This September marks eight years since Laura Blackburn took the leap into self-employment and launched B Animated. Coincidentally, it is exactly as long as she spent in her previous employed design career. With the business busier than it has been for several years, Laura tells unLTD about taking that initial gamble, seeing her work in New York, navigating the arrival of AI and learning that success does not have to mean working every hour available.
Eight years ago, Laura Blackburn walked away from the security of full-time employment without knowing exactly what would happen next.
“I quit my full-time job and just thought, ‘I’ll just see what happens,’” she says.
She had some reassurance in the shape of a substantial six-month contract due to begin the following January. However, by the time it arrived, B Animated had already begun gathering enough momentum to change the plan.
Laura had spent those first few months building a portfolio of work she could publicly share, and quickly realised that developing B Animated itself was more valuable in the long term than committing her time to a white-label contract.
“The work that I could actually show off and promote meant a lot more at that point than the money,” she says.
That decision proved to be an important one. Eight years later, Laura has worked with hundreds of clients, created thousands of animations and seen her work appear everywhere from huge event screens to football stadiums.
One particularly memorable moment came through work for sports nutrition brand Science in Sport, when Laura created content displayed around Yankee Stadium in New York.
“I think seeing my work in New York was one of the big ones,” she says. “My work was on all the strips around Yankee Stadium. I couldn’t really warrant a trip over to go and take pictures, unfortunately, but it did happen!”
Closer to home, her work has appeared on LED advertising around football pitches and large digital screens at venues including Meadowhall and Cineworld, while she has worked on Tech Summit events since 2022. Her latest work for the Northern Tech Summit will be displayed across the Crucible’s main screen during the two-day event in Sheffield.
It is a varied portfolio built largely without a conventional marketing strategy.
“I’ve never really fully marketed,” says Laura. “I’ve done a few expos, but apart from that, people come to me through word of mouth.”
Collaboration has played a significant role. B Animated regularly works behind the scenes with video and creative agencies.
“I’m not competitive. I’d rather collaborate,” she says. “We work with video agencies and that’s a biggie.”
It means plenty of Laura’s work has been seen without B Animated’s name attached to it, including previous projects for major organisations. That makes winning those clients directly particularly satisfying, and she is currently working on sizeable animation projects for both the Police and NHS.
The workload is part of what feels like a return to form after a more challenging period for the creative industries.
“I’m busier now than I’ve probably ever been,” she says. “I’m as busy as I was in 2023, and 2023 was my big year.”
Among six major projects currently on her books are the police and NHS animations, the Northern Tech Summit and a 30-second television advert. She has also recently completed projects for Launchpad and The Business Village. As well as producing her first app animation, something she hopes to do more of in future.
But the creative landscape Laura is working in today looks markedly different to the one in which B Animated launched in 2018. AI, unsurprisingly, has become one of the biggest talking points.
Laura, who trained as a graphic designer before moving increasingly into animation, says she noticed a particular drop in graphic design enquiries as businesses experimented with generative AI.
“There has been a drop in the graphic design requests, but they’re coming back because everyone’s putting these AI posters out,” she says.
She believes audiences are becoming increasingly adept at recognising AI-generated graphics, while businesses are beginning to understand the limitations of replacing bespoke design with automated output.
Animation, she believes, remains harder to replicate.
“I don’t think it can create industry-standard animations yet,” she says “Even when it does, it won’t be bespoke. You won’t be able to go back and say, ‘I need this little part changing,’ without it changing the whole thing and creating something new again.”
That does not make Laura anti-AI. In fact, she already incorporates it into her own work when elements like AI voiceovers are requested by a client.
“You’ve got to work with it,” she says. “You’ve got to use it where it works for you.”
If technology represents one change over B Animated’s first eight years, Laura’s approach to running the company represents another.
In the early days, she admits she regularly worked days and nights, eventually pushing herself into burnout.
“I’ve burnt out a lot,” she says. “Especially in the early days of running the business, I was working day and night, who knows how many hours a week. When you burn out, it’s horrible because then you can’t do anything.”
These days, she is much more deliberate about protecting time for herself and her family. B Animated has been based at the Digital Media Centre throughout its eight years, but Laura has built a working setup that can move easily between the office and home. She is also supported by two long-standing freelancers, rather than feeling pressure to build a large permanent team.
“I’m perfectly happy using them at the moment, and they’re brilliant,” she says. “Maybe when my youngest grows a bit older, I can look at expanding more and having staff. But for now, it works perfectly.”
For Laura, that flexibility is perhaps the greatest success B Animated has given her.
“The biggest thing of anything is my kids,” she says. “I’m flexible, so I do every school run. I’m there for every appointment, every emergency, and I’ve not missed one milestone.”
She has also made more room for her own wellbeing, building the gym into her mornings and recognising that looking after herself ultimately makes her better equipped to run the business.
“It’s nice at the moment to have a full-time kind of wage, but still have the part-time flexibility,” she says. “I would find it really hard to go back to a nine-to-five job.”
Eight years after taking what she describes as a “dive off the top diving board”, there is plenty for Laura to look back on. But finding the time to appreciate it has perhaps been another lesson in itself.
“Sometimes you don’t have time to look back and think of what you’ve achieved because you’re just constantly doing it,” she says.
With B Animated busy again, major projects underway and Laura having found a working system that feels sustainable, September offers a timely opportunity to do exactly that.
