London Visit

During March this year, me and a few people on my course at university got the chance to go down to London. During this trip we got to tour several animation studios. We got to ask professionals about their role in the industry and really get a feel for how different companies work. It was great to see companies like ‘Cartoon Network’ first hand. Each company was completely different. They greatly varied in size and all had their own unique take on production. 

 Studio AKA & Picasso Pictures were the two smaller studios that we went to see. They mainly focused on producing advertisements for other companies. They both worked like this so that they could fund their own personal animation projects. This is something I’ve always enjoyed about the U.K. animation industry. We have a lot of independent studios capable of working on their own things. This gives us a great range of creative styles across the industry. With both Studio AKA and Picasso Pictures; the quality of production was really impressive. They both had quite a free flow style of working; meaning basically everybody just worked on what they could. The only thing I ever worry about when getting a job in animation is being stuck doing the same thing. For these studios it didn’t seem to be a problem.
 

Work from Studio AKA

Astley Baker Davies & Blue zoo were a pretty similar size with approximately twenty people on staff. Blue zoo work on a couple of television programs such as ‘Tree Fu Tom’ as well as doing commercials and idents. Astley Baker was entirely focused on producing their own I.Ps including ‘Pepper Pig’ & ‘Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom’.   They use their own unique version of ‘Cel action’; which is a 2D animation package not to dissimilar to ‘Flash’ or ‘Toon Boom’. Were as Blue zoo stuck to more commonly used software packages such as ‘Maya’ and ‘3Ds Max’.

Work from Blue Zoo

It was hugely impressive to see Astley Baker produce two television series simultaneously, especially considering their team size. Blue zoo were no less impressive however. The scope of their projects gave the impression that would be a much bigger studio; needless to say everybody at blue zoo was an expert in their field.

Work from Astley Baker Davies 

Every single studio apart from Cartoon Network let me film my time at their studios. I intend to put this to great use towards my dissertation. My plan is to create a documentary for my dissertation. It’s a shame I couldn’t film cartoon but understandable.

 I found my time at Cartoon Network the most inspiring. My time there pretty much forced my hand into purchasing a Wacom Cintiq 21UX. This is after being told by a couple of animators there that they found it pretty much essential to their workflow.

Cartoon Network’s London studio is currently working on the second season of a television series called ‘The amazing adventures of Gumball’. The show seamlessly combines elements of 2D animation in ‘Flash’ and 3D animation in ‘Maya’ whilst overlaying all of this onto photo realistic backgrounds done in ‘Photoshop’. It’s a very new and fresh style of animation. And it was the only studio using all the same software I’m used to. I felt like I knew what they were doing and this has got me really excited to try something similar. I’m now planning on having my 3^rd year animation follow a similar workflow to theirs; combining 2D and 3D elements.

'Gumball' by Cartoon Network

All and all I found this London visit essential to planning my future projects and even my career. It’s given me a realistic outlook on what I can achieve. I’m feeling really positive about I will able to do during my final year at university and hopefully it will give me the leg up I need to get some were in the industry.