Action Plan Research: Lumiere Studios

With Bath's proximity to London and Bristol, 2 of the UKs largest animation cities I thought that it would be a good idea to open up my search to those places, there are relatively few animation studios actually inside Bath, less than 10. Open up the search to Bristol and that more than quarduples, open it up to London and the numbers in the hundreds already, all within an hour train ride from Bath.

Although ideally I'd prefer not to have to commute so far everyday, if it would result in a well payed job with great experience then I'd probably do it. So I'll be applying at a few places.

One of the most prevalent animation studios in London is Lumiere Studios. They work primarily on commercials for a variety of high profile clients for television, I recognised several of them immediately! They have also created a few short films, probably as a showcase, like most studios do.

http://www.lumierestudios.co.uk/lumiere_site_v3/

I think that my work in graphic design puts me in a great position for applying to a studio which specialises in advertising, as the principles are very similar, but with film as the medium rather than print. Building my portfolio towards corporate identity and product development like I plan to over the summer will give me a great start for applying to companies.

Lumiere themselves are one of the biggest animation houses in London, and work on a huge range of projects, from make up for Max Factor, to adverts for Sony Playstation. All of the work is to a very high professional standard, I'd really have to up my portfolio before I applied here, for fear of being laughed out the door!

The majority of their work is also CG, so learning Maya or 3DS Max over the summer would give me a huge advantage as I expected. There is 2D work out there... But much less of it than 3D. so I definitely need to hop on the CGI train if I want to have an easier time in this industry.