bloom/
- Other: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/return-to-nature https://www.pinterest.com/thesistersbloom/
Image Credits
Jamie Arrigo Kier Atherton
