Visiting Professional: Fraser MacLean

The wonderful ball of energy that is Fraser MacLean came to talk to us and boy was it a treat! Not only is the man an animation mastermind in my mind, but he was also extremely humble and entertaining and if not just a little bit crazy.

He came to talk to us about how he got started within the animation industry and the struggles he faced as an artist growing up alongside all of the success he has had. His journey was inspiring to me, as I could relate to his struggles and concerns, as I feel the same doubts he did, but it was nice to hear of his success and be reminded that it's possible to achieve what you want with perseverance.

Fraser started his artistic career in art college, studying fine art before moving onto graphic design. Being made to focus on life drawing, he pointed out that this is an important factor in being an animator, as it is essential to be able to draw, and it is what landed him a job later down the line. His first animation job however was a long time coming. The fact that Fraser and other professionals have explained that it took them a while to get their first jobs has done nothing but fill me with courage and confidence about moving forward with my own career, as it reminds me every time that I need to be patient and these things take time. Chances are, I won't begin to work in the area of animation that I want until I have gained a good few years of experience under my belt, but it is also nice to hear that real professionals have had to go through the same and that they were once in my position.

Fraser's first job was on the film Roger Rabbit, where he worked as a shadow artist, which literally involved him adding the shadows to the animated characters. Even though this didn't seem like a huge job, it was something he could put on his CV and it opened doors for him and helped him to continue to get jobs within the industry. However, despite finally gaining work with no other than Disney Studios, the road to success for Fraser was very bumpy. After Roger Rabbit, MacLean experienced a series of rejections from a number of producers and production companies and it wasn't until Disney were advertising down in London that MacLean landed his second significant job.

Even though it seemed hard, and it was hard to listen that it will be difficult to find work within the industry, it was also quite inspirational to hear that hard work and persistence pays off eventually. Fraser has since gone on to work on a number of different animations and has even written his own book on layout and the importance of background and design.

The Lifting Tower: Pitching Our Ideas

For the German Market idea, we wanted to gather a series of iconic images that we felt reflected the essence of the market, without being too 'cheesy' and we came up with a list of things that made us think of the German Market and these included:
- Mulled wine
- Beer
- Pretzels
- Hotdogs
- A moose head
- A carousel

The idea was to have a camera pan through the scene and as it did so, have these images pop up in a style similar to a motion graphic. This way we could keep the designs simple and keep the line work neat and clean whilst being clear.
Once I had done this, I passed my sketches and thumbnails onto Katy who created the storyboards. From here I was able to put the pitching boards together.

Overall, I feel that we have managed to turn this around quite quickly and, as a group, we have been able to work to the deadline quite well. I feel that we split the workload fairly and I am really happy with how smoothly the whole process has been. The only thing I am not sure of is whether or not our ideas are suitable for projection mapping, as I have never done anything like this before. I feel that our ideas may be a little too ambitious, however, we had nothing to gauge our work against, so we will see what feedback we receive and move on from there.

New Year, New Opportunities

To kick off this year, we've been given the opportunity to get on board with a live brief for Lumen. The brief requires us to work in teams to generate a series of animations that will be projected onto The Lifting Tower in Leeds over the Christmas period.

I thought that this would be a really good small brief for me to complete to help me get back into the swing of things and start the year off. So with this in mind, I teamed up with Lauren, Katy and James, as there was a lot to be done in a short period of time. Once we had got together and had a thought about what it was we wanted to pitch to Lumen, we managed to come up with 3 ideas that we felt reflected Leeds and the surrounding area quite well, without being too festive and 'cheesy', these were:

- An orb of light travelling through a forest lighting them up as Christmas trees as it moved through the space. 

- Lines/ Ribbons that flowed through the space and formed themselves into different landmarks around Leeds. 

- The German Market: A series of iconic objects that represented the German Market would pop up in a pop-up-book like style.

I have been given the role of creating concept work and thumbnails for the German Market idea before handing them over to Katy, who will be in charge of storyboarding.