During the Spring Holiday I was able to have a weeks work experience in the very prestigious company; The Mill.
I arrived on Monday not knowing what to expect. I met another runner before starting and we were taken to the kitchen and given Mill t-shirts. I was now a runner at The Mill. They explained that because they were so busy at the moment, HR wouldn't be able to provide me time with an artist in my particular interest. However, I still had the great opportunity to explore the building and meet everyone.
At first I was really shy about approaching the artists while they work, even though it was a very relaxed professional environment. Fortunately I was paired with another runner, Dan, who had been there a couple of months and new quite a few people already, so he told me to approach one of the artists he knew very well and ask him a question. When I did this it gave me the confidence to talk to anyone so i'm very grateful of his encouragement. - There was this 'theme' that consisted throughout the week of everyone trying to help each other out.
So I began to talk to a lot of the 3D artists and some of the compositors too. I met a tracker, Nick, who once was a runner but got promoted and he introduced me to one of the lead animators!! Once i started talking to the animator, Dave, we got on really well. Some of his work was Chicken Run, Creature Comforts, 10,000BC and Hellboy II. Amazing animator! After we spoke for a while he suggested that I come back tomorrow (Tuesday, the second day) and test my animation on one of their rigs. This was exactly what I wanted!! So for the rest of the day I quite happily cleared away peoples mess and finished promptly at 4pm!
When I finished I met up with the tracker again who was working on till 5pm and he said that I could shadow him for an hour to see what PFTrack and the basics of tracking was like. This was a great little tutorial for me. Nick mentioned that another one of the artsts was going to be giving a tutorial on Massive at 6pm. So when we finished there we went over to a board room and sat in on a fantastic half an hour session about Massive. It's an incredible piece of software that I would really like to experiment with in the near future.
The next three days were again a shift of running 10-4pm. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday evening and Thursday evening and afternoon I worked some more on my animation test. This was a Walk Cycle for a Dinosaur called 'Van Gogh Creature' (pictures below).
On Thursday I showed my animation to the Head of 3D. He said it was cool (as I am a junior artist) but I should show it really to another person who knew a bit more about animation. So it's a shame the other person couldn't have seen it. But talking to the head of 3D, I got his e-mail address and the other person who I was told to contact again in May, when my showreel is finished and enquire about working at The Mill as a junior animator!! This was music to my ears.
So after four LONG days it felt like a very short week. But I did all that I could. I spoke to many people there, gave my business cards out and made a few very good contacts. I'm looking forward to keeping in touch and hearing from them soon.
Anyway, here are some pictures from the week...
If ever you have the chance I recommend going to The Mill. It's a great place to work!
Soundtrack: The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build A Home
3 comments:
building looks sick! where all the people? was it ok to take pics in side?
I was a bit conscious about taking pictures inside, but also I was just so busy during the day the only opportunity was in the evening when I was animating and everyone had gone home (cept a few)!
In soho mate
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