Marc Godfrey Animator

Wednesday 25 March 2015

I'm an Animator

I have news: I made it. I'm an animator.

Looking back through this blog is quite a humbly experience; being able to look back at my journey and how I got here. But I know really that my journey has only just begun...but my leap of faith to do it in the first place, has paid off.

I'm aware that there's quite a bit of missing information in the lead up to my first job. Let me fill you in.

Me and my fabulous course mate, after our graduation.
What happened:
My course at Aardman finished just before Christmas 2014. Our graduation was such a gorgeous, yet bittersweet day. I was proud of the work I had done. I was chomping at the bit to get out into real world again, and starting working. I was sad to say goodbye to all the lovely people I'd met, and I was gutted to be leaving Aardman. But I was excited to see what's next.

By some twist of fate, in my final weeks at Aardman, I was offered a job as a junior animator with a boutique studio up in Glasgow. I had to learn how to use and animate in Cinema4D (which was actually pretty easy, truth be told) and all went well. I was there short term, but three weeks in I got a call from the course co-ordinator at Aardman, telling me I had been invited to join an Internship with Blue Zoo, with potential to stay on for a year contract. How the blinky blonky I ended up with two animator jobs in less than a month after finishing the course, I'll never know!

I spoke to the studio director in Glasgow about the situation, and he gave me his blessing to accept with Blue Zoo. I felt pretty bad about it, as I didn't want to let anyone down. I found somewhere to stay in London and sorted out all my travel (trains are so damn expensive, right?) from York (where I live currently) and I was off. Then three weeks into the Internship, they told me they liked the work I was doing, they thought I fit in, and offered me a contract to stay on...I'm still pinching myself.

When I was at Aardman, I didn't think any studio would come close to the pedestal of greatness that I put it on. Aardman was the ultimate workplace, as far as I was concerned. But, I gotta say, Blue Zoo is up there too. It's a dream. The project I'm working on is called Tree Fu Tom, for CBeebies. It's gorgeous. The episodes are cute and the characters are challenging to work on, which I love...I mean how do you approach animating a character who has four arms, two are enough for the junior to contend with, surely? ;)



So, that's it.

All I can say really, is if I can do it, you can do it. It's funny working with people who are in much higher positions than me, who are younger than me. It makes me think "I wonder where I would be now, if I had gone straight into animation... but hey, let's not get toooo philosophical on that one.

Cheers
Marc :)