Stop-motion animator Kevin Parry: “You have to have that business sense of how to get your stuff out there, because no one else is gonna do it for you”

If there’s one thing creators can learn from Kevin Parry, besides his very obvious video wizard skills, it’s his approach to turning passion into business. 

He’s been doing stop-motion animation for 15 years now, over which time he’s built a significant follower base, but it hasn’t just been time helping him. It’s been his perseverance for testing what works on platforms and consistency for sharing content, even if it means resharing and repurposing old materials—in fact, that’s one of his newest tricks. 

In this interview, he also talks about how social media numbers don’t necessarily pay the bills, the importance of and tips for self-promotion for creators, his approach to monetizing art, and what he means when he says, “if you want something done, give it to a busy person”.

You have a BA in animation. Has your path been a straightforward journey to where you are in your career now?

No, I don't think anyone has a straightforward journey. I graduated in 2010, and social media wasn't really a thing yet. It was still in that era where it was just family and friends connecting, and it definitely wasn't like a career path. You couldn't really make money yet doing social media, except maybe early YouTube, but it was not on anyone's radar. So no, it's been a kind of windy journey to get here. I've just followed my passions and somehow ended up here.

I checked your first YouTube video, and it was posted 13 years ago. Do you remember which one it was? 

It's probably one of my student films.

It’s titled the Arctic Circle.

Yeah, that was my grad film. 

What do you think about it now? 

I still really like it. I think it's well animated, and I'm glad I leaned into a kind of retro aesthetic. I also stayed within my bounds of what I was able to do, and didn't try to go overly ambitious with it. It has that kind of angsty college student-like greed aspect to it, which I think a lot of young folks lean into, but I think it's okay. It holds up. 

I also really like storytelling, and read a lot of books about story structure. For that animation, I think I had just found a literal structure of how to tell a tragedy. And I was like, “Okay, I'll hit those beats”.

You mentioned social media and how it wasn't really around back in the day when you started, and now you have over 9.6 million people combined following you. When people look at those numbers, especially creators who are just beginning their journey, they might have this question: How did you get here? How much time did it take?

You know, it’s been 15 years now since the day I graduated, and the number of followers, as a metric, used to be more important. Now, things have shifted so wildly to algorithmic feeds, where it doesn't really matter anymore what followers are.

There used to be more of a focus on growth and getting followers, but now there isn't. At least, I don't really think about it too much. Nowadays, as I'm getting older and thinking about what I'm doing more as a business versus like getting attention on social media, it's more about the quality of subscribers and quality of followers, and how a smaller group can support me as a business versus how I can get as many followers as possible.

I’m happy to see as well that creators are starting to realise it’s better to have a core fan base who would actually purchase your work, instead of having a myriad of followers who don’t even engage with you as much.

Exactly. I've had enough viral videos where you get the tens of millions of views and you're on the news, and then the day after, you're back to square one and you're like, “Okay, I hope that happens again”.

You realize that no value comes out of that, not really. You rarely make money off of those big viral successes. It’s like you can't pay the bills with those views. 

But maybe, at the same time, those moments helped with building awareness around you and your work.

I guess. 

My big piece of advice these days for people is to think of social media as advertising and not the product. If you're thinking your videos online are the product that's supposed to make money, then you're gonna struggle quite a bit, and it'll never be enough, and you'll probably never make enough ad revenue. But if you think of it as advertising for a service or something else down the line, then it's much better. 

And, to your point, that's where those viral successes come in handy.

Do you have a social media platform that you particularly like to use? 

I gravitate toward Instagram and YouTube. I don't know if that's just a millennial thing. I just feel comfortable on Instagram. TikTok is still a bit of a mystery to me, and platforms like Snapchat, I never used. I have no concept of what Snapchat is really.

I've been thinking about how social media algorithms have been pushing video content for a while now. Do you think this was helpful for you, as your main format is video?

I was probably very early on in this because I've been doing brand deals and social media stuff for almost 10 years now. I was pretty early with video on Instagram, and it just happened to be that I was making short clips that were really shareable. So, I think all that works together really well in my favor. 

But, it was a struggle for the first couple of years when video was more long-form-YouTube-kind of stuff, and it wasn't until a handful of years into it that every platform jumped into the short-form content. That's when I really hit my stride, when I could just make one video and post it everywhere. Before that, it was all very fragmented.

In one of your newsletters, you were talking about this method or process that you do, where you create a usually short video, and then you do the behind-the-scenes process video as well, which is longer than the original one, and how that has proved to be successful. It seemed to me that maybe you cracked the code.

I'm trying. Social media is always evolving. You have to keep up with it and figure out what works for you within the context of where it's all going.

I was just talking with some creative friends of mine yesterday about this, where I think it really is a benefit to create that behind-the-scenes or how-you-made-it kind of content, which is like a secondary piece to what you're making.

I think it's pretty tough to just make the art and to let that be the thing. You have to tell a human story along with it for it to make it, as another kind of shareable piece of what you're doing. And I think that's only going to get more important as AI kind of infiltrates the media landscape, where anyone can just hit a button and make a piece of pretty art or video content.

So, making something that tells the human side of it or how you're crafting things, I think people really connect with that. 

We discuss AI with creators almost all the time because everyone seems to be affected by it on a certain level. Everybody is very concerned about how they should evolve right now. It's just a question of how. 

It’s funny how stories of how people made their art have been around forever. There's the story of painting the Sistine Chapel, and everyone talks about how Michelangelo was on his back for however many years to paint it. That story lives on. 

Those human stories of how things were made; they're so important to the art a lot of the time because I think people really connect with human ingenuity, and want to know how someone cleverly developed something or created something. 

You also create videos for brand deals. Under one of your branded videos, somebody commented, “I love your ads.” I come from marketing and must say that that is a unicorn kind of event, to receive a comment like this on an ad or branded content. And your video has a million views, too. Have you ever received negative feedback on your brand partnerships?

Not, not really. There are always people who are grumpy online, but I've always been really careful about the partnerships that I do, that I stand by them. I'm not working with companies that are shady in any way. I'm pretty picky about my partnerships, and I really care about making good video content. So I'm never just phoning it in and making something that's just about making some quick money. 

And, with the vitamin ad you mentioned, it was also done that way. It was about: How can I make a 30-second vitamin ad interesting? How can I get you to stare at a bottle of vitamins for 30 seconds and be interested? I take that challenge really seriously. 

And that one was very much about what we talked about before, about how I can mix in the behind-the-scenes with the main piece, about how it can be all-in-one so that you're kind of wowed by how clever it's being done. 

If you were a beginner and you were to start your business today, what would you do when it comes to building your brand, building awareness, marketing, all of that?

I would have a really clear idea of what product or service you're offering. Is it your goal to be hired as an animator? To be a video creator? Make that really clear on all your pages.

Make it obvious. Click here to work with me or contact me. Make it really easy for companies to work with you. That's the main business thing. And then, I think it really is a numbers game. You could just make one thing and then, you know, erupt into the world and get well known, but it’s pretty rare. You just have to keep making clips, and maybe one of them will do really well.

I think my periods of best growth and getting eyeballs on my stuff were when I had the time to make a lot of stuff, and maybe one would hit out of a few dozen.

You mentioned Instagram and YouTube as platforms you like. Would you recommend those for others as well?

Right now, my mentality is to hit every platform and to figure out the best use of every platform. Because if not, you're kind of just giving up eyeballs and distribution of your stuff. I just signed up for Substack two days ago, and I'm figuring out how to use that platform to distribute my content, and it's just another way to get seen. You have to have that business sense of how to get your stuff out there, because no one else is gonna do it for you.

Have you ever tested a platform like this, but then let it go because it didn’t work for you?

Snapchat's a good example of that. I've tried posting there. I don't really get it. I know it's big, but I scrolled through the feed on there, and I don't like what I see. So I said, “Okay, that's not for me”.

You have two courses. How did those come about? 

Both platforms reached out to me. One is Studio and the other is Motion Design School. They approached me and helped me develop those classes. 

And do you know how successful the courses are?

I think, for the Stop Motion course with Motion Design School, a few hundred have signed up. Stop motion is a niche on its own, and it tends to skew younger. So, a course for adult professionals in stop motion is pretty limited. It's a much smaller audience. The scroll-stopping videos course with Studio probably has a few thousand signups.

You also have strategy sessions for other creators and artists, where you say, “You don't need a million followers to succeed as an artist online - you just need the right strategies.” Can you expand on this idea?

It's very dependent on what they're doing and what they're struggling with. 

Having been doing this for 10 years, I see how social media used to be and the way it’s evolving now. And that’s typically the biggest pain point. A lot of people are still using social media like “I have my Instagram page and I post my pretty portfolio piece once in a while, and I don’t promote myself, and I just wait.”

A lot of my strategy sessions are kind of lighting a fire under people to promote themselves a lot more. Telling them how to not just be “Oh, I made this video, here it is, and never mention it again”. You can recycle stuff and you can repost content, and you can constantly make people aware. You can explore the platforms, you can make it easier to be hired, and be there for people to communicate with you. 

What type of creators and artists are reaching out to you for these sessions? 

I think it's a pretty wide range. A lot of them are video creators, not necessarily in animation or effects, but mostly film-industry leaning.

I have been noticing that a lot lately because that industry has been hit so hard in the last few years. A lot more people’s ears are perking up to the opportunities on social media because they can't rely on constant work in the studio system of Hollywood and feature films.

You’ve talked about self-promotion. It’s a struggle for many creators to advertise themselves. Have you had any problems with that in the past?

I was probably more timid about it at first, but I think I'm much more confident and ruthless with it now. 

The last couple of months, a big focus of mine has been to see how I can utilize my whole back catalog of work. I found 52 good videos that I really like. Now, one of my tactics is that every week I go push one and use that to advertise myself. Because there’s constantly a new audience who hasn't seen your stuff. 

Just this morning, I grabbed a video from five years ago and posted it on every platform, with a link to my newsletter. Because why not? No one has seen it in five years. It's a great video. There's no problem with me cycling through my old stuff. 

Now, I use a video to promote myself every week, and in a year, I'll just start over again in the list, and hopefully add more good stuff. And that is such a different mentality than just trying to keep up with making new videos.

I think this is another thing creators sometimes miss out on. You are free to post and share the same thing twice or even more times. 

Yeah, that's okay. And it's good business-wise because now I'm more top of mind with people who are seeing my stuff, as the guy who can make really good shareable short videos. And if anyone in that audience who has seen my old video from today is in a meeting, and their company is looking for someone to make a good short video, I might come up.

So what happens is that I've just been recycling old content, and it’s helping me book new jobs. 

How much time do you spend on keeping up with social media, like algorithm changes, hashtags, and specific platforms, to be successful? 

I've largely stopped caring about algorithm stuff because this last year I focused on building out a proper business where I have a newsletter, I have courses, and I have the one-on-one meetings.

I think once you start building out that side of a business, posting becomes easier. Because now, like I said, I posted a video today, and the goal of it was to link to my newsletter. I'm kind of like taking this Trojan horse approach, where people are now sharing this really cool video, and it just happens to be a link to my newsletter.

So my goal of posting today wasn't to get as many views as possible, or to hashtag things, or to keep up with the algorithm, but to promote my business. And so, who cares how many people see it, as long as a few of the right people see it, then that's a win.

You have several channels for monetization. What can you tell me about which one works best and how those income channels fluctuate, if so?

So it largely has to do with me being in Canada, but I can't make a lot of ad revenue on social media. So on TikTok and Instagram, I can't make any money. YouTube is really the only ad revenue platform I can use. That is somewhere under 10% of my income, and the most is the brand deals. And that largely has to do with me being an artist who can handle commercial production.

I'm primarily a production company that just happens to be entangled in the influencer world. So, because I can make ads, I'm fortunate to make commercials or ads for companies. 

I've been focusing a lot more on the businessy kind of stuff over the last year, and I've adopted a mentality of, even though my ad revenue is a small percentage, if it covers my expenses as a business, then that's really good.

I've kind of thought of the different income streams as levels of income in my company. For instance, if I can put a little ad at the bottom of my blog and it makes a dollar a day, then maybe that pays for my whole website for the year, just incrementally, versus trying to make every income stream as high as possible.

You also have a Patreon, but you don’t have paid tiers. Do you have any plans to change that?

I've never really felt comfortable, or it just hasn't worked for me to do any kind of paid membership. Largely, because I don't want to tie myself down to the demands or the monthly requirements of that, but I also really like that it’s a free, tiny community. 

In the last couple of months, I’ve struggled to keep up with it, and I’m trying to figure out how it fits into the business. My idea lately is to do a live session weekly or every other week. That might be the most beneficial. 

And do you know who the members of your Patreon are?

It's probably an equal mix of creators and fans.

I’d love to talk about your creative process a little bit. Where do you get your ideas and inspiration from for your videos? 

I was just thinking about that the other day because I was washing the dishes in my kitchen, and a video just appeared in my head, like fully formed. So I guess, that is to say, I have no idea. They just mysteriously show up in my head. 

But I did a project in 2020 on Instagram, where every month I picked an emoji. One was a box, one was a ball, one was a pumpkin. Every month, I had to make videos based on that object. That was a really cool exercise to give myself that limitation. 

I discovered that I would make five or six videos a month, and it was the fifth or sixth one that was really good, and it took the first four or five “okay” videos to get there. So that was a really cool exercise, and I think it shows that if you give yourself a limitation and time to experiment, you can come up with some really cool stuff.

Have you ever made a video that you gave up on during production and never posted? 

Oh, yeah, all the time. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't work out. 

Because of technical issues?

It's typically the technical stuff, because I'm doing effects where I have to do an invisible edit, where I'm joining two shots together, and sometimes I just can't get things to line up, or it's too ambitious. 

As an animator, I'm really picky about motion. So even if it does work, but the motion doesn't feel right, I'll scrap it. 

So, yeah, there are a lot of technical reasons why I get rid of a video.

And how do you feel when this happens? 

It's annoying, but it's not devastating at all. 

I think you have to embrace failure. For every video I make, there's always that valley in the middle where I'm like, “This is garbage. This isn't gonna work. I'll never make it. I'll never finish this video”. And then somehow, it just picks up, and I'm like, “Oh, this is amazing”. So there's that journey through every single video. 

You mentioned in one of your videos that it takes a long time to create a video, that it could be days or more. I know you have a family, and so I’m wondering how you are managing work-life balance? And do you have any tips for other creators?

Yeah, I used to have more hours in the day. I used to be able to get up at 5, and I love the early morning hours. Now, that's gone. Now, I have to get my kids up, get them to daycare, and all that, and then at 9 or 10 is when I'm getting to work. So there are fewer hours. 

But there's that old saying, “if you want something done, give it to a busy person”. So I think I'm much more precious about my work hours now, where when I'm in production, I'm like, “Okay, I need to stay focused, no distractions”.

I've also always been really good about just working essentially from 9 to 5. I never work past 5 o'clock. And nowadays it's like 4 o'clock. I stop working because I have to do the daycare pickup at the end of the day. But I've never liked working outside of the normal work hours anyway.

For me, taking the time to step away is super valuable, and probably something that I picked up on being an animator. Because in stop motion, you have to move things one frame at a time, and then five o'clock rolls around; you stop, you go home, and that frame that you left on is torturing. But, you sleep on it, and maybe sometimes you go back and you’re like “Okay, I figured it out, or I can’t wait to get back to work, and figure it out” versus if I had stayed into the night, I'd be fighting it. 

There's a lot of value in stepping back and letting your mind stew on things.

What do you think is the biggest challenge today for creators, regardless of their fields?

Online, it's probably just the sheer volume of stuff and competition. It's pretty daunting to see everything being made, and there's no shortage of video content online.

So how do you stand out in that field? And mentally, how do you juggle with that? If you just go on TikTok or Instagram, you see endless amounts of stuff that could be perceived as better than your own work. How will you ever top that? How will you compete in that field?

That's something I've had to juggle and fight with, that kind of imposter syndrome of why should my stuff stand out? So, I think that kind of mental battle is probably one of the biggest struggles. 

Yes, I hear this same sentiment a lot from other creators as well. The other thing they often mention is AI, and the third is the economy. 

All true. 

With the economy stuff, after a few years, you realize the ups and downs of it, and that when it's good, it's really good. But then in an instant, it could be quiet. You know, a pandemic can hit or a recession could be looming, and all of a sudden, you're out of work and companies aren't advertising. You do have to be smart about planning your years out, so that you can ride out those slow periods.

This is why it's important to invest in passive income channels. 

Definitely. Waiting, sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, is a bad business plan. When the industry is really good and the phone's ringing, it's great. But in those slow times, you have to have little gas pedals you can push to generate income here and there.

Find Kevin:

• Website
• Instagram
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Patreon
• Bluesky