Framestore

To be entirely honest I hadn't heard of Framestore before Natalie mentioned them to us on Monday when she told us we would be going there. After visiting their site and finding out that they had done the CGI for some amazing films and adverts such as Avatar and Narnia I started to realise how much of a big deal it is that Natalie had managed to get us shown around. 
The reception were we waited was stunning and had a huge mural of Coca Colas most recent advert. We also helped ourselves to the Framestore freebies left out!

We were then shown into an office and introduced to Simon Gosling who took us through a presentation. The first thing of course that struck me about the office was the very impressive trophy cabinet along the far wall, which included six D&AD Pencil awards.

Simon talked us through how they worked on Avatar which was absolutely amazing and mind blowing to see how much is put in to even just the shortest bit of film.

He then talked us through the Andrex advert, and explained to us how it was quite a touchy subject as people were so used to seeing the original puppy, that seeing a more human like animation may throw some people off. Because of this they had to get the puppy looking as real as possible, they achieved this by taking 4 steps...

Modelling - essentially 3D plastacine, this stage also includes rigging a skeleton

Texturing - eg-adding fur

Animation - getting it to move

Lighting - making it look realistic

We also had a chat about the Coca Cola advert that was shown during the Superbowl... a very fought over spot for advertisers. The advert itself cost approximately 2 million to create and a whole 6 million just for the air time! 

He then went on to talk to us about an interactive project that they'd been working on with Nokia. The idea is that anyone can create a bit of CGI, merging it with their own videos all from their mobile phone. Although their were some complications, because of the file size that is required for this app mobile phones simply do not have the capacity. They solved this by having the files sent to a 'render cloud' and then the customers can receive their videos via the web.

  

We then went downstairs where a team were hard at work, but were kind enough to talk us through what they were doing... which I didn't  manage to follow for very long! Maybe I'll stick to graphic design then!


Simon showed us out and told us that if we ever needed any help we could come to him. We have his email address and I think its great to be building up contacts already. He also told us it's not what you know but who you know in this industry, some very sound advice I'd say!


I left Framestore utterly speechless, so much information was fed to us we didn't quite know what to do with it. One things for sure I am extremely grateful for that opportunity that was presented, and at least if I never win a pencil award I've seen one close up!