Blue Zoo's Jamie Floodgate Visits Escape Studios

Escapee Jamie Floodgate (right) lead animator at Blue Zoo

On Thursday 21st May we welcomed Escapee Jamie Floodgate, now a lead animator at Blue Zoo animation, to give feedback to our second year animation students. 

Jamie Floodgate gave up his time to review all twelve of the Year Two Animation Studio Projects.  

Escape Studios' tutor Kevin Richards reports on a great day of industry feedback. 

Industry Feedback with Blue Zoo's Jamie Floodgate

Jamie Floodgate from Blue Zoo

Jamie Floodgate went through each film with his usual, distinctively affable precision, care, diligence and polite attention to detail. Jamie's analysis always leaves our students galvanised and fired up with the imperative to improve, and this occasion was no exception.

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High Quality Animation
Jamie was in general very impressed with all the work; the major, positive take away from what was a rather wonderful and inspiring day was that he found the overall quality of the animation consistently high, and most importantly, consistent stylistically, emulating the systematic standards imposed upon animators who work in the industry. 

Particular praise was given to the directors and
lead animators of the projects, echoing my own observations, that each of them had succeeded in the most important job of all in directing any team, of making sure that each film looked like it was animated by one person. Jamie noted with some admiration that all the animation seemed uniform, indicative of fully integrated groups working with one creative purpose.

Critique

Jamie Floodgate

There were of course criticisms, but this is what makes his mentorship visits such a valuable experience for Escape students, perhaps even more than the sincere praise he gives. Each single shot was examined in exacting detail. The process was exhaustive, meticulous, and invigorating, and proceeded from 09.30 to 6 in the evening, across two classes. 

Jamie analysed each shot in every film without exception, noting moments where a motion "hit the wall", where the weight was off centre, where the poses could have been "braver", where they could have been hold longer to have a greater impact. Always, in each criticism, was the same positive note of optimism, that he sincerely believed that in all of the animation he criticised, that the students were capable of fixing the mistakes and improving to make better animation in future.

This was a great event, we very much thank Jamie Floodgate for spending so much time with our 3d animation students, and he is always welcome back in the future.

-- Kevin Richards 


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