If you haven't been living in isolation from the world for the past few years, you've definitely heard of or seen at least one episode of the RObotzi series. Every Thursday was a real celebration in offices and homes everywhere as we all gathered in front of the computer to watch the latest episode, something like Game of Thrones.
From our admiration for these characters was born the idea to invite Ramona and Codin, the creators of RObotzi, to draw the cover of The Daily Cup and share with us more about their story. Discover in the lines below two cool, extremely friendly, creative people with a very well developed sense of humor. We chatted over coffee and found out what was the idea or impetus from the beginning, the challenges they faced, creativity, advice for young startups and about their newest project - PUNCT - a space for alternative education, where enthusiasts can learn more about the audio-visual field, directly from Ramona and Codin.
1. Hello. First, let's make the introductions. Who are the creatives behind the CreativeMonkeyz project?
Ramona Cordoș and Codin Sebastian Pop. Both with artistic backgrounds (ceramics and film directing), passionate about expression through art and animation. Founders, entrepreneurs, not-early-risers, living their love story for 10 years now, 7 of which in the company of the CM project.
2. Let's travel back in time to the beginnings of the CreativeMonkeyz project. How did it all start, what is the story of the project? What was the motivation/necessity?
The CM project started from our desire to change the world for the better! Yeeey, utopian goal ticked! When we say "the world" we mean the nearby universe - the world around us, with which we manage to come into contact. We thought about how we can do this through a project that is self-sustaining (yes, "living" from it), but at the same time accessible to everyone who is passionate about art and audio-visual - because these were and still are the areas we are closest to.
We launched the CM website with Romanian language tutorials and graphic and inspirational resources offered for free, aimed at helping young people (of all ages) who are passionate about art to improve their skills. We could do something in English for an international audience - we thought about that option too, but going by the saying "It's better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion", we decided to try to do something really good on national plan.
We're not kidding: everything we do, we do with humor. A specific humor, which was not absent from the tutorials either. Each lesson started with a comical intro, and the first episode of RObotzi appeared exactly like a tutorial intro. Right for the web buttons tutorial (hence the "Press it!"). Ramona, being a visionary and connected to the astral world, a 30th degree Grand Shadow Mason, proposed that we put that intro as a standalone episode on YouTube as well. She was the only one who thought she would "break" - and she "broke", "breaking" everything. After the pilot episode went viral, the RObotzi series became a priority. And I treated it as such. I received it with bread and salt and "got big".
With the series as the driving product for the tutorial site, we were able to combine entertainment with education and continue to do so today. Let's entertain and educate in equal measure.
3. What are the biggest challenges you have faced along the way?
In the beginning, nobody understood what we were doing. The concept of "content creator" was completely foreign in Romania in 2010. It is a challenge common to pioneering work in any field: the fight with the narrow-mindedness and narrow-mindedness of people stuck in vestigial dogmas. In short: teaching people that it is possible and otherwise is almost as difficult as inventing a new color.
There were years when I frequently repeated to multiple pairs of ears phrases like: "Yes, these cartoons are not downloaded from somewhere, we make them!" ; "No, we are not an advertising agency, we work for ourselves"; "Yes, that's what we live for, we don't work anywhere else the rest of the time."
Despite the dubious times, we still managed to have collaboration contracts with big and open-minded brands and to meet agencies with visionary people, who understood much faster that online is at the top of the pyramid and worth investing in. Then, what I earned from the collaborations I reinvested in CreativeMonkeyz.
4. What are the greatest satisfactions of your work?
I have received, over the years, various awards. We have appeared in various publications (forbes and, of course, the Olivo Coffee Roasters newspaper), we have been included in the list of innovators made by Google - New Europe 100, we have received various awards for activity, website, etc.
But the greatest satisfaction we get is when we meet our fans and hear their stories about how CreativeMonkeyz have changed their lives in some way - whether they've helped them through very difficult times or they connected them with people who shared the same kind of humor and outlook on life, whether they helped them find a way to express themselves artistically or showed them that it's not that difficult to take the plunge from creative idea to artwork. Thus, we can say that the CM project ended up influencing a lot of people for the better, and this is the thing that makes us happy the most.
5. What are your sources of inspiration? Who are your creative influences?
We get our inspiration from everything we watch, live, consume. We read a lot and watch diversified productions from various fields.
If the skills of the writer are closely related to the size of the library behind the desk, the same can be said of the content creator. You need to keep consuming content as you create. The secret is not to emulate what you see, but to assimilate, process and modify. Otherwise you will be copying and copies are cheap by definition. We put a lot of value on our personal touch, so when we like something from somewhere else, we think about how we might adapt that element of novelty to our universe. Most of the time, it happens that we come up with something completely new, which does not resemble the starting point at all.
6. Of all your projects, which one is closest to your heart and why?
For Ramona, definitely RObotzi. He loves to bring characters to life and the time he invests in animation is time he doesn't feel like passing. The satisfaction of having a room of nearly 3000 people laugh in unison at East European Comi Con during an episode airing is second to none. For Codin, things are not so stark, in the sense that he doesn't have a favorite production. His top is horizontal, so if he draws a line, it underlines all of them.
7. Who is your audience? How do you keep in touch with your fans?
We have a diverse audience. Different ages, different occupations, different social backgrounds. The vast majority is made up of individuals between the ages of 18 and 35, but we are also followed by many children and people of all ages. We produce diverse content and everyone finds a certain production that appeals to them more, but they all have in common the kind of humor specific to our productions.
We communicate with fans daily for about 3 hours on our live stream on Twitch, where we respond in real time to the community and, in addition to the worst innocent jokes, we also give them advice or suggestions. Those who discover us there and get to know us better, stay and come back because they share our vision of life and values, and when we see each other face to face at events like East European Comic Con, it's like meeting friends whom I have not seen for a long time and not with strangers. It's a nice feeling to see ourselves surrounded by thousands of friends and it serves as the best validation of our creative work.
8. What does a day in the life of CreativeMonkeyz look like? What do you like to do in your spare time?
We do something out of the ordinary: we wake up! I had mornings when I did the live matinee "La Cafea". Now we don't have anymore. We wake up around noon, make a huge cup of coffee, and sit down at our workstations. We talk about what we have to do - we do what we have to do. Ideally, we go out somewhere in the center of Cluj for lunch. If we fail, we order something and work on. In the evening we prepare for the 3 hours of streaming, and after them an episode of a series, maybe a movie and sleep. This is an ordinary day.
But what we have to do differs a lot from one period to another, sometimes even from one day to the next, we can't get bored. We are now setting up our new training space, but in parallel we are working on a series of gameplays for YouTube, new t-shirt and cap designs for the CM shop, and of course the next episode of RObotzi. This is in addition to the answers to vital emails, through which we keep in touch with collaborators, special projects, trips and the daily stream.
We also like the company of our friends, so it often happens that in our free time someone stops by, we share laughs and many glasses of conversation.
9. Tell us a little about the Punct project. What, why, where, when, how? :)
The PUNCT project is the crowning of our efforts on the educational side. We started CM with free online video tutorials, in Romanian, but for a good period of time, the entertainment component (RObotzi, MiEZ, 3lar, Piramida) dominated detachedly. However, our desire to keep the educational component of the project relevant has not decreased in intensity - it has adapted to the new context. It was like water, as Bruce Lee would say. do you know If you put water in a glass, the water takes the shape of the glass. Kind of like that. (I wrote glass, not vessel, because if you put water in the vessel, it sinks; everyone knows).
We decided to take a step towards the decline of the educational side in offline. Let's invest what we have accumulated (both financially and in terms of know-how) in a physical course space, where we can teach our way of doing things to those who want to - whether it's how we approach video editing, graphic design , animation or screenwriting. This is the POINT. A... point of education and coffee. Of course, it's not a standard lecture venue - there are no benches, no barren, oppressive and rather passion-killing atmosphere typical of a high school or college classroom.
We wanted to set up PUNCT as an artistic cafe, where small groups of a maximum of 10 students can receive the information relaxed, without a bit of stress and with the certainty that the mentor takes care of each one individually. And I almost made it. We have a superb location, in the center of Cluj, in a historic building, on Strada Iuliu Maniu and we can't wait to complete the process of putting it on... PERIOD.
We are in the stage of final details, both organizational and related to the arrangement of the space. We've been lucky with very OK partners so far: RedBull, BenQ, HyperX, Wacom, TPLink and we're in talks with a local coffee roaster :) for the coffee we'll give free to the learners.
The duration of a course will be 18 hours, divided into 2 hours per day, twice a week, for one month. The courses will be free of charge, and as soon as the new site is ready, we will start registrations.
10. (If we are still a newspaper for coffee lovers) How do you like to drink your coffee? :) How did you discover this drink? What role does it play in your life?
Until recently, we used to drink coffee with sugar. The first to renounce the white, flavor-destroying devil was Ramona. Codin followed after 8 years. It was hard, but not impossible. Now we drink our coffee plain and black, like our little creative hearts. The only allowed addition is water - we drink coffee cups, it is mandatory that they are not filled only with shots of espresso.
The coffee. We no longer know when we discovered it, but we certainly know that it plays a vital role in our current existence. Coffee-free days are rarer than calendar holidays, and we tend to honor most coffee invitations. It's an excellent conversational binder and, unlike alcohol or third-party substances, keeps the conversation going without raising or lowering its volume and intensity.
MO calls her UFO - O Zeama Neagră and, not knowing what to call her, she loves Caffee Gommosa - an espresso poured over a single meringue. FOCA knows that the plant originates from Ethiopia, and the drink from Yemen, his favorite coffee being Guillermo - two shots of hot espresso poured over two slices of lime, to which ice is sometimes added. That's him, weirder.
We like french presses.