Jeff Rustia’s Creative Workshop.

May 18, 2009:

I woke up early because our team attended Jeff Rustia’s creative workshop.

Who is he? Well, he is a Fil-Canadian in striking distance of studying law, but the call to shock and awe led him astray to his “rightful” path. He was one of the pioneers when MTV hit Asia. Coming from an English teaching “raket” in Japan, he mailed his film reel and a 16-page magazine about him to the MTV execs to hopefully land a “creative” job in Hong Kong.

You know those MTV 5-second station ID’s you often see in the early 90’s? Those blurbs that you can see after two straight MTV’s were cued? Yep. That’s him.

When Star ditched MTV (MTV was once part of the Star Package but was booted out for a reason I don’t really know of), he was quickly absorbed to create branding for Star’s newest brainchild… Channel V. He was the man behind numerous Channel V shows, including Sigaw Manila, which was one of the first pro-Pinoy music shows to stream Asia.

After half-a-decade, he returned to his hometown (Toronto) and instead of heading to New York where he was about to accept a creative director job, he opened up a company called Front, which is tasked to create imagery for networks around the planet. The company grew and became well known and is weeks away from celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The Promax winner has had his share of works shown in various kid, movie, horror, religious, gay and lesbian channels… among others. His accounts involve Nickelodeon, HBO, APTN, Disney, MTV, and networks from Asia to Europe to the Americas and to Oceania. He is a copywriter, director, producer, 2d and 3d artist, voiceover talent and even an on cam talent.

In the talk, he gave us a bunch of words that would hopefully boost our train of thoughts in further improving our craft.

And while he was talking, I was documenting.

The documenting parts later.

(I suggest you watch the clip. Then search it online.)