At Playgrounds In Motion I happened to meet Despina, a DPS animation alumnus, by pure chance. She told us about a project she was directing called Toll Trolls. A month or two later I built up the courage to actually email the team to apply for a role as an animator. To my surprise, I heard back quite quickly. While I’m aware that not every application will be successful like this one was (in fact, most probably won’t be), this was a good reminder that it’s always worth sending off an email. Before this, I had been quite hesitant to send applications but it definitely gave me a boost in confidence.

Toll Trolls is a rigged animation, whereas I am more used to hand drawn frame-by-frame animation. I had used rigging in Toon Boom Harmony before but it wasn’t a rig as complex as the rig used in The Toll Trolls. I feel that this is a good opportunity to learn a style of animation that is prevalent in the industry and can expand my portfolio. Thankfully, the team were very supportive of me. especially when I was feeling lost or making quite rookie mistakes.

This experience really exposed some of my weaknesses, such as avoiding confronting things I find difficult/ can’t understand easily. It also cemented for me that I prefer working with others in-person- remote work isn’t really something I enjoy which might be an issue when it comes to finding freelance work.