Industry Indents: MPC

MPC is another amazing VFX company based in London, Vancouver, Montréal, Los Angeles, New York, Amsterdam, Bangalore and Mexico City. With these many facilities it will come as no surprise that they produce such a great volume of fantastic visuals.

MPC has worked on Advertisements and film, made possible by a team of talented and enthusiastic artists. Examples of their amazing hard work can be see below:

So.. why does this inspire me? Well, how can such awe creating team work not inspire a person in this medium?

More importantly when did this company become inspiring to me? On Feb 27th this year, I attended a VFX masterclass  presented by MPC's Adam Davis, on the VFX and crowd simulation in World War-Z. Davis described to us the difficult use of motion capture data, caused by the awkward twists a half dead zombie makes while grasping for the next host; well... the guy mimicking the zombie at any rate. The studio brought in people who could twist their extremities in such ways, the motion capture data was getting confused and glitched. Davis also described the hero animation system MPC made up for both World war-Z and Lone Ranger. Their VFX breakdowns for world war-Z can be seen below:

MPC has a great diversity in the realistic animation they produce, with many different subjects, in both advertising and feature films, has made me aspire to produce such diversity in my work. They have character, creature and object animation in their commercial reel alone, and I should aim to have the same in mine! Hopefully I will have a diverse, realistic, and dynamic showreel for VFX by the end of summer...

Thanks again,

See you soon,

Claire

Industry Indent: Blue Zoo

Blue zoo is a multi-BAFTA winning animation company, who produce:

• Commercials
• series
• Idents
• Development trailers
• and many other types of animation (Check out their styles here)

I first became interested in Blue Zoo when they visited the USW in 2013, however my interest spiked with the Blue Zoo Christmas short, Xmas 2013.

Their use of warm-cool colour contrast and arcs for character movement fascinated me; especially the squirrel character (who I do believe is a Jackalope?!?!), who floated believably. More on this short in a bit... Blue Zoo has won 2 British Animation awards for their series 'Those Scurvy Rascals' and won a BAFTA in 2012 for 'Best independent Production Company'. The different style used within the studio is what makes Blue Zoo so appealing to me, from 'Lessons in the force' to their animal planet stings, their range of styles shows their adaptability in their work. I personally love their pieces for stings and commercials the most, mainly because of this diversity. Most of these feature a hand made look, rather like the Xmas 2013 short, in which you can feel the artist's influence and hand in the pieces. Even shiny pieces like the Rugby League World Cup 2013, stings, you can see the thought behind the style used, and the simplistic shapes used for the characters only highlights their animation teams' ability.

Their diversity in animation styles, not just textual, is my main pull to this company. As a student now working to diversify my showreel for multiple styles, studying Blue Zoo's studio pieces is proving integral for my studies.

Looking forward to seeing way more from them soon!
See you later,
Claire