Drawing up a growth strategy: Tulsa animator builds electronic

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jun 19, 2007 by Kirby Lee Davis

Jimmy Gramblin trained for classic pen and ink animation. While he loves such projects, his work often carries him from designing restaurant menus to trade show displays to graphic interfaces.

That wide variety reflects the blurring of design and application, said the founder and senior designer for Organi Studios. His young Tulsa company's success reflects its ability to meet those many opportunities.

"We see ourselves as an idea house," said Gramblin, whose firm employs a staff of five. "We are a group of technicals and creatives. We do not like to confine ourselves to one medium."

Since launching Organi in March 2005, Gramblin has gathered a portfolio of 40 clients ranging from the women and children's boutique Pink Daisy and the software company ExecuTime to the nonprofit wildlife conservation organization NatureWorks and Hardscape Materials. All are repeat clients, he said, with about 80 percent of the business drawn from referral.

"We have more work on our board right now, halfway through the year, than we did all last year," he said.

While many of those projects revolve around Web site programming and software design, Organi also attracts more traditional marketing and branding services. Gramblin showed an example of how the emerging Brookside area restaurant Keo hired Organi to design its business cards and menus.

Mixing mediums intrigues Gramblin, who on a creative level views them as much the same.

"Good composition is good composition," he said. "Color is color."

He admits his heart remains with traditional animation. A bachelor of fine arts in international animation from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, he studied classical animation under Sam Fleming, who worked on the original Charlie Brown animated television specials, and Barry Nelson, of George of the Jungle fame. So when Gramblin builds upon an idea, he takes the concept first to pen and paper.

"I think it has its place," he said of computer-generated 3-D animation. "But you can not replace traditional animation."

That contrasts well with the experiences of his cohort and technical director John Hope, a 3-D technician with a bachelor of fine arts in animation from the same college.

Gramblin said that flexibility in animation - the realization that animation represented design in motion - led him to start his own company.

"That's really where I saw the need," he said.

Even with 30-percent revenue growth projected for this year, Gramblin maintains a conservative business strategy. Working from 500 square feet in the Philtower, he stresses customer service as the largest reason behind his success, as reflected in Organi's strong referrals.

"In commerce today, it's either grow or die," he said. "In the next couple of years I would like to see offices in other cities, but I'm in no rush to do so. We're taking it pretty slow. We don't want to bite off more than we can chew.

"We just do good work," he said. "And give people what they pay for."