Industry Week! - Animator, Animation Guys, Location Location Location, and Apes on Stilts?

From the 10th to the 14th of February this year, the university had its annual Industry Week where numerous creative industry professionals hosted lectures and workshops within the university facility.

One of the talks I attended was provided by Micheal Morgan. In the morning he hosted a lecture where he talked about his time in the animation industry and how he got into the industry, what he has worked on, and he showed us some of the animations he has produced. In the afternoon, Micheal came to our animation room to speak to each of there, providing us with one to one feedback. When speaking to me, I asked him to review my designs on my portfolio website and he really liked the direction I was heading in with them; he said my character designs for my Final Major Project (FMP) looked well informed and you could see where I had done my research into the designs. I found speaking with him very inspiring and gave me a much needed confidence boost in my work.

Another talk I attended was that of a location scout called Vinnie Jassal, who has located filming locations for films such as Star Wars and Fast and Furious 6. He spoke about how he got into being a location scout, stories from working on the film sets, and what his job involves him doing beyond finding the locations. His talk was very engaging and it sparked my curiosity to possibly look into the career path of a location scout, it also informed me just how expansive a location scout/location managers role is.

On Thursday the 13th, I attended a talk given by Jamien Middleton, animator and founder of The Animation Guys. He showed us the various projects the company and himself have worked on, and talked about how the Animation Guys tackle the various briefs they are given, along with the origin of the company and how it is run. His talk was engaging and interesting to listen to, plus it was refreshing to hear about a side of animation we don't often look into, this intrigued me as I would like to look further into motion graphics and I would consider going into motion graphics animating as a future career path.

The final talk of the week was hosted by Ace Ruele, a talented motion capture actor, who has worked on productions such as Planet of the Apes and Tarzan amoung other things. He talked about the productions he has been involved in, how he started his career, how his life lead up to his career, his up coming motion capture acting workshops, and he even gave us a demonstration of how he acts out being an ape. After the talk, he joined the game students to critique them and help them with their motion capture for their games they are producing, and at this point I was able to speak to him and ask him about voice acting. Although voice acting isn't his specialised field of work, he was able to give me invaluable advice on how to go about starting a career in voice acting and how to voice act effectively. Ace gave an inspiring talk and left us all with a new sense of motivation that has helped push us further as we continue with our Final Major Projects.