Recently I wrote a post about the English Animation which inspired me to become an animator, and in the introduction I shared some of the animations I had made. A motive to writing that, and continuing in this vein, is that I'm in the process of switching careers. I will still be doing some animation on the side - but henceforth I can't see it being my primary occupation. So I am, in a sense, coming to terms with that shift. I thought I would follow those quite home-spun projects with a selection of the best commercial work for clients that I have done. Not totally spent, who knows perhaps this may even get me some work as a side hustle?
As a caveat before I get into this - there are many projects that I feel blessed to have been closely involved with over the years but for which I can't claim significant stylistic input. I've done a lot of work for a lovely company called PRISM but, in the way of things, I've often been in a supporting role there, working in the shadows. I did a number of animations at Intro with Mat Cook and Julian House but in that situation I was mostly just engineering or executing their vision. Likewise for many years I worked for the advertising agency VCCP - but mainly doing "cleanup" compositing work - so there's not much to show for that effort. The Colorcalm film I made working with Peter Saville, who I remember getting to sign a copy of Joy Division's "Closer" for Mark Fisher, was a highlight but where the resulting film isn't worth sharing.
Channel 4 "Beer"
Twenty three years ago in December 2003 my very first professional animation work had been for a company called Blue Source in Notting Hill Gate. The studio had a working relationship with the group Coldplay. I think they must have been the band's friends before they broke. However, I never personally worked on any Coldplay videos. Honest guv! Lol. Although actually I don't mind Coldplay at all - it's only Trendy Wendys who get their knickers in a twist about them.
My introduction to Blue Source came from the salesman who sold us both the very first copies of Final Cut Pro available in the UK. At Blue Source I met a really talented art director, something of a future star, called Joe Burrin. Joe introduced me and got me in at a company called Spin. This, in May 2004, was where it all took off for me.
Spin, run by Tony Brook and his wife Patricia Finegan, were a big deal because they had won a BAFTA for a Channel 4 ident with flocking birds. It was significant because it was a notable collision of the worlds of pure graphic design and TV. Tony, a music aficionado and highly-respected historian of graphic design, had pitched the idea for a Friday night ident of a pan over a wall of fizzing lager to the TV channel. That's all I had to go on - no layouts or anything.
I organised a small shoot in the Spin studios at Oval and using those assets pulled the film together. I roto'd out some bubble "streams" and with some streams I actually animated the bubbles myself. I added touches like the shadows of people walking in the background to break things up. It was quite simple to do, but I did it elegantly and the result was very effective. This was one of the rare things that I had done which people actually saw! It blows my mind that I still have the original QuickTime file for this - I've always been careful to archive my work.
Mr. Wright Title Sequence
This small job came through my connections in advertising production. My friend the producer Lynne Hurley said her pal Jacqui at the agency Mugshots had made a film, a gay romance, and that she was looking for a title sequence. This was a nice opportunity for me to art direct something myself - because a lot of the time I worked with designers and animated assets for them.
Today, of course, many designers are reasonably good animators themselves. But twenty years ago Adobe After Effects was forbiddingly complex to people used to Quark and Freehand. Nowadays there are online courses like School of Motion and colleges like Ravensbourne which churn out people with these skills.
I found a website which was licensing old wallpapers, bought this lovely font, and arranged a video shoot with the actors which I storyboarded beforehand. I remember that I caused a lot of discomfort to the actors by suggesting that (as silhouettes!) they kiss - and I think we avoided this. I never really understood why that was a problem...
Practice Hours Grime DVD
This was possibly the earliest opportunity I had to use my animation skills in the context of things which fascinated me personally. In 2006 I reached out to a guy called Troy Miller who was the mastermind behind the early Grime DVDs and offered to make a slick menu system for his latest DVD. I remember Troy coming around to see me at our house on Old Street. I'd never done something like this before but it worked really well.
Gorillaz "El Manana"
In October 2005 I got the call from an agency informing me that a company called "Zombie Flesheaters" needed urgent help. I didn't really know who they were, but realised when I showed up in Shepherds Bush that it was Gorillaz.
I worked with Jamie Hewlett who had been struggling to get the effect of one of his drawings "drawing on" as the track played. They had been trying to do it in Shake (at the time the equivalent of The Foundry's Nuke software). It's an effect that's actually very difficult to achieve with such a complex drawing in Adobe After Effects. I brought my own Mac along and used the elegant rotoscoping software called Commotion to record me rubbing away the individual lines. Then we played the result backwards.
I remember Damon Albarn showing up one day and everyone watched Little Britain's parody sketch of Blur together. In the studio they played classic rock 24/7 - Bowie, Zep, Beatles. It was a fun scene and although I've never really been a fan of Gorillaz I still like 'em. This film was eventually used as a backdrop at Gorillaz Live in Manchester which was put on DVD.
SONY "High Definition"
I met a lovely and very talented guy called Paul McGeoch working at an agency in Soho and Paul got me involved on this SONY job in 2010. This was a hugely significant moment for me because it was working for the director Johnny Hardstaff who was based at RSA Films. I had left Ridley Scott Associates under a huge cloud in 1995. I had worked there as a runner (detailed in my post on The Black Dog) and it had all gone pear-shaped. Indeed shortly after I left, the whole company got turned upside down. There was definitely a chaotic atmosphere there at the time.
When Paul let me know about the job I sent a message to the then CEO Kai and told her that I was coming in - but that I would be on my best behaviour. I maybe should have told Paul? I reasoned that if Kai didn't want me there then she could easily deal with it - and I wanted the opportunity to redeem myself. It was incredibly moving for me to be back in the RSA Films offices. I had worked there straight out of university for two years. It's still the only place that I have ever had a full-time job. I'm not sure what the reason was but Ridley Scott, who I had met once before when I was there in the nineties, dropped by our office and kind of gestured at me. He doesn't speak much to underlings! It seemed somehow significant to me - like he had been alerted (or warned...) I was going to be there. A little context, in case this seems somehow inflated, I did get to know both his sons Jake and Luke a little when I working there.
Johnny Hardstaff the director was riding high on videos for Radiohead and Bjork. He's an incredibly gifted director, and Paul, a redheaded Scot, is also fantastic. However, I do have my fingerprints on a lot of this - I built CG in Autodesk Maya like the camera and device which removes the pin in the shelves (I remember being really pleased with the spring), and I did a lot of the compositing in After Effects. There was some production controversy - SONY were not pleased with there being machines they hadn't designed in the adverts - and there was a last minute tussle with the music licensing. AC/DC had asked for a million quid - so they had to switch the music. To this day they are stunning adverts.
Science Museum Launchpad
I don't know exactly how I got involved in this in 2007. Somehow my name got through to Harry Pearce at the legendary design agency Pentagram. I went along to a meeting at their beautiful old offices in Notting Hill Gate. There, with Pearce, I met Tim Molloy who was the Creative Director at the Science Museum. I remember them saying we have X amount of money only - can you do it for that?
I shot the young people myself on DV and I must have worked it up using some layouts from Pentagram themselves. It's a nice film but I've always felt that it is technically flawed and I could have improved upon it. The launch was a slightly awkward event too because there were some complicated vibes. Mainly it was a great opportunity for me - even if it did play for many years at the Science Museum.
BFI Horror Season
One of the most lovely design companies I worked for was Village Green. This spot was designed by the genius Peter Richardson, but I remember bringing a lot to it with the cut-out animation-style and the visual effects. Pete also designed a cute bicycle called the Wren.
Muppets
When I made these Muppets spots for Disney in 2011 my children were 7 and 10 and, not only were they glued to the Disney channel, they also loved the Muppets movie which came out that year. Consequently making these films was a big kick for me. They got to see my work on the telly and it made me a bit of hero at home at that magical period in their childhood.
All I had to work with on these on were some random shots of the Muppets against green screen (some of which I layered up into groups) and I came up with the idea of these backgrounds (which I built in Maya). This would have played out with music but like a number of these archived films I am sharing the music has gone AWOL or I never had it in the first place.
Google Express
For eight years I worked as a freelance Motion Graphics Designer at a company called Wolff Olins. This was a very cool company and at the time they were the cutting-edge branding agency in the world. They built that eminence not so much on design - and the design WAS exquisite - but rather on strategy. Something of an intellectual organisation, in heavily researching a client's accounts and their market data they sought fresh channels of communication to their customers. This is as opposed to doing what many design companies do, which is come up with some pretty-looking fluff.
As a result their work could often look weird in the context of the design world. This is because WO wasn't kowtowing to trends. The best example of how the work could land oddly is the famous branding they gave to the London Olympics. They'd just done that when I started to work for them. Soon after that came their branding for Wacom which was also controversial.
The company had a unusually creative vibe. It was a bit more like a wacky sixties art school than a design agency. When I was working at Wolff Olins I met some really beautiful people: Karl Sadler. Sandy Suffield. Leanne Bentley. Jody Hudson-Powell. Oliver Heifrich. Rejane Dal Bello. Sophie Paynter. The company had been swallowed up by the monstrous WPP in 2001 and yet it seems like they kept their independent spirit for a long time. However, towards the end of the period I worked there the atmosphere began to change. They moved out of their offices on the Caledonian Road, where they had their own delicious canteen, and one by one the people I knew and respected all moved on.
I worked for so many different high-profile clients for Wolf Olins and the work was always fresh and interesting. For many years I wasn't able to share what I did for the company because it was all heavily covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements. Looking back now I wonder if that damaged my career to some extent? One job I did for them which I particularly like was this for Google Express in 2016. I remember designing and animating it - and also working up all these beautiful behaviours for the parachute too.
Innerpeffray Library
Someone I've worked with on multiple occasions over the years is the director Jonty Toosey. We go way back to my days at art school when I first met him. This job in 2013 came through Jonty - a promotional animation for this library which was of central importance to The Scottish Enlightenment. I think that we must have flown to Edinburgh together and got the train up to Crieff.
Once there I took painstaking measurements of the whole library - all the shelves, tables, and books - and with the help of the friendly librarian we photographed imagery from the books. Then back home I reconstructed the library in CG in Autodesk Maya. The voice-over was done by the great Scottish actor Dennis Lawson. What a lovely project to work on!
Learn Amp
This job from 2018 has a special place in my heart. I'd always wanted to do a proper 2D animation like I had often made for myself - but within a professional context. I really thought that this would be a good direction to steer my career! However, this ended up being one of the most stressful jobs I ever worked on. The client had what I think were unreasonably high expectations (I remember them showing me the equivalent of Pixar movies as a reference) and no experience at all commissioning animation. They were borderline appalled by what I did - but to this day I think it's great! Oh well!
Mozilla
This from 2016 was an absolute dream job. I'm a diehard fan of the company - Firefox and Thunderbird all the way. I'd worked with a lovely person called Leanne Bentley at Wolff Olins and when she moved to Michael Johnson Associates she gave me the nod.
I worked for the genius Michael Johnson there at his company as a freelancer for many years on all kinds of wonderful ethical accounts (which are his specialty). It's a shame I don't get any work from them these days - but new creatives bring new animators with them and the wheel keeps turning.
ArtFund Animations 2016-2020
ArtFund came to me originally through my friend from Wolff Olins, Rejane Dal Bello who, since I've known her, has become a design world superstar. I never worked with Rejane for them but I think she worked up their brand when she was at Wolff Olins.
I did many many short animations for ArtFund which were informed by the brand's excellent design aesthetic. I always enjoyed carefully tailoring these exquisitely clean animations for them. It was nice to be working too for a brand which was doing such a great service in the world.
I've not often worked for toxic brands - but sometimes it was inevitable! And gotta say, right or wrong, usually I've been able to rationalise what they were trying to achieve in the marketplace. I find it hard to cast the first stone. However, I have on a couple of occasions ducked out of jobs I thought were unethical - one car company I remember asking me remove exhaust fumes from the footage of their vehicles... Nope!
Vodafone MWC
This was for the advertising agency Ogilvy that I always get a kick out of working for. That's probably because when I was researching my comic book TPM I read "Ogilvy On Advertising". Just this year I've done work for the brands Viasat and Chep for them.
This was made in 2024 just before WPP shrunk the company - a consolidation which came owing to the headwinds which have affected the traditional advertising model. The challenge here was primarily technical in VFX - getting very solid matchmove tracking done on stock footage not shot with that in mind, and making convincing-looking CG elements.
NSSIF
I did this working for my dear brother Toby Ingram for his company Scarlett. I think of all the films here in this 16 Greatest Hits this is the work I am most proud of. I designed all the layouts myself and worked up visual concepts which did Toby's script justice. I'd love to do more of this kind of work!
P-POD
And finally a favourite from 2024! Researching my book "The Garden" I visited the New Alchemy Institute in Cape Cod. I fell in love with Hilde Maingay and Earle Barnhart there, and after lunch in their greenhouse volunteered to make a free animation for them.
I really pulled out the stops and although I wasn't charging them I'm proud that I worked very hard. We got through a number of revisions until they were happy. Of course, this is the kind of far-out product that the arsenal of advertising should be promoting. I was really pleased with the way the film came out.
-
Over the past quarter of a century I've had some wonderful times working as a Motion Graphics Designer. It has been really special to dig into my archives and re-present these old films. Gotta say I don't think any of them have dated particularly which is a testament to the good work wot I done. I'd like to give a sincere "Thank you" to all the clients who placed their confidence in me over the years.
