Industry Feedback from DNEG

Santiago Colomo

Yesterday we were fortunate to welcome DNEG animation supervisor Santi Colomo and Dara McGarry, Artist Manager at Double Negative, for online industry feedback with our students.

Santiago Colomo is an animation supervisor at DNeg, with 16 years experience in the industry.  Santiago and Dara joined us online via Google Meet and Syncsketch to offer feedback to our animation students on their short film project "Moon Rockz", directed by Molly Babington, which is nearing completion.

Industry feedback is at the heart of what we do at Escape Studios; it helps our students to connect with the commercial world and make sure we're teaching industry-relevant skills.

Santi Colomo Martinez

Dara McGarry

Santi Colomo Martinez is an animation supervisor at DNeg.  He is an animator with 16 years of experience in Films, Commercials and Games, skilled at both character and creature animation. Trained as a traditional Illustrator, Santi also teaches animation, both online and as a visiting lecturer in England and Spain.

Dara McGarry
Dara McGarry is Artist Manager at Double Negative; she works in talent, production, and resource management at DNeg. Prior to joing DNeg she had a successful career as an actor - you can see her IMDB profile here; her acting credits include Meet the Robinsons (2007), Chicken Little (2005) and Assassin's Creed (2016).

Studio Project Module PR5001
Santi and Dara generously gave up an hour of their time yesterday to take a look at "Moon Rockz", one of our MA storyboarding and animation projects, in which our students form themselves into groups and create short animated films, working to a variety of creative briefs. Moon Rockz involves a collaboration between groups of MA students studying storyboarding, animation, 3D VFX and 2D Compositing.

"Moon Rockz"

Still image from "Moon Rockz"

Santi helped the animation team push the standard of their work, helping them to make their shots more expressive, and better communicate what the characters are thinking and feeling.

Santi gave us the time to go through all the shots on the film, drawing expressive poses in Syncsketch and making sure that every shot was as good as it could be. All our animators got notes, and all of them will be able to push their shots a little bit further before the May 29th deadline for delivery.

Industry feedback
Here at Escape Studios we also host regular industry feedback sessions, where students can get feedback from industry guests.  Industry feedback forms one of the five pillars of "The Escape Method"; important because it helps to keep us grounded in the real world of the animation industry.

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 2020, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.