Understanding the Animation Industry: Part 3 – Adaptability and where I want to be

I’ve mentioned a few times throughout the creation of this blog about what I want to do in the animation industry, and I’ve shown examples of diving outside my comfort zone to try new things, such as expanding my workflow to include Premiere Pro during term 2. Now that term 3 is coming to an end, I want to reflect on my work throughout term 3, and how it’s influencing where I want to position myself in a year’s time when I look for a role in the animation industry.

Currently, I’ve been working in a group for the London International Animation Festival, making a short sting for the category of Absurd to Zany called Open Mike Nite, a slightly gruesome sting of a stand up comedian’s show going wrong. The director is Neale Upton (@bortttttttttttttt on Instagram who also does the voice over) and we have Sofia Pietrafesa (@drawingfresa) doing 3D backgrounds for us. I can’t share the full film (not that it’s in a complete stage yet) due to LIAF wanting to screen it in November, but I can share work in progress of shots I’ve been working on.

Perhaps out of greed, or a desire to a mark on the project, I’ve taken up quite a few roles for this project: roughs, keys, inbetweens, clean-up, colour and compositing. Clean-up is something new to me given that the only prior experience I had was working on my own projects, but I’ve had a go at the others so I felt confident I could handle these.

Working in a group has been humbling. Perhaps I was over-confident, or stubborn, working at my own pace which is often described as rapid and fast. I gave my director loads of work in the first week, but he found it overwhelming to try and correct all 5 or 6 shots I’d “completed” in a few days. I also was being a little too rigid in terms of the software I was using – I’ve used Clip Studio Paint for all of my projects, refusing to learn TVPaint because I had gotten so used to the former. Neale has experience with CSP but only for illustration, and with the limited amount of time and the responsibilities he had as director, he wanted to stick to TVPaint. I’ve been told by our tutor, Steve Roberts, that TVPaint is a UK industry standard program, so whilst I’m still in an environment where I can make mistakes and experiment, I’ve now picked up the program to make my director’s job a little easier and help keep a consistent vision.

Over the course of this project, I’ve slowly adapted to his workflow and his pace, holding back from going straight to clean-up and doing passes to make sure its in Neale’s vision. This isn’t my project, I’m not the one who should be making the calls on how the characters are drawn or how they move – my role in this group is to help my director the way he wants the shots to be. This project has provided me the perfect start to changing my practice. I’ve spoken with my mentor, Paul Nicholson, about my desire to be a 2D animator, whether it be keys, roughs, clean-up, colouring etc. I remember he mentioned the need to adapt, to be flexible in style, in the way other people work. I’m starting to see what he means, as I slowly let go of the way I work and begin to understand how other people work and adapt to their own paces and workflows.

Speaking of being flexible in style, I realise that this time next year, I won’t have the freedom to help out in multiple groups as I’ll be developing my grad film. As such, I’ve taken the opportunity to not only help out another LIAF project, but also help a second year with her grad film. For Ioana Agavriloaiei (ioana_agavriloaiei_art on Instagram), I did some clean-up for her film, as well as make some adjustments to her key frames and poses for the scene below:

I was given character sheets to follow, and told her style was a rough pencil-like approach. It’s very different from how I usually draw characters, which is very much anime-like in the facial features. But at the same time, it was both fun and enjoyable to explore this softer, rounder look that felt a little more real. I did this clean-up prior to picking up TVPaint in the project, so all of this was done in Clip, but I managed to mimic the brush Ioana used and she had no problems with the animation. At this point, all I can ask for is experience, so I was very happy to clean up a few shots for her during this term.

Lastly, I joined as a rough animator for another LIAF project called “The Ritual”, a story about a character called Aura who performs a ritual that goes wrong. Directed by Rebecca Heath, I brought some of her shots to life, asking for feedback and making suggestions on timing and posing. We’ve discussed having me potentially help out with clean up in the next week or so, but for now my contribution lies with some rough shots. Again, a very different style, very different approach to design, but it’s always worth trying a different style. I feel like I’ve learned my strengths and weaknesses as an animator when working under a different director.

Moving forward, my workflow will continue to change. I’ll be doing all my future roughs in Clip as I prefer its intuitive controls on timing and the transformation tool (and as the industry standard for anime in Japan), I’ll be doing clean-up and colour in TVPaint as a software the UK industry likes to use, and once I get to grips with After Effects, compositing will take place between it and Premiere Pro. I’ve enjoyed learning more about the roles of 2D animators and compositing, and these are the areas I would like to focus on in my future practice.