Ben Fryc

So Ben, you've been at Framer, I think it's like one year, Nice. ⁓

Yeah, just over a year. Started in January of 2025. It's crazy. Went by so fast.

Sweet. And I think a lot of people were like me when you started, just really excited to see you join and see where it went. And like looking back, it like was pretty epic. It looks fantastic. There's definitely from the outside, obviously felt like there's a big lift, a very sort of different vibe that's coming out of Framer. I mean, like Framer's always been like really sick at video. ⁓ I want to ask about that actually, like culturally there, but like, ⁓ Yeah, what's it been like this last year? Maybe you could kind of, know we've seen the reels and stuff like that of what the last year has been like, but what's it felt like for you and how does it fit and feel like compared to the other things you've done in your career?

It's been great. When I look back at other positions I've had, usually, I think a lot of designers can kind of speak to this, is like you usually work for a company because you need a paycheck and you hopefully you get to a company where you kind of like the thing that they do. ⁓ And when I came to Framer, it was kind of like this natural fit because I had been, you know, making my personal website, my portfolio, and then as well as the, like the knob website and other websites in Framer just for personal projects. So I already loved the product. was something that I used. ⁓ And obviously, the community loves it too. But it's awesome to work for an organization where you use and respect and like the product ⁓ that you're marketing. So it has an added effect. You're not just making a thing that you really have no emotional connection to. It's quite the shift.

And what is the video team there or the kind of the design and video team? I'd love to get a picture of it. know Andy Orsor is there, like you must work really closely with him. Who are the other people that you kind of work with on a day-to-day basis?

So the Framer team is, or at least the marketing team, is relatively small ⁓ for the impact that it has on the internet. yeah, Andy does hype videos at Framer. He was the one who actually reached out to bring me onto the team ⁓ back in late 2024. So that was cool. ⁓ But the other people on the team are ⁓ Joseph ⁓ and Justin. They were both previous colleagues of Andy at InVision, I believe. They joined and they're doing educational content, which is fantastic at Framer. They just finished building a new studio in California where it has this green screen, or not a green screen, but a video projector screen behind them. ⁓ Really innovative. It's not quite the volume that you see in the Mandalorian or whatever, but it has that same effect where it puts.

⁓ like virtual production stuff.

the background in camera, you get realistic reflections and you can control all these things with a green screen ⁓ would be more difficult and ⁓ challenging to do. So it's very little post-production work for them, so that makes it easy. ⁓ But then there's other people that I work with ⁓ that you might see on Instagram. Emily, she does great work there ⁓ making Framer look super dope. There's a ton of great content that she brings to the fore, showing other people designs. ⁓ and creating really compelling social content there. ⁓ And I also work a lot with Monica, who's our new head of brand. She had previously, she's recently got a promotion to head of brand. She does awesome work for the website and really cares a lot about ⁓ the look and feel of Framer as a whole. ⁓ like Yara, he ⁓ is ⁓ the head of marketing, work with him directly.

Mm.

⁓ on almost every project that I do. And there's other people like Paul. Paul Lapkin, joined in the past year. ⁓ Just a lot of people. A lot of really great talented teams or team members just because like Framber is not a big team so there's not a whole lot of like hierarchy when it comes to like art directors and creative directors. Like it's not that usual stack of like a team. ⁓ It's just like everyone's a sniper, they can do their work and

you

they're trusted to do that. So it's great.

Yeah. It's always felt like from the outside, really cohesive and strong. And it's interesting and like to hear that it is a small team. why do you think like coming in in, in, in your first year, like, what did it feel like to come in culturally or like design or aesthetically wise? Like, ⁓ I'm rambling a bit, but I'm just thinking like, what was it 2019? I think I remember watched my first Framer launch video, which is even Framer X. And I remember that was one of the early things I was like, wow. video can be done so well for product. And that was like my early years at Glide. It kind of super inspired me. And so video has always been super strong there. Like, do you have any idea like why it's always been super strong and, and who's behind that?

I don't know exactly the heritage of all of that video content, but I know that the team really cares about craftsmanship and everything they do, they want to make it look as good as they can. So the people they partner with are really senior, experienced, they have all of the tools that they need to get the job done. ⁓ So it's very enabling in that sense. And I think just that thought and care is why. the content's good is because the people who make it are good. ⁓ And there isn't like a rigorous guidelines that we stick to. It's more just like, how can we make this dope? Like, how can we make this just awesome? we take, right before we kick off a project, we might have like a quick notion document or something like that. But that's as far as we get. Then it's just like, all right, let's just make it.

like a lot of shared language, I guess, between you guys as well. So just take me back a little bit to like when Andy and you first started having conversations and, and what that was like, why do you think Andy brought you on? Obviously you're, you're dope at what you do, but I'm just interested like, was 3D a big part of his decision to bring you on? Like 3D is a very, very cool part of your skillset. And it's become a very, very like significant thing as far as I can see in the frame of brand.

Mm-hmm.

Was that like the primary thing or yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

So I think Andy and Joseph and Justin, to a certain extent, have experience with 3D. And they know enough to get the job done when they need to. You'll see that in some of their videos. They'll have tilting UI and maybe some simple 3D transform stuff. But they really wanted to level up what the Framer team could do from a 3D perspective. And I think they were looking around at the space and And Andy reached out to me and I was in a spot where I had been at Wealthsimple, which is a Canadian fintech company for just about two years. And while I was very happy there, it was like I was working on a product that I couldn't personally use because I'm based in the US. So it was like working for a product company where I can't even really use their product for my personal, you know, day-to-day finance work. So ⁓ it was awesome to hear like Frammer has a need.

Mm-hmm.

And it was interesting, the conversation we had was like, hey, Ben, could you do some freelance work for Framer? And I was like, you know, I really don't do any freelance work. I try to keep, you know, my work-life balance, you know, really good. And he's like, okay. And then like a couple hours later, he's like, what about you coming here full time? And I had that conversation while I was sitting in an airport going to a Wealthsimple offsite.

Mm-hmm.

So was like in the midst of traveling and I'm getting this really cool opportunity from Andy. So it was ⁓ a really appealing pitch and I'm really happy so far.

Mm-hmm. It seems like it's a, correct me if I'm wrong. It feels like a really primary like language or surface or expression for Framer. Now that like the 3D stuff that you do, does it feel like that for you? Like it's like front and center a lot.

Yes, I mean, there's a balance. At the end of the day, the things that we use the 3D stuff for are illustrations that go on the website. And they're not necessarily the focal point of ⁓ a website design, because the kind of 3D that I do is done with renders in a separate piece of software. And then those videos or images are put on the website. And they have to be formatted a certain way so that the download isn't

Yeah, of course.

Enormous when you visit a web page, so it's never like it's not like a whole screen takeover where there's like a loading bar that has to load when you go to the website so we have to think about all those things and And that's 100 % fine because I was doing the same thing when I was working at Wealthsimple ⁓ So it's kind of where I was I had this experience doing web illustration and marketing illustration ⁓ And be able to bring that expertise to Framer ⁓ The opportunities that I have to make video content that appear in ads too, like help, because sometimes those can be like the more immersive, more rich types of things. Like there's a, the spring event that we did last year with like all the grass stuff, that was like a huge challenge for me, because I hadn't done any full scale like grassy scenes. I was like learning a lot when it came to how to build that stuff. it had a really good impact for that event. So I'm really excited that for like the larger splashier things. we really put the sauce on when we're trying to make something that's impressive. For a more, I would say, not necessarily tame, but more restrained expressions that appear on the website, ⁓ those are the ones that have to be a little more clever in their use of ⁓ 3D.

Yeah. That word restraints, like a really interesting one for me because yeah, over the last three years, I s I suppose I've been learning essentially your workflow, a very similar workflow. watched your config talk the other day and I was like, right. It's so nice to be at this end of having learned all of that stuff. And it makes sense. remember like how many years ago looking ahead and being like, what is all this stuff? ⁓ so it's like really similar. So I've been working on that and actually what's been really interesting is that glide where I work, it was really wanted in

Yeah, it's a lot to learn.

people were interested in it in the design team, not the product team. And then it's become like, not necessarily a thing that we want to put front and center in our brand. And I see this in, some people play with 3D very overtly, others do it a lot more sort of with a little more restraint like you and Framer. And then other brands just like really stay away from it. Maybe you can talk a little bit to that because 3D can be a very, very powerful thing that you can just default to throwing it all. at the screen and the kitchen sink. Why do you think it's ⁓ an overused tool and what are the skills or the keys to not doing it too much? And why do brands not pick it? A lot of questions for you there, sorry.

Yeah, I think of like the different surfaces that 3D might appear in. So from a web perspective, hero illustrations are like the primary way that you can use them because they're really eye-catching. They might tell a little bit of a story because they have a metaphor ⁓ with them. There's also like places down the page that you can use them as spot illustrations. Footer illustrations we use at Framer quite often. I remember doing a lot of them at ⁓ Wealthsimple as well. But then when it comes to the product, there's this other layer of where does it make sense. For mobile apps, onboarding is a place to use them. But then adding places that bring delight to the user adds another layer of complexity. Because then you have to think, OK, what format would we use? You wouldn't be able to use an MP4, like a 4K MP4 in the app. Slowly, then you have to think about image sequences and all of this other stuff that ⁓ balloon the app's install size, ⁓ which developers are very well within reason concerned about, because you don't want a 100-megabyte, 200-megabyte app download for something that is relatively simple. So as a 3D artist, it's about picking what you can do and creating different ways to use it and showcasing them. And I think part of it, I look at other artists in the motion design space, in the 3D space, a lot of them just make ads. And that's 100 % fine. Like, I think some of the folks that you've interviewed have done that, like from Buck and who worked with like Google and Microsoft, like they're doing like these ad campaigns which are 16 by 9 video, 9 by 16 video. and they disappear on social and that might be it. That's like the only place that you might see their work is in these ads. But when you're working with like web illustration, it's evergreen to some degree. So you have to, again, be more restrained. Like it has to be like an isolated illustration or something that will complement the layout of the page. So working closely with web designers and knowing what to do and creating the right metaphors is something that there's only a handful of artists that I've been exposed to in the space that have done that kind of work. ⁓ So I think that that's probably the hardest part is like creating the right metaphor. What is the actual thing you're illustrating? Because when you're creating an ad, you can use the full frame of the video to create a render. But when you're putting stuff on a website, you're much more constrained by a lot of different factors.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I want to ask about that, about the creative process for you guys and like, and concepts and stuff like that. But just before we move away from the like web and 3D stuff, I'm just interested like, ⁓ where you see it going with things like Spline and any other tools. I know Framer, can use Spline and Framer and stuff like that. Like, do you see 3D being, do you see your work going into things like Spline in future for web or, or, or other tools?

Perhaps. I I have experimented with Spline here and there from time to time. I remember when the tool first kind of gained popularity, I had used it for a little bit just to see what is it capable of doing. How could I use it? ⁓ And for my particular use case, it just wasn't the right fit at the time. They keep adding new functionality. I know recently they added a timeline. So you can add keyframes and stuff like that. I haven't really played with that, though. The concern that I have for tools like, for real time 3D, is fidelity. Because with the tools that I use, Cinema 4D, Redshift, After Effects, the fidelity you can achieve is much, much higher than something like Spline is capable of doing at the moment. And that's just because you're throwing a huge amount of GPU time at still images that you're rendering. So there's that... I want to be able to create something that has rich, realistic materials that moves in the way that I want, when I want it to move and... I suppose if I weren't able to use Cinema 4D or Redshift anymore for whatever reason and I had to use Spline, I would be able to work within that environment, but it would also mean making sacrifices on fidelity elsewhere because it's just like you don't get the same kind of ⁓ freedoms that you get when you work with a standard 3D tool like Cinema.

So week to week in your work, is it nearly all renders from Redshift or are you working in After Effects a lot? Not just for finalizing and stuff like that, but you're actually doing 2D stuff. I know you, am I right? You've played around with Rive or you work with Rive a lot. I'd love to know just a little bit about like week to week, what you kind of use.

It's mainly cinema and Redshift. Then I do compositing and editing in After Effects. I haven't done a whole bunch. I wouldn't say I'm a great 2D After Effects guy. I can get the job done, but I'm not doing kinetic type all the time or doing really crazy stuff in After Effects. Although, I can follow a tutorial pretty good. yeah, it's mainly cinema 4D After Effects.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm.

Redshift ⁓ for all that stuff.

Cool. So yeah, maybe I can ask a little bit more about like the creative process, because this is always a really interesting topic area, especially for people who are in sort of full-time teams, as opposed to like freelancers necessarily. I'd love to know a little bit about how you guys work on projects, because some of the stuff that comes out often feels very distilled. Like there's a very strong concept in many of the things that you've done. Like the thing that you talked about in your config talk about the wealth simple hero thing, it's just like very clear. Probably took a lot of time to like get to that point, a lot of like dead ends. conceptually, like, and you, I think have spoken a lot about, a little bit about bringing motion in at the beginning. So, and I've, I've experienced projects where like motion video comes in towards the end of something and that, there's a kind of lack there. So maybe you could just step back and talk about that. Like, what have you learned over your time with different companies about the right creative process for you or a good way of working on these kinds of projects and what's it like at Framer these days?

So in the past, it's all a bit about communication, about what are your ideas? How do you envision something coming to life? And communicating that might be mood boards, it might be written documents, it might be some look dev type renders that where you're just like, I wanted to try this. What do you guys think? ⁓ And that works well. I think at Framer, it's been more the latter of that. than in the past. Framer is a relatively small team, so there's not this huge hierarchy in different departments with different stakeholders that you have to pitch things to to get them approved. It's very much like, let's just make something cool. Ben, what are your ideas? Andy, what are your ideas? Joseph, Justin, Emily, Monica, who's got ideas? And we all of just work together on them. And we might have our own projects, so we're just in our. own worlds and trusted to do that work. So it's more clearly communicating what your plan is. And more often than not, people are just like, cool, go for it. Like, I trust you. And then you just grind away.

Yeah. And like in terms of just maybe be good to get some advice on like how that plays out over a, a big scale project that you might have to do, like one of those events or whatever. Do you start with like really low fidelity things? I think I remember reading somewhere you use Google slides or something like that. ⁓ Like maybe you can talk about that process and maybe places where you've made mistakes in the past with like, you know, wasting, wasting effort and things like that.

Mm. I remember, I'm thinking about like the spring event and how like we collaborated with that. That one, I remember there's a Slack channel that we are like, Yorn and Yada and Andy and I were in and we were, you know, throwing ideas out. And I remember putting together like a very early sketch where it was like a, a framer logo that was like a bright light shining. And there was like a grassy path kind of like extending toward. you know, the camera, and then we put it like on a webpage to see like what it looked like. And ⁓ it was cool, but it felt like it felt a little stark and empty. so like Yorn, I think used some image gen AI stuff to like fill in like a theoretical backdrop, which was like a full like grassy meadow and At first we had this night, mystical forest kind of vibe. ⁓ And that was probably the first time where we were experimenting with a larger landscape behind it. So using that as a way to expand beyond the original idea, ⁓ we just went from night to day to all these different camera angles that we were experimenting with. And the team was like, dope, dope, dope, keep pushing, try a new thing.

Mm.

And we just kept like layering on things that looked cool. And we ended up using those as interstitial shots in the spring event. Every time there was like a new ⁓ feature that was being released during that spring event, we would create a sequence that would compliment that theme. ⁓ Like there was one for like the workshop, which had like this metallic logo that was reflecting the glarec, the grassy meadow, but you didn't actually see it. There was another where I think we launched a vectors tool, ⁓ and that one had these swooping arcs of grass where it's blooming along a path, and then ultimately made the vector icon, but the grass was growing along it. So we had all these ways. The grass was the core metaphor because of the spring event, but then we used them in different ways to introduce different features, and it all fit together. But it wasn't like some, we had some master plan of like what it was gonna be. It was more just like, is this cool? Yes. Is this cool? Yes. Is this cool? No. Is this cool? Yes. So we're like, we're just like, yeah.

Hmm. Sure. Yeah, no, no, I get it. I'm, guess I'm trying to get like a flavor or a feeling for, I always try and ask these questions online and offline of like the different kind of creative vibes in teens, because I find it really interesting. ⁓ and and it feels like it's just a lot of trust, a lot of back and forth, a lot of experimentation and you, it all just kind of works. You keep up with each other at the same time, rather than having Kanban boards necessarily for everything. It's just like, you're staying in touch with what's going on. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, there's, there's some experiments I shared earlier, I think it was January, December, I don't know, we were kind of like in a lull, I didn't have like a big project to work on. And I had been meaning to learn X particles. So I got a license, and I started learning. And I would just put the used framer as like the core of like my experiments, I'll get the logo. And I started posting those experiments.

you

internally in like our our slack channels and stuff like that and they were cool enough where and they didn't really really they weren't really connected to anything that you know would Make any spoilers but the the vibe was like this is dope like we'll use something like this for future events, so Stay tuned when it comes to you know how to use those things, but I think like it's more like Like can we make some cool stuff if we have an opportunity to try something new? We try it out and hopefully we can use it down the road.

Yeah. How much are you playing around and experimenting with new things? ⁓ And like how much does, how much of that sort of makes into the stuff that you guys create or that you create generally.

think the 80-20 rule is kind of a good spot to be in where like you're working on production stuff around 80 % of the time and then 20 % of the time you're experimenting or learning or ⁓ being inspired by other people's works. And Framer's been a good spot to do that kind of thing because ⁓ the brand is always evolving and adding new things to it and there isn't like this rigid set of like...

Mm-hmm.

illustrations that we have to stick to. So it's more trying to find ways to bolt on new ideas and it'll keep extending and broadening horizons. So I think that, and the team does that too. Like you've seen like the work that Andy does with like AI video. ⁓ Just the storytelling is something that we care a lot about and there's a lot of different ways that we can do good storytelling. Like we just had a new guy join the team.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm. Mm-hmm.

Ryan, he's going to be doing a lot of video content for us, which is going to be a different way to express the Framer brand. So we're excited to see what that's going to look like.

So I want to just move and close off like, just so that everyone can understand like the different tools that you work with for the, for the 3d skillset. in your Figma talk, you really do a great overview of that. Like, am I right? It's kind of Figma, Plasticity, Cinema, Redshift. Is there anything else that plays into your, like your toolkit primarily? Oh, and After Effects for finishing. Is that pretty much the whole set?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's still like that. I haven't used Plasticity so much lately. ⁓ Framer work hasn't been one where I've needed to create really intricate type models or techy type stuff. It's enough that I can just create like if I have a vector icon, then I export it from Framer and I put it into Cinema. And I can manipulate things as I need there. ⁓

Mm-hmm. It's enough to bring it into cinema and do it there.

There has been the odd case where I might need to do something in plasticity, but it's more often just been something where I just model everything in cinema. ⁓ Although for my keyboard stuff, I use plasticity for all that just because of the precise control that it provides.

Yeah. I want to ask about that. like if you, if you step back and look at the, the, the skillset needed to do what you do with cinema and redshift, there's like a lot of parts to it. There's the modeling, there's the lighting, there's the texturing and everything else. The simulation stuff, like what part of that, as you were learning, it was like the most hard or what part still remains quite hard for you. don't know. What do you feel pretty comfortable with everything you do nowadays?

I think like some of the more technical aspects of things that I'm still not great at. ⁓ I am terrible at doing UVs. ⁓ I haven't really, I've like, I've like paint myself into a corner sometimes because I kind of work under the assumption that I don't know how to UV unwrap. So everything gets a cubic projection. Like, sorry, like it's just, that's the way it is. And it's, and it's been fine. But I haven't needed to use it. I haven't needed to learn it. So like it's not been. something that's kind of like a weak spot and then rigging. ⁓ I am not great at rigging. I remember when I first started learning 3D, I started doing like these character illustrations and I'd use cinema. What's that?

Yeah. Who was that for again? Was that for poly work?

probably work. Yeah. Yeah. And I would do like some initial modeling using like a volume builder ⁓ for like faces and things like that. But then having to model hands and then rig those hands and ⁓ man, it's a bear. ⁓ Very technical, very, ⁓ you have to you have to not be under a deadline to do a good rig, at least for me.

Yeah.

So like those are the weak aspects. It's kind of one of the reasons why I stopped doing characters is because it just felt like, wow, I could only do this. Like this is the only thing I could focus on and that would I would be a character artist and I'm not super keen on that. So I kind of was like, I'm not doing it to do portraits anymore. I'm not going to do characters anymore. And I started focusing more on like abstract or semi abstract illustrations, ⁓ which kind of led to where I am, which is I'm fine with that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. yeah, there are these like really weird, ⁓ invisible parts of video production in general that just people don't know about obviously, because they're so niche within a certain thing that often like seem, it seems kind of crazy how long these small like four second clips take to do one simple thing. And it's really hard sometimes for teams or marketing teams or clients to sort of recognize what goes into that sort of thing. Still today, especially in the age of AI where everyone's like, why is this like, Why is this still such a small thing? Like, obviously it doesn't sound like Framer has this issue, but like, have you ever worked in places or with clients where that sort of like expectation of speed versus craft kind of comes up against each other? Is there any kind of conflict there? Or has it generally been pretty smooth? Has there been a good kind of appreciation for what you do? And do you feel like you've always been given the space to do it?

Yeah, I felt like it's been pretty generous in terms of how long timelines can be. mean, early on, if we know a deadline, then we kind of scope the project to meet that deadline. So that might mean less in the 3D space and more in the 2D animation in After Effects, because it's faster to do it there. ⁓ But if we have the timeline, the runway to do it, then doing something really, really dope in cinema is going to be what I gravitate towards anyway. when it comes to like client work, I would not probably be the best person to ask because I haven't done a lot of big agency work ⁓ since I pivoted to 3D. It's been mostly one-on-one client relationships or working directly with a company such as like, like, like Polywork. I remember freelancing a little bit for them before I joined the team full time ⁓ and other you know, one off like illustration projects that I would do for friends who had apps and things like that.

Do you ever struggle with like scoping how long something is going to take?

Yes, especially when I don't know what I want to do. Like the, think that's probably the biggest unknown when you're like kicking off a project. It's like, okay, well, well, what is this going to look like? ⁓ What are we actually making? and getting the enough time to figure that out is, is critical, I think early in a project because like you might be like, yeah, I can, I can make something in three weeks or a month, but like,

Mm.

What are we going to make? What's the script? If the answer is like, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know, then you have to do that writing. You have to do all of this pre-production work before you can actually get and start making stuff in 3D or animating stuff on the timeline in After Effects. So the pre-production, think, is the hardest part to figure out. And then once you do that, it's more or less production work.

And does that look like forcing, not forcing, but like getting the team aligned around an animatic or Google slides or something like that? Like, how do you, what's the forcing function for that? Because often people can do a lot of talking and saying like, yeah, this is what we want. And then when you actually sort of start piecing things together, it sort of falls apart. Like, what, do you guys use for that?

Yeah So I found at Frambert showing something that is somewhat high fidelity but low resolution has a good impact. Even if like the all the animation stuff isn't dialed in, it's like a good enough thing for people to comment around. more often than not, people haven't provided the most feedback when it comes to the visual side. It's more like, what are the words being said? What are the words on the screen say? and they'll change the words and sometimes that affects the visual, but it's usually like, visual looks great, let's work on the message, then we go back and forth and align on the message and then we can just move forward with the rest of the piece.

So redhering times or anything like that don't ever sort of like cause you any grief.

If I had to render locally only, then yes it would. I have two boxes from Puget Systems. One has a 3090 in it and another has a 5090 in it. And I can run both if I absolutely need to, but I usually only do that for my personal work because I'm not paying for a render farm. But with Framer, we use drop and render to do cloud rendering. There are some instances where it just doesn't work for whatever reason. Like when you have to do something really complex with simulations, for whatever reason, drop and render doesn't really work great with those types of things. But for most everything else, once we get the animation dialed in and put it up on drop and render, and literally within an hour, a full sequence can be rendered and downloaded onto your machine. So it's just knowing when to press those buttons and spend the money.

Cool, yeah, maybe we could just dive a little bit deeper into Plasticity because that seems like, am I right? It was kind of your journey into doing the keyboard stuff and knob and stuff like that. Did it come out of you playing in Plasticity or was it more that you wanted to create this and then you looked around for a tool and then found Plasticity?

The way I remember it was someone in my network, think it was Adam Witcroft, I think that's his last name, but he was ⁓ one of my colleagues at Wealthsimple, like just prior to me joining, like he was there and then he left like right after I joined. And he had done the logo for Plasticity, like Plasticity's app logo. He did that in Blender or something like that. But he had talked about it and I had seen their posts. So wanted to give it a shot and I downloaded it and played around with it and I was like, this is really cool. Let's see what I can make in it. And I started making these little devices and I had been inspired by ⁓ some other artists online. I wish I had the name on the top of my head, but he works ⁓ at Analog, the company that makes the retro gaming devices. ⁓ And he makes these awesome illustrations. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

outside of there that are like these fantastical devices like a watch and like video game systems that would never work practically. But I was like, I want to make something that would be a cool device, but never make it. And that's where like the knob, you know, series came from. And when I was making them, ⁓ I had already made ⁓ that connection with Joseph Sims. And I asked him to do the sound design for these pieces. And he graciously gave me that time for free to do the sound design for those pieces. And I would make one, I would share it with him, and he'd like, here's some sound design. literally, I would not give him any notes. I would just be like, great, ship it. And we would just make those pieces together. And I'm very grateful for his work there, because it really elevated each piece way beyond. what they would be on their own. ⁓ Sound is an incredibly powerful thing and it's something that I don't have any experience in. Like I play a little bit music, like you can see a guitar behind me that has more dust on it than I'd like to admit. ⁓ But the sound design aspects of them really helped them get more reach, I think, on social media. Like it ballooned my Instagram following from like less than 10k to like now over 40k, I think. ⁓ man that series is such a fun thing to do I keep thinking I want to revisit it I want to like go back and like add like create some more more things in in that style but I haven't had the ⁓ right inspiration though like the right like mental space to do it ⁓ but that I was in like this sweet spot where like I was I was being inspired and I was making pieces at a regular interval and and Joseph had availability to help me out with those things and while I was working on it I was like

Yeah.

I should try to design a keyboard in this style. How hard could it be?

So can I just jump in? So these illustrations, or sorry, ⁓ these renders you did were just like exploring ideas from the models you're building in Plasticity. And you didn't have like, there was no end game there. was just like, hey, this looks cool. This is a style I like. And then it kind of blew up. And then you were like, what if? Yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that asking that question, what if, led to me initially designing a keyboard layout in... I modeled a key first. That's what I did. I modeled an individual key in Plasticity. And I was like, what's the general size of a key? And I looked up some dimensions and it was like 20 millimeters. And I would model something. And yeah, just kind of... put it out there in the universe and like, you know, how hard could it be? And I started working my way out. was kind of like I started with the key and I expanded out to a full layout, which I had designed in, in Figma at first. I put out like a, ⁓ a JPEG of like something, a layout that I had made in Figma with like some, drop shadow and people thought it was a real keyboard. And people were like, where's, where's the by link? And so I was like, maybe I have something here. ⁓

Mm.

So I started tinkering with it. And I started modeling things in 3D and in plasticity, of course, and bringing them into cinema and applying all my materials and things like that so that it could look more realistic. ⁓ And I just kept learning about what it takes to make a keyboard. And I reached out to a few people in the space, like Tim Van Dam, and he was like, don't do it. It's too hard. ⁓ And I was like, I'm going to do it. ⁓

You

And I'm glad I didn't take that it's too hard thing. Because if I had known it would have taken as long as it did for me to go from those initial renders to shipping the keyboard, it's awesome. I hold this thing in my hands now. It's the keyboard that I designed and Work Louder helped bring to life. They did the lion's share of the work, honestly. The engineering team over there is fantastic. And Matthea over there is... Very detail oriented. It has a lot of technical expertise that I just don't have ⁓ and would have taken me many years to learn. ⁓ So I'm grateful that they reached out and wanted to partner with me to bring it to life because ⁓ I'm super proud of that project.

must be crazy as well being someone who's so like, like immersed in the 3D world of physical objects to be holding things as well. And there is like that you've made and I hope you do so many more. Like, I just want don't want to leave the Joe Sim stuff like obviously offline, I was saying that we just worked with Joe, he's so great. And yes, very often, it's kind of like, Oh, yeah, that's great. No feedback. And there's something about what he does and a few other people I've seen, but mainly

Yes.

show is the one that I feel is like really interesting. Like it's so, ⁓ I don't know what the word is tactile or maybe this is the wrong word visceral. just like, it's, it's so connected to the motion. And I've always, like, I think I got into motion. Like when I traced back all the pieces that I've always loved and found interesting, it's always been this great relationship between music and sound and motion. Like this, I don't tend to look at things and go like, wow, unless there's a, there's a deep connection there, either in the vibe, rhythm. or the texture. ⁓ I think, yeah, honestly, like I really think that the reason those, opinion on why those videos did so well is because of Joe's sound and your like aesthetic for those things that are just working so well. ⁓ I don't know. Do you ever think about this with music and sound and like, ⁓ it feels like an underutilized thing in motion still even, but it seems like it's almost 50-50.

Yeah, I agree. Like there's the knob series and I think he had done some for like my abstraction stuff later in that series too, but like it's just elevates the work. Like good sound. mean like look at movies. Like John Williams' score for Star Wars is iconic. If you were to replace his score with anything else, it would feel wrong. to see Star Wars without John Williams. And that holds true for motion design work. ⁓ Makes sense, because we have ears to listen and eyes to see, that connects the world that's around us. having talented people at both ends will make great, great pieces.

Just before we leave the world of keyboards and stuff like that, did you notice the other day that with OpenAI, they've got this new tagline of you can just build things. And I was just looking back to the thing you've been saying, stuff like that. think your pin tweet is you can just make things or maybe it's the other way around. can't remember.

. Yeah, yeah, I have to pull it up. I think it's it's like this exact same No, I mean that that's a That's a tried and true Meme in the sense that people other people have said it. I did not coin that one. I have no idea who did but I used it anyway ⁓ Yeah, I think Just willing things into existence is such a powerful thing that we can all do ⁓

Do you think they copied you is what I'm trying to say? Do you think OpenAI copied you? Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

No one was clamoring for me to make a keyboard, but I wanted to make a keyboard. And I put it in the universe saying, like, I'm going to make this. And with that conviction and drive, I think you can make anything happen. And it's just about how willing you are to make it happen. What are you willing to sacrifice? I think there's a period of time where, so I'm like a big video game person. Like, I love playing video games. When I was working on that stuff, I didn't play any video games.

And you, I think. Mm-hmm.

I was wholly focused on making art and making design for Nob. And I think that dedication kind of like showed. Like there was nothing else in my professional work that was consuming all of my brain power.

And if you had, I mean, it takes a lot to do something like that. And it will take a lot to do any more things like that. If you had limitless resources or it was incredibly easy to ship your next product. I know you're doing like another batch of this keyboard, but like, if you could make loads of other things effortlessly, what do you think you would build? Is there anything on your backlog of ideas that you'd love to do one day?

think taking over the desk is kind of like a compelling idea. I know I've had some 3D models. Here, hold on.

Yeah

3d printer. And you know, I've, I've been playing around with like a mouse shape. Like what would that look like? And I've done a few like printed shapes. And it's so hard to make a shape that feels good, but also looks good. Like I look at the stuff from from from Logitech, for example, like, everybody uses Logitech stuff, they'll all say like, the MX master three and the MX vertical, they're

yes, awesome of this, yeah. Mm.

fantastic mouses. ⁓ But I look at the aesthetic of those devices and I think there's a lot to be desired. It's like, is this as minimalistic as it could be? Does it have the build quality that you expect? ⁓ And they're a mass market like tech company. They're made to be made in the millions of units. ⁓ The knob keyboard is not. It's expensive. I be happy to sell a million of them, but there's no way we'll ever do that. thinking about like, OK, if we want to make the best mouse we possibly can, what does that look like? I'd love to try to tackle that. There's also like the like the knob less device series that were kind of like in the back of our head. We started some initial engineering on that, but it's kind of like in the waiting to be done. know, call them because we've had other things that are taking priority at Work Louder.

Did last question about, no, was, did like going through that whole process of building the keyboard up your 3d game and your modeling game, did you have to like deliver sort of essentially assets that would then be made or did they take on that kind of modeling that they would then print? Like how did that handover work? Were you more aesthetic conceptual and then they actually like did it?

Mmm. Yeah, initially I provided the CAD files that I created in Plasticity. ⁓ But there were certain things that Plasticity didn't do at the time that they might now be able to do, but at the time they couldn't do it. Like there was no measuring tool ⁓ in Plasticity. Like you couldn't show like the measurements of a particular object. It couldn't do certain kinds of like curvatures. And the team at Work Louder had to remodel everything ⁓ in Rhino. ⁓ And now every time we need to make changes, ⁓ the workflow that I have for like going from like their models to cinema is now I will take like a Rhino file, like a step file exported from Rhino, I'll put it into Plasticity, because it imports those files fine. And then I'll export them from there using the Plasticity export tool, and then import them back into cinema. So it's like this the circular workflow where it's like, always come back to plasticity, but it's more for ⁓ importing stuff now than modeling for the keyboard project, just because like the production versions of the knob keyboard were modeled in Rhino rather than plasticity.

Interesting. Yeah, I would love to make a keyboard one day, but I don't think I have the, don't think it's like high up on my list. I have this like, I love having my hands here and never moving them. So I always try and do everything keyboard first. I love Raycast. I love like keyboard first tools. ⁓ And I've always, Yeah. Yeah. I would hold it up, but it would sort of probably pull some cameras around and stuff, but yeah, it's, it's got the stupidest name ever. It's called ultimate hacking keyboard. ⁓

Hahaha. Sweet. Well, you have like, do you have a split layout? Like a split. Hahaha

but it's a great keyboard, I love it. ⁓ Yeah, and it's got one of those like little mice, actually I can take it out actually. One of those things that, know, where you can move it around with your thumb. So that sits on your right hand and you can just go like that with it. ⁓ And it moves it around. It reminds me of actually like the first laptop I ever used, which is like a really early Mac laptop on my dad's and the Mac, it had one of these things right in the center. I think it was Mac anyway.

look, you have to send me a link. Oh, like a little trackball? Yeah, like the ThinkPad, like the little nub that you can move.

Maybe it was Mac. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ so it's kind of cool, but yeah. cool. Maybe just starting to wrap up. just wanted to ask you about the classic kind of phase that we're in right now without going into directly too much about AI and what you think of it, but more, more just like the future of motion and 3d, and how you mentioned a little bit about how you guys are using AI. know Andy's obviously using it, ⁓ in, the, kind of more marketing hype videos, like how does it. play in day to day, week to week with your work? Is it just like a brief conceptual idea and then you just sort of put it away or is it starting to encroach a bit more?

think we start at the conceptual phase still like, what are our ideas? We're not asking AI to come up with those ideas. like, I don't use it for production assets, personally. ⁓ I've used it for like backgrounds and things like that and Andy's done stuff, but not for like the actual, like it creates the piece ⁓ wholly without input. ⁓ ⁓ Yeah, so that's kind of like where it fits right now. I think that the question is like where would it be in a few years when we can do all the things that I can do in cinema in an AI tool? Like what does that look like? I don't know. But like typing things into a chat box and then getting a result is not the kind of creation that I like to do. ⁓ So it's not part of the way I work.

course.

⁓ I couldn't get the results that I do right now with AI. ⁓ It's just not possible. Like there's no camera controls, there's no easing controls, you can't like create a clever illustration that loops perfectly, that has all this overlapped, you know, animation stuff that's going on. So it's, it's just not something that I need on a day to day basis.

Yeah, and like, I'm interested mainly like also in your, your hopes for where it would come into your existing workflow as well. Like not necessarily as a replacement for the whole workflow, because that's ridiculous. It's going to take a very long time to get there. But like you mentioned UV unwrapping, like presumably that would be a place where you'd love it to come in. Maybe it's already there. ⁓

Yeah, there are a few tools that I think have started to chip away at some of the more technical sides of 3D, but it's not like Gen AI. It's more like machine learning type stuff. Like RISOM UV, think is one that makes it really easy to get UVs done. But then rigging, it would seem like maybe there's a way to get rigging done with AI, but maybe not Gen AI. Again, like a machine learning type thing. ⁓ What other aspects of it might

Yeah, that keeps bringing that.

make sense maybe for like props like I don't know but but again it's like the kind of work that I do is is kind of more abstract like when when you want to create an abstract illustration but it's still like a deliberate thing that has ⁓ controllable aspects to it ⁓ the the ai tools they exist right now don't give you a lot of that it kind of like is a slot machine where you're just kind of like hoping for good result and maybe sometimes you get one maybe times

Mm-hmm.

Most times you don't.

Yeah. Yeah. Glass box versus black box. Do you use, grayscale gorilla stuff a lot in your work these days, or is it, is it that sort of more in the background? you make your own things?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I I'm not a huge texture artist myself I've definitely leaned on grayscale gorilla and the tools that they have love those guys. I had a chance to meet ⁓ Nick at Camp Mo graph a couple years ago. We had lunch. had a good conversation and Yeah, I love the team at grayscale gorilla. They've they've really helped me up up the quality of my renders and I hope a lot of 3d artists realize that it's Yeah, it might be kind of pricey to use them, like the what you get for that money is like insanely good value. Like it's like it'd so hard to cobble together that the suite of stuff that Graves Galgrilla does in your own like library. He would just take in a crazy amount of time that you would be better spent just paying the money.

So we left the topic of Joseph quite quickly. I just want to come back to him. Do you guys still work together on stuff now? Have you got any, does he ever work on stuff at Framer?

So he has done some work for Framer, but it's mostly been ⁓ work with Work Louder. So there's some upcoming stuff that we have at Work Louder that we're going to be using Joseph for. again, the collaboration is just so smooth. He's super talented, very patient, and willing to make changes if we have them. But most often, we don't need to make any changes because he just hits it right on the head. For the knob series,

Yeah.

When we were working on stuff, was just like, make something and he'll just hit it out of the park. First crack.

I still have to like, still really want to like get him on here and chat about and just learn a little bit more about his process. Cause I trained as a musician and did a lot of sound design and things like that back in the day. And then I pivoted to motion. So it's been really interesting working with someone who just is doing all the stuff that I sort of slightly vaguely hear in my head, but just doing it so amazingly and executing it. just want to learn. I'm so intrigued to learn about it. ⁓

morning. Yeah, I keep meaning to like meet up with him because he's not that far from me in that sense. I think he's in Montreal in Canada. ⁓ But funnily enough, I don't think we've ever had a conversation like face to face, like not even on Zoom or Slack or whatever. We're just always in DMs on Instagram. Like that's it. Yeah, I don't know. He could be an AI for all I know.

Mm-hmm. He's big and hairy and really scary looking, so I wouldn't. Yeah, all of us could be. Yeah, okay, cool. So 2025 was epic at Framer. 2026 has just started. I know you can't talk about features and stuff like that, but like, yeah, maybe you can just tell us how you're feeling about Framer and this year and how you're feeling about what's cooking and what you're working on. yeah, vague question to end on.

So yeah, I mean, it's been a not that long into 2026 now, but like it was awesome to see a bunch of billboards pop up around San Francisco during the Super Bowl. ⁓ I was able to create the illustrations that are on those billboards and ⁓ super dope to see those. There's some ad campaign stuff that's connected to that. That'll be going out ⁓ in the coming weeks. ⁓ And then We have events coming up. got the Framer Awards coming up. We have new features in the pipeline. So be on the lookout.

Thanks so much, been great connecting. I appreciate your time.

Yeah, thanks Jack.