The first place I contacted about having a portfolio visit was a company called firestep, the guy there called Gwyn Roberts always got back to me in the past so i thought its a good place to start...at least I'd get an answer either way!
The good news was that he got back to me, the even better news was that he'd passed on the email to the people at firestep and also kilogramme (because there work in the same building as them). I was familiar with kilogramme and were on my list to contact, so i was surprised and happy then Gwyn had forwarded the email onto them!
To cut a long story short Kilogramme's Co-Director, Claire Grey, contacted me to say that they would be happy for me to come see them.
I asked if Monday was ok...they said that cool...so at 12.30 on Monday 18th April I went to show them my work!
I forgot to mention that Clair grey had seen two of my pieces on youtube after Gwyn Roberts asked if I could send them some work...but the other Co-Director, Jon Turner, hadn't seen anything so this is what I showed them...
Show Reel
Eden
Eden - Making of
Malc the Milkman
Sway
Chuck
Walk Cycles
They enjoyed my stuff, particularly liked how I'm still doing hand drawn 2D animation! I explained how I wanted to keep working on Malc the Milkman, bringing colour to the 30 second piece. Jon Turner said that the charm of the animation is that he is hand done and rough... keep at that for the rest of the animation. This is totally true, the eden brief has shown i can bring colour in, and i'll keep practicing with colour over the summer and in the 3rd year, but Malc maybe visually more pleasing if he stays rough for now.
They thought the timing was good on the malc animation as well and picked out some of the sketches from that brief with they liked...
They liked the stretch in the yawn
Think it was the pose in this one...also Jon mentioned that he liked the innocence of my drawings
Jon pointed at this one as well...
They like the fact that I had skills in these different programs and was able to animate on the computer as well as just be hand.
I was telling them about how I kept a notebook for the character design brief so i had loads of character ideas to choose from an narrow it down to a final character etc...they told me they keep all their notebooks filed away for future reference...they never know when a scraped idea may come in handy!
In terms of the studio, it was nice and intimate. You had firestep and Kilogramme in the same room, so you can imagin that there always helping each other out and bouncing back and fourth ideas etc...This is a piece which they collaborated on, reading from the paragraph on Vimeo it tells you who did what, Steve Maher (who i met at the studio) from firestep directed it, Jon Turner did the modeling (from Kilogramme) and so on
Goliath from Kilogramme on Vimeo.
They were all really friendly people; the kilogramme people, the firestep people and anyone else I met whilst there!
firestep were really busy but still found time to have a talk about what they were up to, sounded really interesting...working on something (don't know if I can say) but its being made in Singapore and also some of its being done in Ireland...so there having to communicate to all these people! they looked stressed, but they kept smiling through it!
They said to keep in touch and to tell them whenever I have a free week during the summer so I can go in for a few days and maybe work on some stuff with them, or just watch over them and learn some stuff! Really appreciated that and will be defiantly taking up that offer!
Below is Kilogramme's showreel...
Kilogramme Showreel from Kilogramme on Vimeo.
And this is new...its their Easter card!
Easter card '11 from Kilogramme on Vimeo.
I got a lot out of this visit, getting some creative feedback on my work whilst also learning more about how the industry works.....oh, and also that James Corazzo works in the same space as Kilogramme and firestep!
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