David Jeffries, founder of Mere Mortals
Nov 8 2010 by John Hill, The Journal
Mere Mortals founder David Jeffries left Newcastle for New Zealand three years ago, but a few months ago he returned to return the business to its moving image roots. John Hill finds out what brought him back, apart from a burning desire for Timothy Taylor real ale.
IT was a creeping process, but by 2007 David Jeffries was no longer in love with the company he’d created eight years earlier. He’d formed Mere Mortals with partner Graeme Love in 1999, nervous but confident that the pair’s expertise in programming and animation would establish a successful North East business.
In a flash, he was running a range of companies from Newcastle’s Hoults Estate, offering animation and production for TV and Hollywood films, web services for businesses and games for the Wii and Playstation consoles.
However, he couldn’t shake the feeling his job had changed for the worse. The 3D animator that had once thrown himself into illustrating the human body and Aesop’s Fables in a new and exciting medium was trapped in the paper prison of a successful business, bogged down with payroll, fire regulations and forms.
He says: “I was a creative individual and I was increasingly caught up with the actual running of the business.
“In hindsight I needed a business manager to take away the finance and HR side. I sat down one day and realised I was just responsible for things like HR, payroll and rent.”
At the age of 41, Jeffries used his animation background to secure residency in New Zealand. He worked part-time for a business there, and remained on the Mere Mortals board of directors.
He set up a New Zealand wing of Mere Mortals to create a “24-hour office”, which involved dealing with work in one time zone and sending it back by the time UK staff arrived in the morning in another time zone.
Jeffries found himself not working as late at the office, visiting friends for barbecues, gardening and taking walks on the beach. His partner, Sally Kevan, joined him earlier this year.
But three months ago, Jeffries hung up his coat in the Newcastle office again and started pulling the business back from the brink.
Kevan says: “People think we’re bonkers for coming back but he’s still passionate about it and he’d never have been happy in New Zealand knowing what had happened to it.”
He says Mere Mortals had seen a “significant deterioration” in its business over the last year and he found out about the problems “by degrees.” But matters came to a head when he was phoned by a co-director asking for help.
He closed the gaming division, while former director Kathryn Taylor took web hosting clients to new venture Taylored Hosting. Co-founder Graeme Love is at Gateshead gamers Eutechnyx alongside many of the firm’s former staff, and former managing director Steve Walmsley is a director at Which Medical Device.
At an event late last month, the company announced its return to the core principles of motion graphics, editing, CG graphics and audio services that won it work with the BBC and films such as 28 Weeks Later and Sunshine.
He says: “My pride would not let me walk away from a company I’d spent so much time building. One of my great regrets was that I didn’t have an opportunity to rescue the business earlier as more people’s jobs would have been saved. I’m very glad that all those people have gone on to get jobs.
“I’ve rediscovered my passion for the business now, and we’re going to keep the business small and tight. In hindsight I should have taken a sabbatical, and I’d urge all MDs who’ve been running a company for a while to consider it every five or six years. I don’t have to worry about pensions and fire regulations as there’s someone to deal with that now. I’m going back to what I do best.”
Before Mere Mortals, Jeffries had spent several years as a 3D animator for both games and TV. Born in Harrogate as the eldest of four children, he dropped out a year into his A-levels to try sculpture and photography at art college in Bradford before studying for a fine art degree in Cardiff. It was there he discovered the key to his later career success.
He says: “A man called Roger Fickling left a business card at my degree show. His company made the weather programme for HTV in Wales which was all graphics.
“He said he couldn’t give me a job but I could come and learn to use something called Quantel Paintbox at night. It did something similar to what Paint does now, but cost about £200,000.”
He also became interested in an emerging technology called 3D, which was being shown off by companies like Pixar.
He says: “I took holidays from my job to go to courses in London to learn how to do it. One of my eyes is plastic so I can’t see in 3D, but I was fascinated by the art and the ability to manipulate things.
“People look at me strangely in the office when I tell them this, but back then you had to type in commands to make things happen whereas now you can just pick up and move things.”
He moved from Leeds TV production company Bow to join Granada Television in Manchester in 1994, and worked on several educational projects commissioned by Channel 4, including illustrations of Aesop’s Fables and a series where 3D animations would be intercut with scenes of Mr Motivator explaining the inner workings of the human body. He says: “At the time, this was cutting edge stuff.
“It was like a little gang. You could almost touch the people who were making stuff like Jurassic Park because we were all on our little forums.”
In December 1995, Jeffries was lured away by US software company Alias|Wavefront, who needed someone to provide support for its Northern Europe operation.
