This week Hugh Hancock, film-maker, story-teller and creative director of Strange Company answers our quickfire questions

What does ’creative’ mean to you ?

’Human’, I guess. The drive to create is one of the essential characteristics of being human. Everyone wants to express themselves in some way or another. That’s why ’creative’ jobs are so highly sought-after, and why popular online dating sites have forbidden the use of the word ’creative’ as an adjective for self-description. More interestingly, it also means ’playful’. We’ve really disapproved of the concept of ’play’, as a culture, for a while now - ’leisure’ or ’recreation’ has replaced it. But, because play is another essential human drive, we’ve replaced it with code-words - one of the main ones being ’creation’. Several African languages have no seperate word for ’art’ and ’play’ - essentially, the act of creation is also an act of play. And that’s one of the reasons it’s such an in-demand word, I think - we like to play, we like other people who are playful, but it has become verboten to say such a thing. (As a side-note - I don’t generally describe my profession as either an ’artist’ or a ’creative’. I normally call myself a ’storyteller’.)

What’s your best piece of business advice ?

I’ve got lots of idealistic ones. Do what you’re passionate about, ’90% of success is just showing up’, etc, etc. It’s worth noting that I’m not in this business for money, in any way, and I think a lot of people in ’creative’/’playful’ jobs feel the same way. With that in mind, and thinking brutally practically, I’d say my piece of advice would be ’try very hard to avoid spending money’. I’m coming to the end of a three-year, internally-funded animation project right now. We were able to do that, basically, because I’m a little bit obsessive about making sure our costs are as low as possible. Unless you’re absolutely certain you’re on the right path and you’re where you enjoy being, one of the best things you can do for your business - and more importantly yourself - is minimise its available risks. And one of the main elements of doing that is making damn sure you can survive on a lot less cash than you expect to have coming in. If you’re in a position where you’ve got three year’s working capital in the bank, you can afford to experiment. You can afford to take risks, and do things that might not work. And if you want to do really innovative, creative stuff that’s not dictated to you by a client, that’s where you want to be. Hence, try to avoid spending money. Of course, there’s some expenses you have to take. If you need a piece of kit, it’s more stupid to not buy it and lose lots of time than buy it and lose cash. But it’s really important to make sure that you spend a decent amount of time thinking about the alternatives rather than just blindly spending money. Can you use open-source software rather than buying it? Do you really need that upgrade, or that new company car, or that conference trip? Or would you be better, in essence, buying risk and time?

Who do you admire ?

Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity) and Peter Jackson (Lord of the- oh, hell, everyone knows who he is) pretty much top my lists. Whedon simply because he’s such a brilliant storyteller and writer, and creates characters and worlds that are so very real. He writes how I want to write. And Peter Jackson because he’s taken his low-budget, anarchic, guerilla film-making techniques, and hasn’t lost or abandoned them simply because he’s now working on enormous films. I’ve seen so many production companies and businesses in general who look down on any anarchic or alternative idea within production as being, well, so very not what’s done, don’t you know? It’s undignified. And then you’ve got Peter Jackson making initial animatics for his films using a coat on a broomhandle, for a $300million feature. And I’m sure he had plenty of people saying: "Oh, dear, no, Peter, that won’t work. You need to spend hundreds of thousands on a computer previsualisation there." He seems to have gotten to the top without losing sight of the playful aspects of his work. And that’s really cool.

What in the world could be done better ?

Almost everything. For example, copyright law and indeed most laws connected with creativity or ideas are currently a gigantic, stinking corrupt mess. 95% of the working world are at best uninterested by what they do for a living. There are thousands of trivially preventable deaths a day from easily curable illnesses and starvation. But the problem is that everything’s an interconnected system - it’s very easy to look at one aspect of any system in isolation, but that system impacts other systems, and it impacts people’s attitudes, and it impacts beliefs, and all of those interactions are what makes changing anything hard. And then you’ve got the fact that almost anything is the way it is for a reason, and any changes are likely to have short-term negative consequences, and you can really see why not as much changes as you might expect. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that change is impossible, or that there’s not a definite reason to push for it.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time ?

Hopefully, making stories by playing around, and having a lot of people enjoy them.