In March I went with my University to London to visit various London animation studios.
These are the studios we visited..
Studio AKA
We were given a talk about Studio AKA, what they do, the processes they go through to get work from clients and to create their animations. Studio AKA primarily create commercials. To have a commercial to create they are contacted by a company or agent and are given between 24 hours and 1 week (if lucky) to come up with an idea, create artwork and pitch it to the company. If they win it they normally have 12 weeks to create the commercial.
At the pitch they show various pieces of artwork such as concept art of characters, maybe an animatic or blockmatic and backgrounds or environments etc. They use various techniques to create commercials, they say that it all depends on the commercial as to how they go about it. However they like to throw in some stop motion every so often to freshen the team up.
There is only about 24 people that make up Studio AKA so it's a pretty small team. In between making commercials they make their own short films, such as 'Lost and Found' and their recent success 'A Morning Stroll', which they were nominated for an Oscar for and won a BAFTA! One commercial that they've kept making more of is the Lloyds TSB adverts.
I would love to work in this studio, or atleast gain some experience here as I love the work they produce, especially as they use a range of animation techniques!
Blue Zoo Productions Ltd
We started off by having a talk with Tom Box , a co-founder of Blue Zoo by showing us their show reel of which had a mixture of children's series, commercials and channel idents. He then showed us a video of the process that they went through to create the choc'n'roll commerial which was very interesting and good to see. All of their animation is produced digitally on computer. At the time there were three main projects going on which were three children's series, 'Olive the Ostrich', 'Alphablocks' and their most recent 'Tree Fu Tom' of which the staff were split up into teams, each team doing a different series. The studio was very big, spanning over two floors of which Tom Box told us that the Studio start on the lower floor and the amount of staff had more than doubled in size.
Tom Box went to Bournemouth University with the other two co-founders Oli Hyatt and Adaw Shaw and they started the company after they had graduated.
This studio was much different to Studio AKA, it was a lot bigger and there seemed to be much more going on (although this may have been to do with the time of day). We were told that to get a job there or to get some work experience within the studios you would be expected to already know how to use the likes of Maya.
Astley Baker Davies (The Elf Factory)
The Elf Factory is the studio where 'Peppa Pig' is made and more recently 'Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom'. Which makes sense to me now when I look at both styles as they are both quite similar! I liked this one, mainly because the lady that showed us around not only talked to us about the different stages that the company goes through to create a programme for a series but showed us round at the same time. So for example when she was talking about the animatic stage she took us to the team that create the animatics and got them to demonstrate how they would do it. It was good to see them demonstrating it rather than to be just shown a video as you could also ask them anything as they went along.
I liked the look of the programme they used to create the animations, its like flash but better.
I wouldn't mind getting some work experience here either!
Picasso Pictures
Again when visiting this studio we had a talk and were shown the showreel. Picasso Pictures creates commercials, title sequences, idents , TV series and short films. We were shown the stages of the making of one of their commercials called Fidelity which was about banking. Not only did I learn about how a project is thrown back and fourth to the clients to make sure that everything is to their liking and the stages used to create such a piece but also that a banking advert doesn't have to be boring and mainly fact based but can be made very visually exciting. I loved that commercial as it's the sort of thing that I would love to make. This studio was similar to Studio AKA being that it was quite small and they both create animations for commercials mainly.
Before going on the London trip I had sent my CV and showreel to a few studios in London in the hope of getting some work experience in the summer, Picasso Pictures was the only studio that got back to me, unfortunately they didn't have any free spaces for work experience until December. Having been there and seen what they do it's made me want to get back in touch in the future and hopefully I'll have more luck.
Cartoon Network Europe (Turner Animation Studio)
The last studio we visited was Cartoon Network Europe. This tour was much like The Elf Factory, they took us around the studio showing and explaining the processes they go through to create a programme for a series. They showed us an animatic they created for The Amazing World of Gumball and then each stage of creating it. It was very interesting as both 2D and 3D was used in it as well as photographs and so it was good to see how it all came together.
Overall the London trip proved to be very important and very interesting/exciting. It was good to see the possibilities for my future, especially as I have the advantage of living near London at home. I will definitely be getting in touch with these studios in the future as well as others I may come across. It was good to see how each studio worked as each one was quite different to the others.
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