For the first week of my placement, my role was to be a runner for various animators and artists at Framestore Production Company In London. This role sounds like I spent my first placement making constant cups of tea and coffee, and to be honest, half the time it was! Especially the first day where everyone was sure what to do with the work experience student, and I learnt a new rule within a working environment, the first day of a new job always seems to be the longest where you learn the least, simply because you’re still trying to adapt to a new environment.
The first week of my placement was at Framestore between the 10th and 14th May. Upon arriving at Framestore on Day 1, I was given a tour of both of the facilities and offices (each within a couple of streets from one another), with several induction handbooks to read, where I learnt my role for the week and what my duties to the company would be as a runner, and what was expected from me! The main point about the first day for me was to get my face recognized so that when I came to talk to animators and producers, or even the other runners, they knew who I was and they would kindly be prepared to talk to me within their busy schedule.
At the beginning of the week, I had a specific three point Agenda so that I wanted to come away from Framestore saying, “Done that!”; First,I wanted to try and get as many contacts as I could within the industry, both runners and producers alike for future reference and feedback, second, I didn’t want to waste a single opportunity so when it came to traveling via delivering, I would often volunteer to get a good response from my peers and to get over my fear of trains and busy lanes so it wouldn’t hinder me in the future and finally, to put aside being shy and talking to people so I could find the most I could about the industry and what my ideal job would involve to enable myself to be prepared at the end of University.
After an uplifting first day, and I knew I could make the most of what I had before me, I was ready for day two! As I gathered over the week, the first few hours are simply wait and make drinks and breakfast for whoever wants it, so as well as learning to be a running for a placement, learning to work in a cafe was also a key skill I picked up from the early hours of my days! However, as the afternoon came, one of the other runners kindly introduced me to one of the 3D producers. He had been trained with Maya and 3dsMax for seven years, three of which were for his University degree. He showed me some of his work from university, followed by some very impressive work he had done for a Sony television advert, aired in march and some of the preproduction work for Framestore’s role in ‘Avatar’. They were commissioned to build the base for the first scene of the film when the protagonists arrive on Pandora, with the builders, planes, humans and humanoid machines which was incredible to watch, needless to say, I brought a copy of the film on my way home to watch the visual making of the film! Framestore also kindly offered to show me the early stages of Post-Production for several films in the making (by which I had to sign a disclaimer, so tough luck), which sent my inspiration levels sky high and the immediate feeling was this is what I want to do! The rest of the day went quickly as I was in a 3D heaven where I was constantly thinking about how to make this and what I want to do, needless to say, I was looking forward to the rest of the week.
Unfortunately, day four was cut short due to illness but friday I was back on track! The first hour was spent with the usual coffee orders but the day overall was a lot better than I thought it would be. I spent the majority of the morning with the 3D producer, learning more techniques, such as making items passive with synchronized movement, which was a great technique to learn since certain items I want to build as a personal project have wheels or need continuous synchronized movement! He also taught me good knows how many techniques to texture, with effects and websites for flat textures which work perfectly within Maya! The rest of the afternoon, I sat in with four other executive 2D and 3D producers and animators who had previously worked a lot with far eastern television channels, which was fascinating to learn. You hear so much about the difference in Western and Eastern culture but to see how producers would work together to create channel advertisements was incredible and extremely beneficial to see how the media would incorporate such ideology and culture. The ‘best’ was saved for last! Towards the end of the week, in the entrance of Framestore, they had ‘Avatar’ playing through a a 3D television and although it was a brief tutorial, one animator, who had recently been promoting from a running two months prior, taught me how to transfer models, but imparticular script into 3D motion, suitable for a 3D television!
My second work placement was at a personal production company, situated in Hammersmith called ‘Fastfinger’, dated between the 28th June to the 2nd July. The owner of ‘Fastfinger’, Matthew Davies produced and commissioned ‘Creature Comforts’, an animated series of animals by the BBC , which I happen to be a big fan off! After several emails, I looked at both his personal website, where he focuses on professional development of individuals etc and then the website for ‘Fastfinger’!
Arriving promptly for 10 o’clock (needless to say I preferred the hours here, 10-5, starting at 11 on a wednesday and finishing early at 3 on a friday!), i was greeted by a bare-footed matthew in a shirt and shorts, needless to say I felt a bit over-dressed with shoes, jeans and a polo! Following a quick introduction to himself and his intern, he set me my first task… to run across to Tesco, grab a pint of milk, come back and make a coffee! Talk about earlier assumptions, I thought here we go again, but that turned into one of ten cups I made throughout the week! As I thought i’d be his assistant all week, he through me in straight at the deep end, working side by side, and sometimes against his intern, helping him work on titles, scripts and logos for various television shows that he was working on, some were yet to be pitched, others were on their way to production, so straight away I felt privileged to be working on such projects.
The second day started much the same! Quick cup of coffee to start the day then some more quick mind games and brain-storming ideas for possible and probable television shows! Matthew also showed me various kid’s television series he had previously worked on, others that were in production, as well as lending me several books to read over the curse of the week, the most beneficial was ‘How to script an Animation’ by Jeffery Scott (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), which first made me realize where i’d been going wrong with my past animations within the first few chapters, but it was just a fascinating read, which was truly inspiring for me, really boosting my confidence that I know how to do this, so I can!
Then after a lunch break, Matthew turned to me and asked me how my skills on photoshop were! He usually hires an intern with Photoshop experience, but his current intern was an outstanding writer, from what I heard and he was still learning basic skills in Photoshop so he presented me with a perfect opportunity which really made my week at ‘Fastfinger’ a rememberable and beneficial experience! As I mentioned, he showed me previous Pre-production work that he had used for children’s television programmes and he had a current programme in its’ pre-productive stage which had to be altered because the original imagery for the main character, the character’s background story and the episode story lines themselves may provoke racial tensions. Unfortunately, again due to signing a disclaimer, I’m not allowed to give the name of the programme in production but my task was simple, to redesign the main characters’ headwear, the background silhouette and several other features of the pre-production material. This was simply what I’d been waiting to do since september 2009, when I started at AUCB! The original character had a turban on, and in five images, I had to erase the turban from the original imagery, redesign an airport policeman’s hat and place it onto the image, and create a police badge.
Something told me the week before to use what little finance I had into buying a drawing tablet for my mac, and it came into use this week, I would’ve been lost without it! Transferring the images into photoshop and erasing the turban was simple. The next process was to find my examples of a airport security hat, and draw my own from different angles, to match that of the position of the protagonist. This took me the best part of four days to do, but the hardest part to do was the security badge! I originally had a blank canvas infront of me because designing the badge was simple enough, overlaying images from a police badges, creating my own from that but the tricky part was getting it at the right angle for the image. I wasn’t saying no but it wouldn’t have been the best idea to keep re-drawing the logo to suit the picture’s angle, but getting the dimensions right in what time I had would’ve been impossible, so I simply saved the badge image as a jpeg in photoshop, reconstructed the image in Maya, simply edited the angles of the plate, took a screenshot and brought that into photoshop! The badge worked out a lot better that way, so i kept the dimensions correct and it really brought the piece together, having a decent looking police badge, both on the protagonists’ chest and hat. I got really positive feedback from matthew, as he sat me down, took me through what he had seen throughout the week and what he saw in the work I had done, and it truly benefitted my confidence hearing someone of his stature say what he did! From this task, I felt as if I found my strongpoint within the industry.
Overall, I can only use a few words to describe my two weeks placement; inspiring, influential and beneficial, and above all exceeded my expectations of any placement at my level. People have often asked me which week was the best, and from what I got to do, Fastfinger was probably the more practical and more thrilling part of the placement but both weeks taught me something different, working upon each other! Framestore set the pace and put me through the experience where I will most likely have to go if I pursued the route of 2d and 3d designer/ animator, knowing that I would have to be a runner for the best part of a year but since I got to talk to animators that had been through that, I learnt from them how to achieve what I need to do and various designers walked me through key principles and concepts of design, especially 3d which with Avatar playing in the reception, really reminded me what I can do with my life. Part of what I learnt from Framestore, was put into action at Fastfinger with the pre-production work (which I should hopefully get for my digital portfolio) and I got to have quite a few (brief) goes at writing, which was a first but it became obvious that there’re other routes into the media-world than being a runner, yet being in such a small office, there wasn’t as much influence around you. I’m hoping that since his interns last between two to three months that I can undertake an internship at the end of my second year or after university. At Framestore however, When I stood in the studios, there were designers and writers surrounding me and every cup I cleared, I could see something new and inspiring, despite the fact I was a part of it! Both weeks made be identify two weaknesses within my approach to work; the first being the effort to keep practicing to gain the best possible result, the second, use resources more efficiently, to widen my mind and push my imagination. As I said, both weeks were equally amazing and truly inspiring, and there’s little doubt in my mind that I should be in the media world.
