Stoke your fires festival of animation (Masterclass)

I’m backtracking a few weeks here, but it’s something which has been a big highlight of my year so far. At the end of February I travelled down to stoke with a friend to attend the “Stoke your fires festival of animation”.

We went down a day earlier to attend the Master class with Lee Danskin of escape studios called “How to become a World-class animator". Lee specialises in 3D animation and visual effects, and started his career on the development team for the Maya 1.0 software. Although he specialises in the 3D and visual effects world, some the advice he gave would be relevant to most people in the industry. When the master class was finished I left the lecture theatre with more knowledge than I went in with, which is always reassuring.

So, some of the advice he gave was:

•To be focused on exactly what you want to do.

•Identify what specific area you want to work in and what specific job you want to do. For example if you want to be an animator, don’t just say “I want to work in animation”. Say what technique of animation you want to specialise in and what section of the animation sector you want to work in e.g. film, TV, commercials, broadcast.

•Identify your goals in life and your lifestyle choice. For example do you want a career where you are constantly thinking about what you do and work long hours, or do you want a job what you do when you go to work and forget about when you go home.

•Would you be willing to relocate??? This will majorly effect what jobs you will get and links into the lifestyle choice.

•Draw – This was one of the best pieces of advice he gave in my opinion. He said that drawing is essential in all areas of animation; weather its stop-motion, 3D, hand drawn… I too believe this to be essential for all animators, as it is the foundation of any project.

•Refer to the 12 principles of animation – This is a piece of advice I took on board. I know how easy it is to get on with a piece of animation and get bogged down with the project. Then you feel like the animation is lacking something. In this situation, Refer to the principles of animation. You never know how much they could help your work along.