Studio Research (Part 1)

Before I finish this animation course, I’ve done some research into some of the animation studios I want to apply to. As Margaux suggested, I’ve not only looked at their “house” style, but looking at fonts, the types of projects they work on, the directors on hand and more should help increase my chances of a successful application.

Let’s start with The Line Animation, who’s in-house style is very much western anime. Their font is very blocky, san-serif, modern and clean. Their art is highly detailed, layered shading with strong compositing and depth. They’re very much a studio working with big gaming brands, and translate IPs into anime, such as Chiaki’s story for Acura. Directors include Tim McCourt, Sam Taylor, Bjorn-Erik Aschim and Wesley Louis. Their work involves quite dynamic angles, parallaxes and FX, so this showreel below (or creating a specially tailored one like this) would be a good way of showcasing that I work in a similar style.

Next we have Lupus films. Their font looks to be a little more formal, all caps for titles that feel bold. Their art style feels very textured – pencil markings, soft graphite line art, they don’t look to be a studio that colours flat. It’s also worth pointing out their movement of characters – its very consistent, smooth and realistic. They don’t look to be the type of studio that animates on threes or fours unless using a highly textured art style (like the Snowman) and they have a lot of animals in their work. Clients include many British broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and more.

Admittedly, I don’t have much in the way of animals in my portfolio, but I’ll look to cut a showreel with as much of my more realistic movements where possible.

The next studio I’m looking at is Golden Wolf. Their fonts mix between mighty bold and stylised as seen in their showreel thumbnail. Unlike the last two studios, this studio seems to have much more variation in their work. They have Sakuga-like styles, vector-like art styles, they work in 3D and I’ve seen some classic art styles that look like Looney Tunes. They’ve had Ingi Erlingsson as creative director for quite a few of their projects, including Lords of the Water, Weetabix/Three Little Pigs and their KFC commercial. Seeing as this is a more varied studio in art styles, I think submitting my general showreel might not be a bad shout, as the purpose of my general showreel is to showcase all my available skills.