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 :)

Brushing Up On My Core Skills

Last weekend, I began a google hunt for Life Drawing classes in Edinburgh. I mean, this is Edinburgh, there MUST be some classes somewhere! And yup, there were plenty. I was nearly going to sign up to a 10 week course, costing £170 (!!!) and then read a BBC article about this little group in Glasgow and Edinburgh who hold weekly, drop in Life Drawing classes...for a bargainacious £4.50 per session.

I went along to the City Cafe on Tuesday night, and joined in All The Young Nudes class. I had a great time, and it felt super good to get back into Life Drawing again! You can find all work from the evening on my Sketch Blog, but here's a sample of what I did.

"But Marc, why are you doing this?" I hear you cry... well, one of the things I've learnt whilst job hunting for junior Animation positions, is that studios and directors like to know that the people they have on their teams, do have the basic, core art skills too...and whilst it's easy for me to say "hey, well, I studied at the Cambridge School of Art, y'know", that's not enough. I need to keep practicing, and honing and developing my craft (for want of a less cliche phrase).  Plus, it looks good on the CV if I can say, I regularly attend art classes and-for-that-to-be-true! Sooo I'll be a-sketchin as much as can...and animating, of course.

In other news, the studio in Edinburgh have got back to me, and I'm going in over the next days to learn their software (...horror of horrors, when I rock up for a meeting before Christmas, the bombshell that they don't use Maya, gave me a bit of a stumble).

So, my New Year is off to a pretty good start - in that I've started Art Classes and will be learning a new piece of Animation Software. Lovely.