Ben Hearnden is a CGI artist that has worked on computer games and is now carving a career in TV and Film. After gaining his first credit as an animator on the AAA computer game LEGO:Jurrassic World, he took a big step to move from England to Germany to work on a children’s show Petzi, a german CGI animation based on the danish comic strip, about a bear cub who travels the world. This work led to Ben working on the upcoming Luxx Studios movie, Manou the Swift starring Academy Award Nominated Actor, Willem Dafoe and Academy Award Winning Actress, Kate Winslet.
Jenny Dyke from Jeppstones talks to Ben, who is currently working in Tenerife, to talk about his career so far and the Tech Behind his craft and learns about his new project, Treasure Trekkers.
Early days
When did you first get interested in Character Animation?
I don’t really know when I first became interested in animation, I think I must have been around 15. When I was a toddler, I used to draw on the walls a lot, my mother used to be mad, but always said I would work for Disney one day, so I guess it was a “life calling” thing.
What were your first attempts at animating?
The usual, flipbooks and stuff like that. I remember using Microsoft Paint to make a truly awful little sequence that ran at maybe like…ten frames per second, but that helped me get into an animation course in college. So definitely don’t be afraid to make really rubbish stuff. It’s all just doing it because you want too.
Once you decided this was your chosen career, what steps did you take to make it a reality?
I see myself very much as somebody who goes after what they want. I wanted to be a lot of things when I was a child, a builder, a scientist, a policeman, even a weatherman at one point, but they were all really just fleeting things. As soon as I discovered that people actually draw for a living, I knew exactly what it was I wanted to do. High school wasn’t really for me as someone who knew what they wanted to do, high school felt to me, like it was delaying me. But when I had finished with school, I noticed the local technical college was doing a course in Graphic Design and Moving Image, so I signed up to it. I went onto University, I never really cared about if a course was good or not, I just really wanted to live by the sea. Bournemouth was the best animation course in England and I tried to get in there but I was rejected. So I went for my backup option of Swansea Metropolitan University (which is called something different now I think) and I went on their animation course, I got a 2:1 BA Degree.
Getting into the industry
What was your first job in animation?
I didn’t get my first full time animation job until a year after I left university. It was for a very small company in Manchester, in the north of England, making a video game app for iPhones. I am not a big video game player, but they wanted a character animator to make some cartoon dinosaurs for their game to come to life. I was the only animator there, and it was my first animation job, so the pressure was well and truly on! Not only that, but because opportunities were so rare in my hometown and I was so determined to be successful at what I wanted to do, I travelled 2.5 hours from Birmingham to Manchester and 2.5 hours back EVERY WEEKDAY for 6 months! It was tiring! My friends noticed I wasn’t in the best health because of it and the added pressure of it being my first job was not great for me, but that’s what I had to do. Now looking back, I maybe would have done things slightly differently, like moving closer to work, but I was young and I think in the back of my mind, I wasn’t quite ready to move out at that point.
Your first credit as an animator was on the AAA Videogame LEGO: Jurassic World. How did that come about?
Luckily, because I had worked on a video game with dinosaurs, I (perhaps naively) thought I could make the jump up to animating on a video game that was headed to be the number 1 seller in Europe.
But I didn’t let that deter me. I was working at the time in a hotel in my local hometown because animation work for a young guy with one tiny independent studio animation credit to his name isn’t exactly flooded with work.
I remember crystal clear the email I wrote to get that job, some would say I was a try hard or being annoying, but I had nothing to lose. The producer at the time said in her email that they wouldn’t be able to hire me because, “I simply didn’t have the experience they were looking for”. I sent a reply to that email that would change my life forever. I was not angry or irritated, I simply replied that I understood and that “I would like very much to get some experience”, somehow that must have struck a chord with the producer because she very kindly sent me an animation test for the job. And so, the hotel I worked at kindly let me stay for a week in a room that was “out of order”. It was in there that I was able to have the space and the time to use my heavily ageing laptop and spend a week animating the test. I had to animate two characters in a shot. I got the job and the rest as they say, is history.
You have been working on the German series PETZI, a CGI series that has the appearance of the stop motion style familiar in TV shows such as Pingu or Postman Man. What challenges were there attempting to deliver that style in CGI?
For those who don’t know, Petzi was a kids TV series I helped animate at a German Studio called “Studio Soi”. They are famous for the stop motion CGI style that they do for “The Gruffalo”. I wouldn’t say there were challenges in animating to this style, but it was certainly “different”. Putting all your animation poses every two frames was certainly something I had never done before, but it gave a really cool look to the animation. Also when animating in this style, you REALLY appreciate the art of good, strong posing and making clear, readable movement.
Does the technology employed in PETZI mean that the type of stop motion animation used on Wallace and Gromit for example, is likely to become a thing of the past?
I don’t think actual stop motion animation is going to be going away anytime soon. It’s true that it has gotten a lot smaller in recent years, but there is a charm and an artistry in stop motion animation that you simply can’t get with a computer and this shows when an audience watches it on a screen. However, with the technology used in Petzi, it’s true that it can be done quicker, so for small scale TV shows, it’s absolutely a cool style choice and something that looks different to many other things you see on TV.
Is it essential to speak German in a German studio? How good is your German? Did you study it in school?
It isn’t essential, but it definitely helps and learning a new language should be something everybody at least tries to do, not just for developing as a professional, but just as developing as a person. This also goes for living in a different country and immersing yourself in another culture. You see the world differently. This is certainly one of the benefits of being an animator, you get to see the world! Ich spreche SEHR eimbissien Deutsche, and especially animating on Petzi, which we had to actually animate in German, was definitely easier once I knew some German.
Animating the mouth to match with the German voice dialogue was a definite challenge. I did study German in school, I don’t know what it is like nowadays, but we had to do French and either Spanish or German. But while I learnt quite a lot in school, actually going there and speaking it is a very different thing. In school you get a good grasp of the basics but I had forgotten most of it by the time I arrived at the age of 26. I would recommend to anyone in school to study a foreign language though, especially if you are dreaming of living abroad. I only studied it for three out of my five high school years.
Manou The Swift
You have recently worked on the visually stunning upcoming major motion picture “Manou The Swift” from Luxx Studios starring Kate Winslet and Willem Dafoe. How did that opportunity come about?
I had come to the end of my previous project “Petzi”, and I was about ready to pack my bags and head home to England, but the truth of the matter is that I simply wanted to stay in Germany just a little bit longer. So I did a little research on local studios around the area (and by research I mean a simple google search) and it turned out there were many more than I thought there were. I sent a few emails out, but most of the studios did things that weren’t really interesting to me. I came across “Manou The Swift” and as luck would have it, they were in real need of animators for a few months to come help finish off the movie! Which was perfect for me!
You find a lot of jobs come along due to just the right timing sometimes, and just the right amount of luck.
How long does it take to create something like “Manou the Swift”?
That really depends entirely on the size of the studio making the production. Somewhere like Pixar who have hundreds of artists and technicians at their disposal, normally take about 2-3 years from the start of production to the end (not counting the many years that go into making the concept and story for the show) but with something like Manou The Swift, where there were probably only about 30 of us in total, it takes much longer.
Also the studio needed to generate money in the meantime, which means people would have to delay production of the movie in order to create work for clients. Luxx Studios, where I worked on Manou The Swift, did a few visual effects shots in movies like “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. The money generated from things like this helped to ensure a boost in funds for Manou The Swift, but also delayed the production slightly.
What are the steps involved in developing a scene on a big production, and how many artists are involved? How many does it take to create a single frame for a movie?
I couldn’t tell you an exact number of people, but one single shot requires many different talents to complete it. Firstly a storyboard artist will draw an image very close to a sort of “comic book” style panel, showing how the shot will look and the general look and feel of the shot, then, once the director has approved that panel, it will go into an “animatic” where that panel will be developed more in-depth. A few more vague drawings of the characters acting will be added so that people know how the shot will look in continuity with the shots surrounding it.
After the director then approves this, the layout team will transfer the drawings into CGI, where they will setup the shot using assets from the modelling team and add the camera and any movements the camera will make. The layout team also then add very simple, basic movements, so that the animation team have a clear idea of where a shot starts and ends. It then gets handed to an animator and after the animator, the shot goes to someone who adds light to the shot to make it look pretty and characters or props that need fur or hair will be passed to an artist who deals solely on hair and fur.
Then the shot will be rendered, where all those elements of the character models, animation, lighting etc. will be added together to create a final image. Once that final image is created, a compositor will go in to add any final touches like colour and to make sure everything looks correct and that will be the shot complete. The director will have full input into every stage of the process and a shot will not be able to continue unless the director gives the approval.
What software do you use on a show?
Personally as an animator, I use Autodesk Maya, and Autodesk 3Ds Max. I prefer Maya, but they both work very well as animation tools. However, different departments use different software, for example, Nuke, by The Foundry is extremely effective as a compositing tool, or if you prefer Adobe’s After Effects is also an option. In the TV show I am currently working on, the team are very proud to be using a video game engine called “Unity” to render all the backgrounds and lighting. This is a big step for the “Unity” Engine as they are very excited to see what can be done using their engine outside of video games.
It goes all over my head personally, as I’m just an animator haha, but the studio are very proud of what they have achieved and it looks STUNNING! But software is not just an important part of an artist’s toolkit, production software is critical to ensuring deadlines are met. Software like “Shotgun” are great examples of Time management software making sure all of us crazy artists are kept under control and don’t spend too much time perfecting minute details of a shot.
Future
What are your next projects?
So by the time you read this, I will have started my next project, which is a super cool looking TV show for kids called “TREASURE TREKKERS” I have been lucky enough to be hired by a company in Tenerife, so I am now living in the Canary Islands, and while there is a lot of hard work to be done and deadlines to meet…getting to live by the beach in constant sunshine and 30 degree heat certainly has its perks.
Advice
Do you have any advice for people wanting to get into animation as a career?
Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t first and foremost. Animation is a very competitive industry and honestly, not many people make the jump from student to full time professional successfully. However, if you are passionate about it and have determination, you are already halfway there!
It’s important that you remain open to working in low paid jobs in order to follow your dream because you have to start somewhere. You learn key skills that will help you in your animation career, like communicating with people and learning to conduct yourself in an appropriate professional manner and trust me, especially if you are self-employed like me, knowing that balance of friendly and professional is a HUGE help!
Also, putting yourself in that position allows you to meet all sorts of new people, whether it’s working in a hotel like me, or in a warehouse, or even a shop! The experiences you have in life and the people you meet, will all help towards you becoming a better artist! Just keep focused on where you want to be going, and don’t settle for the stable job you will be in.
But most importantly of all, don’t be afraid to move cities, or even countries for work! I have seen many talented people who have lost out on opportunities because of the move for the work. It is scary at first to leave behind friends and loved ones but I promise you it is worth the sacrifice!
Links
You can follow Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BHearnden
Discover who Petzi is: https://www.zdf.de/kinder/petzi
Information on Manou the Swift can be found here
Watch the trailer to Ben’s latest project, Treasure Trekkers
