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Studio Eleven Collaboration

I am a freelance Flash animator and was traditionally trained. I attended The Arts Institute at Bournemouth in 1998, studying a degree in Film and Animation, and specialising in animation. After this three-year course, I left with 1st Class Honours to embark on a Postgraduate course at Central Saint Martins in London. This was a 6-month 2D animation course, which also included an introduction to Flash. From there I got a job as a runner at StudioAKA (Pizzaz) for 6 months; then 5 months at King Rollo Films on two Children's series (drawn animation), and am now working with a few companies in Flash, and have been using the program ever since. see my work

My main reason for contacting freelance animators is to form a team that can work together on a series or production. I have recently finished working on a series for Channel 4 called Blue Dragon, a pitch, Gusanox for a company in Peru and Testtube babies for a company in Begium. During these progects I worked with a few other animators to complete different episodes, using broadband Internet connection and MSN messenger (instant messaging and file transfer) to correspond. I also downloaded scenes to be animated and uploaded them back onto the company server when they were finished. This system worked very well and so came this concept of joining together a team of animators and designers to work on a given job remotely.

How will this collaboration work?

The idea of this collaboration is to bring together people of different specialist areas to work as a team. By producing a group show reel and portfolio, we will be offering our clients a wider range of services and thus our job prospects will increase. Furthermore, we can also adapt the reel to suit the type of job that we intend to pitch for. This reel / portfolio would then be sent to clients and existing contacts, and everyone would be represented as a company or collaboration.

If a particular style is required for a job that matches your skills, you may be invited by e-mail or phone call, to attend a meeting with the client to discuss the project and the technicalities. The work must be completed within a set time frame, and correspondence between the director or lead animator/designer will be dealt with via MSN Messenger or similar. Some productions may require a number of scenes to be completed and a server will be set up online for members to download files and upload finished designs and animations.

Initially, there will be a lot of organization and collecting of work in order to make a show reel and portfolio. For this a small studio will be set up. This studio will be mainly for administration, and possibly training sessions, but these can also be done online using MSN Messenger. I will require a few people to run this studio. Their role will be to:

· Invite animators and designers to the team and review submissions of possible new members.

· Look for new work.

· Compile new and specific show reels and portfolios

· Deal with contracts and invoicing.

· Receive project material from clients, organize it and send it to the relevant designers /animators.

The company will operate on a tier system so as your skills improve, you will be given more responsibility within your specialist area. For those people who may want to learn a new skill, be it Flash or how to animate, workshops will be run to broaden people's skills. Animators and designers new to the industry may also get work on productions where different levels of skills are needed.

What are the main aims of this Collaboration?

· To provide animators / designers with more constant work.

· To increase our contact diversity.

· To approach clients as a team of skilled animators and designers

· To have a business that can change to the needs of the industry, i.e. different skill base (3d/2d/flash or other), approach different countries (for clients and animators).

If you are interested in joining a collaboration of animators and designers please could you fill in the attached application form and send your CV and a sample of your work, (either a link, CD or VHS). Higher quality versions will be asked for later.

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