London Industrial visit, March 2010

Day One.

Arrived in London today, 8th March 2010, after leaving Wrexham at 8am, and after resting for a little while and getting my room sorted out I partook in the atmosphere of the West end, with Gemma Morris and Ying Yau and one of Ying's friends, who acted as a sort of unofficial tour guide as she lives's down in London.

As I very rarely come to London, I welcomed having some one around my own age, and with similar interests to show me around the West end of London, mainly the tube stations and China town. I am looking forward to tomorrow, 9th March 2010, as I am going to visit the companies Double Negative in the morning and in the afternoon Picasso Pictures. I'm not sure what to expect from these companies as I was not expecting t

o be going to see these companies so I have not really looked at them till the Friday before we came down.

Day Two.

Well started today by going to Double Negative where they showed us around there studio's and showed us a show real of the current work and talked abut work they are doing as well as ways to get into the film and animation industry, but due to a Non Disclosure Agreement I have signed I can not go into much detail, other than to list the new movies that are due out this year, such as Ironman 2, Sherlock Holmes and Hot Fuzz.

I then had some time to kill before I had to be at Picasso Pictures so I walked along Oxford street window shopping and looking for other animation houses.

In the afternoon I visited Picasso Pictures where they showed us around the studio, which was a bit on the cramped side, but they were working on some new Direct Line T.V. adverts.

If had to sum up what I all of the visits today would be to learn the following two programs, Adobe Flash and Autodesk Maya. I then rounded the day off with a trip round to the local public house with some of the second and third years from animation.

Day Three.

This was the most informative day as I started the day by going to 12foot6 where they showed us a selection of work on the show real they have for this year, including Dog Judo, which I had seen a few of on Youtube.

This was followed up by a walk to Cartoon Network to talk with a few members of the development team, on the way there I called into Nickelodeon and Sony to find out if they had in anyone in the development team that had five minutes to give a short tour, I was unsuccessful however I did get the e-mails for the people to contact in future. I then went to Cartoon Network where they showed us a selection of work and tips on pitching to a green light council.

In all I highly enjoyed the this visit to London as I have seen how the pro's work and the standards that they set for others to work in the industry, and plan to build on it in October when I go back for the animation expo over halloween weekend.