TJ’s Animation Workshop

By Emily Daniels

Have you ever tried to describe a complicated concept or idea to someone, and the more explanation you gave, the more confusion it created? It can be downright frustrating at times when the message you are trying to convey is not understood. In some situations, it is easier to show – not tell. Studies have revealed that visual aids can improve comprehension by up to 400 percent because the brain absorbs and synthesizes visual information 60,000 times faster than by text. Mississippi State University alumnus TJ Green is here to help you communicate successfully with your audience.

Terrence “TJ” Green, Jr. is a 2020 College of Business graduate and founder of TJ’s Animation Workshop, a company he started while he was a student. He went down a few paths to get here, but with the guidance of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach (E-Center), he found his true calling – visual storytelling.

I came to Mississippi State as a 17-year-old, with aspirations of playing college basketball,” says Green. “I really wanted to be in the NBA, but my fallback plan at the time was to become a coach. I had gotten recruited by several junior colleges, but I wanted to go to an NCAA Division I school. I wanted to go to a school where I could be happy even if basketball didn’t work out for me, so I chose MSU.

With basketball on the brain, Green initially chose to major in kinesiology, but after learning he would be ineligible to walk onto the team, he ultimately switched to business administration.

“I was sad that my plans were changing, but it was actually a blessing because I still didn’t feel like I was fulfilling my life’s purpose,” he shares. “Throughout my life, I feel like I have had a business ‘sense’ – just small entrepreneurship things like selling snacks or making t-shirts. I knew I wanted to work for myself one day. Before changing my major, a friend suggested that I visit the E-Center and ask to talk to this guy named Eric Hill [Director of the E-Center]. I wasn’t sure what to talk to him about, but my friend said, ‘Just go to him, and he will help you figure it all out.’ I mentioned to Eric that I had been playing around with an idea for a social media app – The Spot – where students can find out about different events. For example, if you were a freshman and didn’t know anyone, then you could find different networking events. He helped guide that idea and hooked me up with resources and another student, Calvin Waddy, who had a similar idea.”

After learning the business process and going over different ways to test the market, Green met with Waddy to brainstorm exactly what the app would and would not do.

“Calvin ended up working on another project [Rocketing Systems, whose Buzzbassador platform’s gross merchandise value just reached $11 million], but he and Hill helped me through the foundational steps of a business and how to take all of your ideas and group them into a way that makes sense,” says Green. “I perfected my marketing pitch by going all over McCool Hall asking students what they thought about the idea, which was 100 percent ‘yes.’ And that was when I made the decision to switch to business, so I could learn more in depth about what I was doing while I was doing it. Schoolwork could help me with my business, and my business could help me with my schoolwork. Win-win.”

The City of Memphis named Green its 2022 Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Photo courtesy of Terrence Green

To build the app, Green knew he would need to enlist the help of engineering or computer science students since it required coding, so he asked the faculty to send out a mass e-mail to see if any students were interested.

“We got lots of interest from computer science students,” he shares. “The student who helped build the app was Jamie Borah. We became very close friends, and he introduced me to all the engineering stuff and was able to tell me when my ideas were or were not possible.”

Green learned from his marketing classes that if he wanted The Spot to be successful, he would really need to promote it. But since just two people were working on it, there was no way they could garner interest just by word of mouth.

“I thought, ‘If I just had a video to send out to explain it for me, that would be so much easier,’” says Green. “I couldn’t afford to have someone else make it or hire actors to be in it, so I decided I would try to make an animated video myself.”

It wasn’t his first experience working with animation. He remembered a class project he had had in high school. The teacher gave an assignment about William Shakespeare in which students could either reenact one of his plays or pretend to be a reporter interviewing the playwright.

“I ended up asking my teacher if I could make an animated video instead,” he recalls. “I don’t think that my video really had anything to do with the qualifications, but I made an A+. The teacher said the video was so entertaining and creative that she had to give me a good grade!”

After making his animated video introducing The Spot, he garnered much praise from the viewers, who found it both entertaining and informative. That is when Green realized that this could lead somewhere. If people loved his video so much, maybe he could make animated videos for other start-ups and small businesses.

“After I started making videos, I was running three businesses (two apps) plus being a student,” he says. “It was almost summer, and I was using student engineers to help with coding for The Spot. They were about to go to different cities for internships, so we didn’t make much progress. Jeffrey Rupp [Director of Outreach] in the E-Center always told me not to bite off more than I could chew. To be successful in business, you should find one great thing and really excel in it. So, I chose animation.”

Fast forward to present day. In the past six months alone, TJ’s Animation Workshop has taught animation workshops at two different Boys and Girls Clubs (Starkville and Covington, TN) and taught a digital marketing workshop at the 2nd Annual Blacks in Nonprofits Conference in Atlanta (where Green won Humanitarian of the Year in 2021). He partnered with the City of Memphis to teach a Digital Marketing workshop for small business owners and was invited to host three workshops at the San Antonio Film Festival. He is also the Vice President of the Downtown Business Networking International Group. Most recently, Green was named 2022 Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the city of Memphis.

He still finds time to create animated videos for clients, though.

“On average, I probably make about seven videos a week,” he says. “We do a lot of series videos. When I first started animation videos, I looked at them as marketing tools to attract people, but they’re really more of a communication tool. With our videos, audiences can understand and retain the information in just two minutes. Explain, educate and entertain an audience – those are absolutely an animator’s superpowers.”

With their animated videos, Green and his team aim to explain, educate and entertain.

Photo by Grace Cockrell