Daniel Baidoo Animator on "Hurricane"

Many congratulations to 3rd year animation undergraduate Daniel Baidoo, who recently finished work as a junior animator on the WW2 movie "Hurricane", currently in theatres in the UK.

Daniel did the work this summer with Lipsync Post in London.

Daniel started his animation career by interning at King Bee animation while he was still a first year undergraduate. Later he joined Lipsync and worked as a Junior animator on Showdogs.

We asked him how he got the position on "Hurricane", and what advice he might have for other students at Escape Studios looking to find internships and summer jobs.

Escape: How did you get the job on "Hurricane"?
Daniel: I got to work at Hurricane because Lipsync kept me on from the previous show we worked on - Showdogs. After Showdogs, we started working on Hurricane doing previs (previsualisation) work, while the company was recruiting new artists for the movie.

Escape: What were some of the challenges working on the movie?
Daniel: Some of the challenges were to get the speed of the plane and CG camera right. Also it was a challenge to have the airplane flying in a believable way. Our animation supervisors also made a few custom tools to improve our animation workflow.

Escape: What would you do differently next time?
Daniel: Next time I would try to get more detailed information about how high the aircraft usually flies, the speed that they reach when they are taking-off, diving or how they might actually react when crashing against the ground, or against another aircraft.  I would also collect more reference generally about airplanes and how they fly and behave.

Escape: What advice would you offer to other students looking for a summer job or internship?
Daniel: The main advice I can give to students looking for a summer internship is to don’t give up and to really have the passion for animation.

Do your CV and showreel, even if you think that is not good enough. It is a starting point and you will build up on top of it.

The second step is to be online looking for studios and recruiters. Another good way to find an internship is to go to VFX events where you can directly interact with people. If you know a lot of people in the industry, your chance to find out about new animation position increase drastically.

The last piece of advice is to keep in touch with people, artists and recruiter that you met online or in real life.  Once in a while send them your work, asking for feedback. They will see your progress and they will understand that you are really passionate about animation.

You can see Daniel's work at his website here.

To see more about how to apply for animation internships, see this blog post.




The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2019, follow this link.   To apply, visit the offical page here.