In March 2011 I started working for Ragdoll, probably the most prolific and successful children's television entertainment company in the UK. To name a few of their successful productions: Rosie and Jim, Brum, Tots TV, Teletubbies, Badjelly the Witch, Boohbah and In The Night Garden...
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My days at Ragdoll were always numbered. Then extended. But ultimately numbered. And it seems the phrase "all good things must come to an end" is very appropriate to use. Ragdoll was an amazing place to work and many others are of the same opinion. I was fortunate to meet a few industry veterans who were there on a short term contact and would tell me that after Ragdoll "it's all down hill from here". I'm sure that isn't entirely the case as there are literally hundreds of studios in the UK alone, but I understood the sentiment that Ragdoll
was a really great and unique place to work. Unfortunately the emphasis is on
was, because the future of the company is uncertain. I can only wish Ragdoll the best of luck and I hope they will continue in business... because I would love to return to work on another season of A&T!
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I feel very proud to have worked on The Adventures of Abney & Teal for just over a year until the series wrapped up. It was my first time working on a full animation production and in an animation department. I was truly in my element. I wasn't involved in any of the early story, style or character development, but I'm going to try to recap all the good times and the bad, all the milestones and achievements I made in that year and share what went into making this CG Animation Television series.
I can still remember my first week really well. I was the first Junior Animator to join and right away I was made to feel at home. My first episode was
The Radio.
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I was immediately excited to work on this episode because of its musical appeal. The first shot I worked on was of the Poc Pocs at the beginning of the episode where they are dancing on the shore next to Bop. At the time I was pleased with my work, but as time went on and I grew more accustomed to the style of each character, I realised that I could have made a better acting choice. I also animated the Poc Pocs being entranced in Abney's house, by the static noise of the radio tuning between stations, and that was much more like the Poc Poc style! I found a rhythm in the static noise and synchronised their movements accordingly.
After this episode I was given more Neep and Poc Pocs shots. Neep was my and pretty much everyones' favourite character so I was really happy to be given the Neep shots. For inspiration, I always tried to think of silent movie actors such as Chaplin and Keaton.
Part of my role as a Junior Animator was doing a lot of fixes. It is one of those
'messy jobs, but someone's got to do it' kind of things, but for the most part I really didn't mind. I actually enjoyed doing the fixes because it gave me the opportunity to analyse shots by looking more closely at how the more experienced and senior animators animated the characters. They were always happy to answer any questions. This was a good way of speeding up the learning process of the animation styles for all the characters. Early on in the show after the director had set the characters' personalities, the characters were assigned to specific animators who had full creative reign to develop their movements following the set of personality guidelines. By the time I started they knew the characters inside out!
There was one episode early on that was a nightmare to fix and we ran over schedule by quite a few days. That episode was Sky High.
Although I had some really cool shots animating Neep doing mid-air cartwheels and a Bruce Lee style flying kick to pop all those bubbles, I had the gruelling task of reanimating some colleagues' work on Abney & Teal because the wrong music track was used as a guide for the animation. It was no-ones fault, but I had to battle between keeping as much of the original animation as I could do and erasing some of it to fit the new music.
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| A little joke reminder I made |
Shortly after this episode around May '11, I moved into a new and very nice apartment (whole other story why I moved there!) only 20 mins walk away from the studio. I was on the second (top) floor of a new build and had a fantastic view of the sky, and would see brilliant sunsets almost every night until the winter. Feast your eyes on some of these...
The sunsets really inspired me. After talking to a few people at work about these sunsets, I discovered that we had a digital SLR (Canon 40D) and after enquiring if I could use it, I found out that a time lapse remote control was on its way! The timing couldn't have been better. So with a lovely camera, tripod and brand new remote control to bring home with me over the weekend, I was able to experiment and create my first time lapse sequences. The sunsets weren't enough though. I wanted to spend the whole day shooting, so I would take the camera around the town and here's what I captured...
I also did three time lapse videos from within the animation department. Hopefully they will be included in a Behind The Scenes on the DVDs... if there are going to be BTS and/or DVDs!
During this period I also co-formed and drummed in a band, called:
The name was inspired in 3 parts:
1. Our mutual appreciation for Wacom tablets.
2. Our mutual appreciation for The Karate Kid movie. and
3. Our mutual appreciation for not really caring about a band name! We just needed one to book a rehearsal room.
The music was a mix of continuous drumming (like heavy Motorik), big-spacey guitar solos with lots of effects and groovy bass riffs. I miss jammin' with the band a lot.
Back to Ragdoll...
After 10 months of being a Junior Animator, a day before we all went our separate ways for Christmas and the Winter Holiday, I was called in to a meeting with the producer and animation lead and supervisor. They said they needed someone to fill a position of Animator and had me in mind. And so for the final 3 months of production I was doing pure character animation. A lovely Christmas present indeed!
I have to leave a gap here because none of these episodes have been released yet so I can't talk about them. Moving swiftly on to the wrap party...
The wrap party was a fantastic success. Held in a popular bar in town, we hired it out for ourselves for the evening. We put on our own music, there was a light buffet and free drinks for practically the whole night. During the wrap party Chris our Producer, made a funny speech that included the total amount that it cost to make our show. I have to thank Nayden for recording this speech on the night! "For the geeks among us"...
On average 110 - 120 shots per episode
6000 composited shots
572 minutes (9.5 hours) of broadcasted content (4.8 feature films)
134 TB of data
2 Keyboards
5 Monitors
480 loaves of bread
36,000 tea bags
1,440 packets of biscuits
1,927 dishwasher cycles
36kg of instant coffee
480 pens & pencils
So there you go. Now you know exactly what it takes to make a quality CG Animation Television series!
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| ...and then it was time to say Goodbye |
My contract might have come to an end, but the journey of my animation career continues. On reflection I can see that I have achieved a lot and have made some really good friends over the year.
Image sources:
1. http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Ragdoll_Productions
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/programme/abney-and-teal
3. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015sl50
