We visited blink ink studio this week and got an insight to the studio animation culture and environment.
The staff gave us a tour of their Holloway studio and then talked through some of the animation work they’ve made. The studio was really homey and whilst small seemed very efficiently run. I was initially quite surprised that there were so few people animating there, most seemed to be in meetings or doing marketing stuff, until they later told us that the office isn’t for the animators…
They gave us a presentation on some of the work they’ve made over the years including commercials, music videos etc. The one that really stood out to me was the BBC world cup tapestry directed by Nicos Livesey. They had ani interesting story on how the idea was formed and lots of information on how it was created and it really made me appreciate the amount of work put in by everyone at every stage in the process of finishing the film.
It was kind of disappointing to hear that they only really have in house directors and producers and the animators are freelance, it seems kind of tricky to get a foot in the door that way, especially if as an animator you don’t get to be in the office making connections with people, as after all connections and networking are the best way to get the jobs as we keep being told and that’s difficult when you’re someone who can’t even say boo to a goose!
This visit definitely made me think more about studio animation, and whilst the staff said that theyre one of the few studios who work like this (with directors being the main priority and animators being freelance), I would like to investigate the dynamics of the other studios i’ve been looking at, particularly the line and golden wolf animation.