Unfinished Business

If we like it or not, the keyword is ‘priorities’. It’s because none of us has unlimited time (or the resources to make up for it). Except maybe Elon Musk.

On a business level, the story isn’t that complicated. When we quote for a job, we do take various aspects in consideration, for example the overall budget of the project and the value that our work will add to it. But ultimately we calculate how much time we would need to put into it. Taking into account the project’s time frame we will find out if we can do the project with the resources we have or if we would need to outsource some work.

Either way, we will then aim for delivering the promised work in the given time frame (usually it’s already here when things can get more complicated, because in reality, both the client’s time frame and the required work are moving targets). We work on a ‘first come, first served’ base, so while any additional job might require us to re-shuffle resources, we would never allow this to jeopardise any project that is already running.

It’s getting more difficult though when it comes to speculative work. As you can guess from the coquine![design] portfolio, we do a lot of speculative work. It’s the famous ‘I was just having a shower when an idea hit me…‘ scenario. As much as we are admittedly over-creative dreamers and would always chase an idea that we feel has great potential, we still have to pay our bills like everybody else, so any project with a client attached to it has always priority.

While this almost sounds like working for clients is something like a necessary evil, it isn’t. We do enjoy the projects we accept and we do enjoy working with the client.

What we don’t enjoy is putting projects on the back burner, so we always try to find a way to juggle our resources and progress our own projects while delivering the work in time. No shortcuts, but there’s always a bit of time left after midnight…

“At least that has been the case until recently, when a new project suddenly popped into our life, that immediately took priority over pretty much everything else. Quickly we learned that this new project was starting to consume a lot of our resources and will continue to do so for many years. Strangely, it also makes us very happy”

We probably don’t need to explain what project Christian Leyk is talking about…

As a result, some of the studio’s own developments and some personal projects progressed a bit slower than we would have liked to see, though we are quite optimistic that with time, Gabriel will allow Christian and Ana more sleep at night and the two will come back to juggling family, job and creative life successfully.

“2017 should be an interesting year and I’m quite looking forward to it. It would be only natural to be a little bit disappointed that I didn’t finish putting together the Suzuki in my garage this year (I am, however, very frustrated that I still didn’t figure out why the clutch isn’t working) and that I didn’t get past the first few chapters of re-working the movie script that I’m carrying with me for years by now. Even worse, the search for the necessary funding for the three-wheeler ‘TRACE’ has so far not brought up useable results. On the other hand we made initially good progress with the 10m runabout ‘To Catch A Thief’ and I’m currently working on some new ideas inspired by Gabriel, while sketching and doodling all the things that come to my mind. Business as usual, almost… to tell you the truth, I’m not disappointed at all. Life turned upside down that day in July and since then we’re figuring it out step by step as we go. There’s only one way to describe it… it’s amazing.

Nevertheless, I do hope that I will be able to bring a bit of balance in this chaotic life and make a few things happen. Wish me luck!”