Career Growth Advice from Christine MacKay, Animation Leader | Career Tips for Women in Animation

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 47
Featuring Christine MacKay

Episode Title: #47 Career Podcast Featuring Christine MacKay, a multi-award-winning animation studio owner and author

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Christine MacKay



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Today on the show, I have a super talented and creative woman in tech joining us. Christine MacKay is an award-winning founder of the animation studio Salamandra.UK with offices in Eaton, Dundee and San Francisco. She is the author of A Destination Animation, How Smart Marketers Convey Complex Messages Memorably. Christine is a Cairns-Lyons See-It, Be-It mentor and an expert B2B animation speaker to name just a few of her many successes. Christine, thank you so much for joining us.

Christine MacKay (Guest): I'm delighted to be here. Thank you, Mary, for having me.

Mary Killelea: I wish everyone could see this because this is audio, but you have, you know, your Salamandra on the back, the animation of your company, and it looks brilliant on camera here with me. So I have the joy of seeing you face to face.

Christine MacKay: Thank you. Yeah, we've got an avatar of Sal, our lizard, and he does a little samba dance for you shortly.

Mary Killelea: They'll have to go check out your site to see that. That's awesome. Okay, so let's start with your background. How did you go from being a sales and marketing manager to owning this animation company? Let's talk to the tell the listeners about that.

Christine MacKay: Okay, well, I've always been a sort of pretty visual person. So I kind of think and even my memory is visual and although I'm multilingual, I kind of think in pictures rather than language. So and I learn better that way. I think a lot of us do. And so I traveled a lot quite a bit and through work and just exploration, what have you. And when I was working in New Zealand, I actually fell in love with animation as a medium for communication. A good friend of mine there has still has a great animation firm there. They focus more on different types of animation. But when I got back to the UK, I saw that there was a bit of a gap in using animation for business, or B2B communications, adverts, that kind of thing, explainers. And I founded Salamandra UK. I had when I was traveling, in fact, I sort of drove across Africa and batted or combi with my then boyfriend, we zigzagged across the continent, ended up in South Africa and actually started Salamandra version one there. But then we focused more on comms and design. And then I morphed it when I came back to England to just primarily animation. And we've just found that it's been a fantastic tool for business to convey those complex messages. I mean, it's such a great medium. You can talk about taboo subjects, you can be genderless, cultural-less, you can be abstract, you can describe really complex methodologies by using visuals, whether again, abstract or imagery, or even using characters. You can go back in time into the future, right inside a piece of machinery. And we approach, we work in about 18 different industries, and every industry has a different sort of style. So we can do photorealistic or 2D or 3D. We also work in AR, VR. So it's incredibly malleable. And of course, you can repurpose it in lots of different ways. So I think what's not to love.

Mary Killelea: Well, no, I think that's brilliant that you're in the B2B space, because the B2B space does have complex topics. And they're trying to, or they should be if they're doing effective marketing, it's like really, how do you simplify that to make it real and understandable and digestible for your customers? And I think animation is a great tool for that. What type of skills did you need or build in order to become so excellent in this field?

Christine MacKay: Well, actually, I myself, I'm not an animator. So, my team's got a really bunch of very creative and talented and funny folk who help us create these beautiful masterpieces. I am a producer as well CEO. So I do add in my sort of creative input and ideas and also wearing two hats, the business hat and the sort of creative hat. Having been on client side and agency side, I can kind of see both sides of the coin, so to speak. And that can be quite helpful to have a sort of almost a fresh pair of eyes. But yeah, I don't actually do the animating myself. And in a way, from a business perspective, I think that can work quite well in a small business quite often, and not always the case, but quite often you get creative folk who start their own business and are brilliant at what they do, but they may not have the business hat they need to make it a success or make it as successful as it could be.

So, I think it's quite nice to have the two in the business. And being sort of more the business person in the company, I can have that step away from creating something is very personal. It comes from inside. And that's why it's so difficult if clients have changes and stuff. That's why account management is quite good because it softens that whole sort of communication and makes sure there's less emotion involved, if that makes sense. Because I think when you create something, it comes from you. And it's important to be sensitive to that. So yeah, so I came to it from a business perspective, I guess, I've been doing a lot of sales and marketing for many years in many territories, in many countries. And so I guess I translated those skills into something that I really loved and could really sort of be passionate about. So I hope that answers your question.

Mary Killelea: Yes, absolutely. That's great. And let's talk about your successes, being the entrepreneur, a woman in tech, a leader of your company, and a mentor and your other successes, what drives you? Like, what is that force behind your passion?

Christine MacKay: I think it's a it's definitely sort of building an amazing team. And I have worked when I worked sort of agency side, I have worked well, not just as I've worked in environments that were a little bit toxic. And not very pleasant. And I always swore to myself that when I created something, that it would be an environment where there's no such thing as a stupid question. Everyone has a voice, you're promoted, or what have you on merit has nothing to do with anything else. And it's, it's a collegiate environment where people actually help each other. And to my delight, actually, one of my team members, who'd recently joined us described the team as frictionless, which was a lovely way to put it, and actually spoke volumes, because it kind of is a bit like that. It's not, people aren't sort of a territorial, or sort of secretive about their work, everyone shares stuff, we have morning meetings and evening rushes, and everyone sees what's going on and making sure that we're not don't veer from the briefing, get excited about what's being created. And there's, there's proper camaraderie, and I'm really proud of that. I think it's, we really sort of live our values, which we created together. And we sort of mentioned it every time we have sort of catch ups, which is every six weeks, one on ones, how did we live our values this month, and all that kind of stuff. I think that's what I'm kind of really, really proud of that.

And also delighting our clients and having really challenging projects, because we work as I say, in over 18 industries, and each industry has its own challenges and exciting opportunities. So it's about coming up with ways to visually get across those messages. And it can be really cool to see that coming to life and then seeing the client really excited, because they often say especially clients who've never used animation before, they said, well, we don't know, how do you know what's in my head? And I don't really know how to tackle this. And they get quite worried, but we've got quite a robust system all the way through. And to your point about the book, one of the reasons why I wrote the book is really to help people understand the process. And look under the hood a little bit and sort of show you what you should be looking for in an agency and what the steps are, and what you should consider what stars you should consider, etc, etc. And it really sort of demystifies that a little bit to help people understand. It's really for marketers and for entrepreneurs. But actually, I was very, very lucky because the chair of Animation UK very kindly was a beta reader and wrote the foreword, which I was really humbled about. And she very kindly said in the foreword that it's also an amazing book for animation students and lecturers, because often animation students think about, you know, joining the Disney's and the Pixar's. And there's a very specific style of animation for that. But in B2B animation, we use different platforms and we have much shorter, obviously, the timeframes and different challenges, just as exciting, but different. And often students aren't prepared for that or perhaps haven't trained on the right platforms, etc. So she said it'd be an invaluable book for that, which I thought was fantastic. So, so yeah, I guess that's how I get a kick out of it. It's never changing. I mean, it's ever changing rather. It's no two days are alike and I get bored very easily. So, so for me, it's great because every new day is a challenge. And there's different things to solve. We call ourselves visual problem solvers. So I guess that's what we are. We love solving problems, whether it's illustrating a mathematical, say, AI data gathering company to air traffic control, we had to do this, actually, we had a job where we were given all this data, and we had to translate that into a visual image of the flight patterns over Europe of all the planes within an hour. So that was a quite a curly one to try and work.

Mary Killelea: Well, and I'm so glad you gave me an example, because I did want to hear about some of the, you know, companies that come in and have these hard challenges, don't know where to start and how you bring them to life.

Christine MacKay: Yeah, well, I think for us, the most important thing, it's, it's not really B2B, it's H2H, it's human to human. And whatever communication you create on whatever platform, animation or otherwise, you must never forget that we're talking to each other, to other humans. We've all got hobbies and pets and challenges and partners and children or whatever, or not, and I think that often within B2B, people think, oh, we're talking to a business and we have to be always sort of strict and stiff and everything else. But actually, if you, if you engage with the human side of things, it's more memorable, it touches people more.

For example, we have a client, Artemis Fund Managers, they're a fantastic investment firm and obviously, their language is very complicated, their products are very complicated, and they talk at the whole IFA, independent financial advisor level. We're not accountants or financial experts, but they were sort of half-mind whether to go for animation or not, we convinced them that we could do it, and they were saying, well they explained the first product that we had to illustrate. It took a bit of back and forth because, you know, we have to truly understand something before creating a narrative. So we kind of got it, we got a fantastic polymath, Emma, who kind of got it, thank goodness, and then we were able to do the whole storyboard and do everything. But within that sort of serious piece, if you like, there was one bit where it talks about old age, investment in old age, what have you, and it showed a chap in a home sitting into a wheelchair, but our animators actually added a little squeak when he sat down, which just, it didn't take away from any of the seriousness of the actual story and the topic and the product, but somehow it brought back the fact that we're still human and there's a little nice touch. In fact, it was so successful that they did a whole series of animations with us, because it really worked, even though they were a little bit cautious, they didn't want it to be, you know, a lot of people think, oh animation cartoons, it's going to be cartoony. It doesn't have to be, it can be photorealistic. We do engineering animations that look like the real thing. People often wonder, is that animation, was that film? I can't work it out. So, but the animation side of thing allows you to then blow apart a piece and you can go inside it or look right through it or turn it around and do all the things that you couldn't really do or could do with great difficulty in real life. So it allows for more malleability that way.

Mary Killelea: That's fantastic. How much do you think all your travels, since it sounds like you're a world traveler or at least have been over your life, enables you to have such a unique perspective for your customer base that you think had you not had those travels? How do you think the travel has impacted your ability to be a marketer, salesperson, a business leader?

Christine MacKay: I think that's a really good question, Mary. I think obviously travel does broaden the mind and I think the more cultures and languages and environments that you surround yourself in and experience yourself, I think the more you see all the moods of different ways you can approach anything in life, whether it's the way you communicate, whether it's the way you approach business. For example, when I lived in South Africa, there were large budgets for everything and literally your imagination was the only limit. Then when we moved to New Zealand, it's a very much smaller market and you had to literally pull rabbits out of hats with very little budget. But what's really interesting about a country like New Zealand is often, because it's this perfectly formed smaller market, then a lot of big brands come there and trial new brands in that perfectly formed market to see how it does before launching it into, you know, maybe the States or Europe. And I found that fascinating.

So, yeah, so you see from, you see different approaches to marketing and communications and just different styles of even greeting or not greeting. Some countries are better at it than others. And all that I find fascinating. I think human watching is absolutely fascinating. And I think also it allows you to, in a way, be an outsider all the time. So because you're an outsider, you do see things with a fresh pair of eyes. So I guess your approach can be more left field. And speaking of left field, I'm actually left handed as well. And I think that also makes you see things, kind of mirror image in some senses, because you're having to learn everything the other way around. And I think that gives you a different perspective as well. So yeah, I highly recommend traveling. I know we can't right now, but I think it does. It's a very enriching experience. And working overseas or in different markets is very enriching too. You learn so much about how other people do it. I was speaking to somebody earlier on today who has teams all around the world, including places like Russia and Poland and Mexico. And he was saying how interesting it is over the Christmas period, all the different countries. A, whether they celebrate Christmas or not. But even if they do, their Christmas might be on a different day. It might be around New Year or it might be, Christmas Eve or all that. It's fascinating how people do their celebrations and the different creeds and the different approaches. I just talk about that all day. I mean, I love human behavior. I think it's absolutely fascinating.

Mary Killelea: I just want to talk to you so much about travel, but to your point, I want to steer this back into careers and for the women out there, because this is kind of focused on women, mainly from a career perspective. Did you look at your career with a strategy in mind, a vision in mind of building this company, knowing that you were going to go in the States, local to Eaton and Dundee? Or is it something that just kind of evolved? What advice do you have for women with strategy or building a strategy?

Christine MacKay: I think there's kind of two schools of thoughts here. One is, you know, have a plan because without it, you're rudderless, which I think is a very, very sound advice. The other school thought is if you don't have a plan, it does almost open you up to opportunities because you don't have a plan. So it's difficult to say 100% one way or the other. I think maybe a little bit of both is good. Have a plan, but be open to other opportunities. When I started Salamandra UK, it was all very exciting. I must admit, though, the first couple of years were very, very difficult, very lonely. I mean, I'd come back, I'd been expecting for 20 years traveling and working in Africa and New Zealand, and then coming back, it was from a standing start. So all my contacts were overseas. And actually, that's how I started. I started pulling in contacts overseas until I could organically grow within England and Scotland. But I'd say that my advice would be find something that you really like. It's not always evident, either. Sometimes it falls in your lap and sometimes you already have an idea. And sometimes I think you have to try things until you find what you love. But at the same time, know that you might be in the wrong seat for a while. And that's not you. You'll know it anyway. And that's okay. But try and get into something where it feels right. Because trust me, I mean, there's nothing worse than being in the wrong seat. It's awful. But then when you do find something that you are passionate about, or that you... It's about sort of finding a gap or finding something that you found didn't work.

When I started Salamandra in South Africa, what I had found was that brands would employ a PR company and a marketing company. And often they didn't really speak and they'd go their own trajectories. And it was quite, how shall I say, it wasn't joined up. And what I did is I created one agency that had both. So we had one team or the same team working on the whole thing. So that everything was joined up and it felt uniform and it felt considered, et cetera. And at the time, I think I was one of the first agencies to do that. So, I'd seen something that wasn't working and I fixed it by creating something that was helping that. I think that's one thing to see.

The other thing is if you see something that doesn't exist that you'd like to exist, then create it. It could be something really tiny. It could be even, I don't know, they don't do something that you like in a particular color. Well, go and create that in that color. It could be anything like that. It could be really tiny, but then that kind of grows. So, to your point about knowing what was going to happen with my company, I didn't have a fully rigid plan, but I just wanted to create a really lovely environment to work in. And hopefully I've done that because I just think that we spend two thirds of our lives at work. It should be fun as well as rewarding, as well as hard work. I mean, we work really, really hard, but hopefully we play hard too. And I must admit that the thing I do most at the office is laugh. And that's why I do miss the office. We're working from home at the moment. And although we still manage to laugh remotely, it's not the same. Yeah.

Mary Killelea: I love that you love to laugh at work. That's fabulous.

Christine MacKay: I think it's important, isn't it? It's nothing worse than sort of being sort of down in the dumps and dreading going to work. I can't think of anything worse. And even though it can be really, really hard work, it can just be rewarding too. And fun.

Mary Killelea: That's fantastic. Talk to me about this Cairns Lyons, see it, be it mentor.

Christine MacKay: So that was something I was asked to join. That was when it was still, everything was in person a couple of years ago. And it was to help ladies within the creative marketing agency field to step up and I suppose to think bigger, be bolder. And at the time it was also to be a sounding board for stuff that wasn't working. I mean, I heard about things like mansplaining and not getting the promotion that was deserved and not being taken seriously and all that kind of stuff. And so I use my sort of life experiences to advise on what I would do. But also sort of asking them what, I think I had three or four ladies and it was really interesting because they were from different countries and they all had very different personalities and backgrounds and jobs. So it was really cool. So, I guess it's just, another thing for me, why mentoring is so important is that I've always looked to have a mentor. And I remember years ago, I was invited to a ladies club and delighted to have been invited. And then I was on the board and I asked the head of the club if she'd be my mentor. And she, and I'll never forget this. So, she turned around and she said, no, you can learn like the rest of us. And I could not believe it. And I left the club. So I thought if this is the mentality, I want nothing to do with it. I've never forgotten that. And I never wanted to be that person. I never wanted to put that person in that situation.

And sadly, through those years, I found that men were more willing to be mentors than women, which I find heartbreaking. I think that's changed a lot now, though. There's a lot more going on in that sort of sphere. And women are much more supportive of each other. But a couple of decades ago, it wasn't that way. Women were more prepared to support men than women. And I could never quite understand that. But it was a valuable lesson because I think it changed me. And it changed my direction, how I like to lead or attempt to lead and how I like to build a team. It's funny, isn't it? Sometimes the horrible experiences are such a life lesson that they're actually a blessing.

Mary Killelea: And I think we have come a long way. And I think women are realizing that there's more than one seat at the table. So, you don't have to be so safety guarding your one seat. But I also think in some of the interviews that I've had, I've learned how important it is to have a male mentor as well as a female mentor, and not just to think one sided, because men just do have a different perspective. And I think listeners should be open to getting that male input as well as the female input from those above you who have been in there and learned lessons beforehand.

Christine MacKay: I totally agree. And some of my best mentors have been men and they somehow they have a very different approach. And one thing that men are very good at, and you can see that in politics as well, is they're very good at surrounding themselves by a support group of whatever and then also not afraid to ask. And it's one thing that us women have to learn. For some reason, we think that we need to be self-sufficient and it's wrong to ask for help, which is bonkers. But I don't know, it's something in our psyche and then we need to change but I agree with you. I think it's very important to have men and women at the table. I believe in equality and I believe that it should be 50-50 and not, unfortunately, what it is at the moment. But I also don't think it should be all women or all men. I think it should be, I think we've got both fantastic qualities for business and in life generally. And I think that I truly believe that men and women are equally important. It would be a very boring world if it was just all women, as lovely as we are.

Mary Killelea: Totally, totally agree with you. What advice do you have for people who have a passion but have a voice inside them holding them back and they want to make that a reality?

Christine MacKay: I think metaphorically and literally, don't be a wallflower. There have been too many wallflowers in the past and as beautiful wallflowers can be, we need to have a voice. We matter. Everybody matters. We're all here to make our mark one way or the other, even if it's just to, I don't know, be here and be present. It all sounds so cliché though, doesn't it? If you say, oh yeah, I believe in yourself and just go for it and all this kind of stuff. I think it's got to be one step in front of the other. You really have to kind of have a short-term, middle-term and long-term goal. So, if your long-term goal, for example, is to work for yourself, then start thinking in the small-term goal, what are the things that you like and don't like? And start making a yes and a no list and start then sort of siphoning that off so that you start getting to what you do like and what you do want and what you want to avoid. Whether it's do you want to work with people, do you want to work with locally, do you want a team, do you want solo, is there a particular industry that you like, are there some skills that are transferable that you've got, are there some skills that you need to learn? And now, I mean, with everything being online, it makes it so much easier. Of course, it makes it all on you as well, which is, God, it's hard enough, isn't it? But I think if you find something that you really fancy or you really want to do, or you want to be your own boss, the nice thing about being your own boss is work becomes your best hobby.

So it doesn't feel like work, although I have to say, and my caveat is it is incredibly stressful because you are responsible for a number of people's livelihoods. And that kind of thing keeps me awake at night and hot sweats and everything else. So, there is a lot of stress involved and you never switch off. So, you have to decide, if you're up for that, then go for it. And if you're not up for that, do something part time or join somebody else or do something with a bunch of people. It doesn't have to be just solo. And again, online, there are so many meetup groups and stuff. In fact, we run a couple of meetup groups. One is for tech and sales marketing, and the other one is for pharmaceutical marketing. And we get people from all over because we build communities, help people to discuss what worked well, what campaign really worked well, marketing and what tech works well, and case studies and things like that. Case studies are great for benchmarking what's worked. And I guess with the internet at our fingertips, there's so much stuff that you can go down rabbit holes, can't you? But you like something and you start looking into it and there's all this other stuff and don't think, oh, it's been done before. Stuff that, do it anyway. Competition's good. There's no such thing as an original idea anymore anyway. There's only refreshed old ideas, and that's okay too. You don't have to have something that's never been done before. Just do it better.

Mary Killelea: Such great advice. So really, really good advice there. When you reflect back on your career, what are you most proud of?

Christine MacKay: I'm proud of the culture that we've built in the company, to be fair. I think it's really special and I love it. And that then spills over into the relationships that have our clients, which is also really lovely. There's a sort of, I don't know, a friendliness about it, which I really like. It's professional too, but it's still, there's again, that humanness, which I really like. That's fantastic.

Mary Killelea: Okay. So now I'm going to shift into kind of more of a rapid fire section. So if you could tell your 20-year-old self anything, what would it be?

Christine MacKay: Back to that thing about whether you've got a plan or don't have a plan. I've never really had a plan. I've been a bit of a tumbleweed, but in being a tumbleweed, I've actually experienced so much and I'm incredibly blessed. I'm so lucky and I do appreciate that. I'm grateful for that every day. I mean, the experiences I've had have taught me, again, back to what I was saying, if you have a really crummy experience, it then becomes a massive lesson later or something to avoid. And it's when you look back, you go, oh my gosh, I learned so much doing that.

For example, when I traveled from Africa, one of the things that I'm still to this day, every time I have a shower and every time I lay down my bed, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for a roof over my head and hot running water, because I cannot tell you how when you have to go and walk for miles to go and collect the water in an infested river and then disinfect it. And then I perfected, I had long hair then, I perfected showering with a bottle over the top of the car and washing my hair with two liters of water. So that's how you then are grateful for first world bounty that we have. We don't even sort of necessarily appreciate it on a day-to-day basis. So I guess I'll tell my 20-year-old self, carry on doing as many experiences as you can, because I think it's great to, you know, have those stories to tell later, I suppose.

Mary Killelea: What does to be bolder mean to you?

Christine MacKay: I think it's about having a voice, knowing that you matter, and actually going for it. I think that too often we feel we're not good enough, but nobody's good enough, really. We're all the same, and everyone's doubting themselves. Everyone's got this sort of, you know, that whole imposter syndrome. You know, if Michelle Obama can have imposter syndrome, then my goodness, you know, we all certainly deserve to have it too. It's that really, isn't it? It's that we're okay. It's okay not to be absolutely brilliant. You can get there and or not, it's still okay. You still matter, and you can still make your mark.

Mary Killelea: I love that. I love that. Absolutely. So what's next? Where do you see yourself in three to five years?

Christine MacKay: Carrying on doing what we do, but working with bolder and bigger brands globally would be fantastic. We work with small companies and big companies, so it's quite varied, but I'd love to get some really chunky budgets to do something really kind of major. Often the budgets are quite tight, and we've got to sort of make do and everything else, but it'd be fantastic to have, for example, like a series of stuff that we could do ongoing. It could be really like on another level. That would be marvelous. And also to just get our reach, we've got a number of clients in the States, and we love working in the States. It's such a wonderful market. And again, it's that whole sort of anything goes. I love that. There's less cynicism in marketing there, which is fantastic. But we've got clients in the East, in Hong Kong, in the U.K., obviously all over the U.K., and some of our clients in the States and Canada we've never met, but that's the way we work nowadays, isn't it? It's cool.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. You must never sleep.

Christine MacKay: Well, we have to be kind to ourselves, too. That's one thing, actually, is to stop and because you can just go forever, as I'm sure you know, especially if you love something, you just never stop, but you do have to force yourself to have a break. One thing I learned, a tip that somebody gave me is because if you're an entrepreneur, you don't necessarily have holidays, but somebody told me at the beginning of the year, book out your holiday in your diary and know that those are the days that you'll take off and whether or not you take it. And if you have to move it, then move it. But it's in your diary. And that's the best advice I've had in a long time, because often you never give yourself any holiday and then you burn out. And that's not good for anybody.

Mary Killelea: How can someone get in touch with you, learn more about your company?

Christine MacKay: Sure. So our website is www.salamandra.uk. You can contact us at hello at salamandra.uk. You can find me on LinkedIn as well, Christine MacKay at Salamandra. You should be able to find me. And then, yeah, we've got, obviously we've got our meetup groups. If you find us on our website, you'll find the events that we run for Tech and Science and Pharma. And yeah, we'd love to hear from your listeners.

As a company, we really believe in giving back. So we support a couple of charities. They focus on homelessness in Eton and Dundee. We also support work experiences, especially when we're back in the office. We haven't really been able to do it the last couple of years, but we have students from local schools, private and government. Youngsters come in and have experience with us. We've had adults and children with disabilities. We've gone to speak at schools about animation. And it's funny actually, because when students have to decide what they're going to study and everything. And I had a couple of students saying, yeah, but I'm doing physics and I'm doing maths, I'd love to be able to do animation. I said, well, that's perfect because you need maths, you need physics, because we have the software has to do gravity. So when you're doing teardrops or raindrops, it's got to use gravity and you don't necessarily have to draw. You can do accounting and animation or marketing or, you know, all these kinds of things. And they're, oh, really, that's really exciting. And so it's about sort of enthusing youngsters and obviously businesses in the sort of versatility of animation. It's a marvellous industry. And I think now that we are so digital and so, and are not from remote, I think it's a fantastic medium for so many things, for education, for obviously entertainment, and for business to get their messages across. We do things like, we animate presentations and we do hybrid digital conferences with either 3D auditoriums that are made up or, or we can actually do various screens in situ as well. So it makes, it makes business still reach their audiences, even if they can't physically.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much for being on the show and sharing your talents and stories with everyone. I really, really appreciate it.

Christine MacKay: Oh, thank you very much, Mary. I've really enjoyed it. You've made it so easy. Thank you.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number two, little b, bolder.com.