I heard about a short film that needed clean-up trainees through a tutor at UAL and decided to apply, I really liked the style of the comic they were adapting and when I checked the studio’s previous work I realised that I had previously watched their film Ovary-Acting last year at Annecy. While it was a different style to their new project (it was a stop-motion film), I remember really enjoying it and even saw it was nominated for some awards so I was really hopeful when applying.

In my mentorship meeting shortly before I started, my mentor had told me that looking into professional animators files when you have the chance is really useful to do whenever I got the chance and doing this job I really understood what she meant. The level of animation was really amazing and getting to add the finishing touches to it was a lot of fun but also had quite a bit of pressure because I didn’t want to ruin the hard work of the animator before me.

Getting direct feedback from the director and animation supervisor was really useful and helped me gain an insight into the structure of a professional animation team, as in student groups the roles are a bit less defined. Additionally, as I don’t own my own copy of TVPaint at home, I often went into the studio to work alongside some other students who were also working on their own shots for the film. It made me realise that I enjoy working in person at the studio alongside others more than I do working remotely.

While I’m not able to share any parts of the film yet, I’m excited for it to come out and receive my first credit! I really enjoyed this work and it helped me realise what types of roles and styles of animation I enjoy working on, I hope to do similar work in the future!