Life & Work with Ryan Massiah

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Massiah.

Hi Ryan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Early Days
When I was younger, I was always fascinated with 80’s & 90’s commercials. Most fondly being inspired by Gap, Nike, and Nintendo commercials. They made an impact on me, watching them at home. I was inspired by how someone could take an inanimate object and apply an emotional connection to it. For i.e., Gap commercials would tell a love story that didn’t really focus on jeans or clothing. However, you would get casual glances and maybe some close-ups of the product. Nike commercials had me thinking I would be a more exceptional athlete during my elementary school days if I only had a pair of their shoes. Nintendo immersed me into the worlds of their games, with their unique way of speaking to their audience. Most notably for me was their 1996 ad campaign ‘Play it Loud’, which featured the grunge rock music of the Butthole Surfers, Who Was in My Room Last Night.

I was fortunate to have a mother who encouraged me in my creative journey. She was always an advocate for learning. When I was younger she purchased (with what she could afford) a 486 DX computer with both 5.25″ and 3.5″ disk drives from Sears. From that moment, I was fascinated with how computers worked. And the installing of games and online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL, using my US Robotics modem. I also purchased a lot of videogame magazines for example Game Pro, Nintendo Power, Game Informer and Next Generation, which had articles about various avenues you could get into the videogame industry. Two avenues that stood out were computer programing and 3D graphic art.

Highschool Years:
I attended St. Patrick’s high school which had an advanced computer lab where I enrolled in a computer programing class learning, Turing, QBasic, and Visual Basic, which I realized was not my path. Other classes that I took when at attended that high school was a computer graphics class using Macromedia Flash, Fireworks, Freehand, Dreamweaver, Director, 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Me and my classmates were given scanned instructional books of the various programs.

While at St. Patrick’s high school, I realized that another high school, Cardinal Carter was having a special summer school course where they had access to advanced Alias Wavefront SGI computers, the same computers used in James Cameron’s Titanic. I immediately enrolled and spent the summer learning Softimage. The learning curve for 3D at that time was harder than it is today. During that summer program, many of the students I met were quite advanced in Photoshop and that is where I leveled up my skills.

When school started back, I signed up for an internship at a graphic design studio, Caterpillar Graphics. After the first week, it was apparent to me that this is what I wanted to do as a career. What reinforced this was coming across the Toronto Star newspaper, where they would showcase once a year the best young creatives in the city. In the newspaper, I came across the work of Alex Shoukas. His work instantly resonated with me. His level of skills and emotional sense abilities was something I have never witnessed in the work of others. From then inspired me.

College Years:
In 2000, I attended George Brown College, School of Design program, where I focused on new media and corporate design. That year, my marks were not up to par. I got an awareness that I was not applying myself as much as I could have. The following semester I was focused.

Another student by the name of Victor Xavier, who was one year ahead of me, connected me with the staff in getting a job at the print lab. Which helped me with my social and software solving skills. I was able to help fellow students with their technical problems on their various school assignments. During that time, I would cold-call various graphic design studios and offer to volunteer after my classes to help out and learn from professionals who were doing what I saw myself doing in the future. This shift helped me in starting to win various graphic design awards at the college.

Job Market:
My knowledge in new media and interactive design opened up doors for me. I worked with studios and agencies that I followed during my college years. For example Blast Radius, where I managed to get one of my first jobs at the start of my career after attending an RGD Studio Crawl tour. I was one of the only people continuously asking questions about the work and history of the company. The Creative Director, Peter Jin Hong noticed my interest and got me a Jr. Interactive Designer role soon after. During my time there my skills advanced. The environment was incredibly inspiring, where I was able to foster great working habits. The team was remarkable. It was an environment where designers would jam on their personal design projects and portfolio sites after work hours. After my time at Blast Radius, I decided to go out into the industry and freelance for various agencies and studios.

Freelance Days:
In 2006, I decided to extend my scope outside Canada and applied for jobs in the US. Primarily New York and Los Angeles. After several application submissions, I was hired by LA-based studio Exoplolis. They were a unique studio creating both broadcast and digital experiences, which was extremely rare at the time. My application stood out as I knew both interactive and broadcast design. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to work outside of Canada with such a talented team. It was during my time at Expolis, where I truly fell in love with motion design. They were the first studio that I ever worked with that used Maxon C4D, which was inspiring. While in LA, I missed my friends and family and I returned back to Toronto.

In 2008, I enrolled at Seneca College for their VFX for Film & TV program, where I learned more about the VFX and motion design pipeline. On graduating from the program, I began to freelance for local tv and news networks, where I applied my skills.

While freelancing as a motion designer in Toronto, I wanted to return to the US. I applied for a Jr Designer job at Buck NY and got in with their six-monthly internship program. The experience there was similar to Exopolis in that I was surrounded by some extremely talented and designers and animators from around the globe. After my internship, I return to Toronto, as my visa had expired.

When back in Toronto, I freelanced again. In 2014, I got an opportunity to work in the US again, where I took a 3-month internship at Imaginary Forces LA. Where I was able to collaborate with another talented team and learned a lot about the craft of motion design and storytelling. There I was able to collaborate with Miguel Lee, who was one of my Creative Directors working on the Nvidia Shield project. Tosh Kodama, where we won my first pitch for FX’s movie channel FXM – Slow Moments. And Michelle Dougherty, working on the documentary movie Sonic Sea. Which won an Emmy.

After my internship, I once again returned to Toronto and freelanced before moving to Montreal in 2016. While living in Montreal, I primarily worked remotely with a Vancouver-based studio Scarab Digital creating playback screen HUDs and FUI’s for various DC/CW shows. Since then, I have been able to collaborate with many great studios including Cantina Creative working on various Hollywood movies such as Avengers: Endgame and Bloodshot just to name a few.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My career has not been a smooth path. I am not sure if I would be where I am if I had not had these experiences. I am grateful that I am a very persistent and highly motivated person.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Ryan Massiah is a Toronto-born multi-disciplinary 3D designer and art director focused on design for film, TV, games, and advertising, currently based in Los Angeles. He has 18 years of industry experience, working with agencies and studios in Canada and the United States.

A lot of my day-to-day work is freelancing / collaborating with studios to solve their creative needs. The great thing about this industry is that it is so multi-layered. I usually like to get involved with a project at the early stages of development. That can be reading a brief and offering suggestions in terms of how a treatment can be executed for final deliverables/output. My process usually consists of brainstorming ideas, then putting together mood boards, which will then help give a direction to the client of what I am thinking. Then finally jumping behind the box and creating a series of style frames using Adobe Creative Suite, Maxon C4D.

While that is what I enjoy to preferably. There are those other times where the direction of a project has already been established. And the studio just needs some additional hands to do more of the production (animating, developing assets in 3D) to get the project to the finish line.

The proudest moment for me is when I see a project that I might have pitched on getting selected. Or when you read a brief that was only on paper/pdf, come to fruition as a completed project. That never gets old!

Another proudest moment is my recent fan-made main titles project for the tv series LOST which I spent working on / off for the last several years. And really brought it to fruition, working on it every day in 2020.

What sets me apart from others, I would say is that that my perspective of the world is unique.

What’s next?
I plan to continue doing the work that I am doing. Collaborating with studios that I admire. And working on movie and tv main titles.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.ryanmassiah.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/massiah.studio/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/massiahstudio/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/massiahstudio
• Other: https://vimeo.com/ryanmassiah

Image Credits:
Vladespicable https://vladespicable.tumblr.com/