OCA Internship

Your demoreel decides everything!

Animator of Axis animation studio, founder of OCA. studio school, director and supervisor of animation of the series "My Babushka smokes a pipe" Ivan Pavlov - about how to get into a foreign studio, what is the difference between working "there" and "here", what to do "here" to be "there", and about how the love for a song can grow into a whole animated series.

Portfolio for work abroad

My work abroad began in London. I got a contract with Framestore studio. I worked on the Christopher Robin project. Now I have a contract with Axis Animation in Glasgow. In general, it turns out that animators are mostly nomads. They move from project to project, not always staying with one studio for very long. Of course, the company has its own skeleton, but no one is going to employ hundreds of animators permanently.

In Russia I worked as an animation supervisor (220 Volts of Love, NTV TV Company, jingles) and at some point, I realized that I had almost stopped animating. And this is a skill that has been developed for years, but it gets lost much faster. To prevent that from happening, I started working on shots for myself. Well, since I've been interested in working abroad for a long time, I started collecting shots in a demo reel - so I could show them to foreign studios.

The structure of a portfolio aimed at good projects is something like this: acting, facial animation (lipsync and mimicry), pantomime (a story told without words) and something from physics (running, lifting weights, jumping - something like that). Finally, if you wish, you can show some of your special skills, such as hand-drawn or puppet animation. This is optional, but it will highlight your personality.

When the reel is ready, send it to the studios or post it on LinkedIn and wait for the recruiters to find you. In words, everything is easy, in fact, it can take years to collect a good portfolio. Not even that: you can spend years and still not collect a reel that will get you noticed in a cool studio. For example, the shots you make for studios in Russia may not be suitable for them. The quality of animation in comparison with foreign, we lose a lot. The main reason is that we do not take the time to polish the shot. This is very laborious and one of the longest processes. And we all want it to be quick and immediate. Investors and executives see the spline animation that has been done and do not understand how much better the shot can be if you give the animator time to polish it. It turns out "it's okay like this". Well, while it is possible to sell work at this level, studios do not have to raise it at all.

Initial tasks, stress and the advantage of animators from Russia 

Getting into a studio in Russia is easier. In fact, you can get a job here almost without a reel. There are not enough animators here yet, and studios cannot afford to invite foreigners: foreign specialists are very expensive. We have to make do with those who are in Russia and the CIS. There are not enough of them, and studios are ready to take beginners. Literally at the level of "at least you don't have to explain where which buttons are." They won't take anyone to a foreign studio like that. They can afford to invite specialists from all over the world. And the first thing you need to be prepared for is a huge competition. It immediately changes your position. If you were a strong animator here, you will be average there. If you were average here, you will be weak there. You have to get into the process very quickly and work very hard to get to a higher level. You just have to study every day, otherwise you will just be kicked out. Now, you have to understand that no one is going to give a new person the most difficult and interesting shots right away.

At first, they will look at you on easier tasks. That is okay. When I was a supervisor, I did it myself. The biggest difficulty for me was the language. Before I moved, I improved my English, especially by studying with a native speaker, and then I joined an international team where everyone has their own accent. And language is not the main thing in our profession - it's still very difficult and extremely uncomfortable when you don't understand something. It took me a lot of time and effort to overcome this barrier. Once you get past that stage, it gets easier. Of course, even if you are the coolest animator in the world, you may not be able to speak English at all. They will rip your hands off and give you a translator. But for everyone else, I recommend you to be puzzled by this question in advance. One of the advantages of Russian animators, it seems to me, is just eagerness and willingness to work harder than other foreigners. We are workaholics. When we join a foreign team, at first our guys are very willing to give their best. After a year or two, of course, it is not so noticeable, but at the beginning the Russian guys are ready to work much more than their foreign colleagues.

The difference in approaches

My first experience abroad was a film project - a feature-length film "Christopher Robin". I was surprised that so-called step blocking was completely excluded from the work there. The animators will understand. Step blocking is when you work with the main poses and extremes and skip the rest of the stages. In other words, the animation is played very quickly, going from one pose to the next. The Framestore supervisor didn't want to look at that, it was necessary to show spline blocking right away. And to make a clear spline, you have to spend more time working out not only key poses and extremes, but also breakdowns. I was ready for that: I had left step for many years and had not worked with it. But I think it could be a problem for someone.

In our project and school, we use all this experience: both Russian and foreign. All our leaders, supervisors and team members work in the industry: in Parovoz, in Argunov Studio, in other companies - we use all the approaches and schemes that we think work and are useful.

About the song from which the series was born and about the school from which the series was born

An idea can live in your head for years before it turns into something. That's what happened with "My Babushka Smokes a Pipe". It all started, of course, with a song by Igor Ivanovich Sukachev. I often went to his concerts, played his songs on the guitar, including "My Babushka Smokes a Pipe" - and noticed that this is the song he always ends his concerts with, everyone always waits for it and is very happy about it. And somehow, I was surprised when I found out that there was no video clip on it. And then I realized: you can't make a video clip on it, it's like it was written for animation! Cartoon characters fit perfectly on it. This thought stuck with me and I started thinking about a cartoon for this song. The idea was supported by the artist Dima Razmakhov, with whom we have been friends for a long time. The idea was supported by the artist Dima Razmakhov, with whom we are friends and have been working since VGIK, we started to make some sketches with him... and it took three years for the image we are working with to appear. At first, I didn't want to do what I was doing. The search was difficult. But in the end, we found exactly what we needed. At that time, we hadn't thought about the series. It was a short movie (10 minutes). I had the courage to write to I.I. Sukachev and we met.

At that time, we had nothing special to show: a rough synopsis, some rough sketches, there was not even a picture of Babushka. He asked why we needed her. Gave the go-ahead to use music and lyrics. Well, we continued to work. What you have to understand about unfunded projects: they live in waves and sometimes pause, because everyone involved has a main job. So, in general things are not moving fast. At some point it became clear that we were not going to make a ten-minute animated film without funding. We have to make a little teaser. Then things started to move more quickly: we wrote a synopsis, made an animatic. Many people from different countries joined the project with enthusiasm. So, the project suddenly became international, which was also nice. So, the active work on the teaser began.

We minimized everything we could: in the end, our teaser consists of two characters. It is grandmother Nina Fedorovna (baba Nina) and the tyrant Pashtet. We collected it first and realized that we did not want to let it gather dust without doing anything with it. We need to use it, and not just in the teaser. So the idea of the series "My Babushka Smokes a Pipe" was born. This is a project of about ten episodes for one season, each about a minute long. There are only two characters in it, and everything is based on their reincarnations and relationships. They are cute and funny. Now we have written scripts for five episodes, and we have started active work on the first one. It was under the series that the idea was born to start an educational project.

There are now a huge number of animation schools. More than any other specialty in CG. And they all have similar programs. In fact, the approach of the very first animation school is copied. The student is given a certain model with a rig and a rather abstract task. Take it, invent it, do whatever you want, and then you will be technically corrected. And within the framework of the school, this is actually not bad. But very seriously, it separates you from real production, where there are always hard limits: the script, the style of the project, the quality bar, and the requirements of the team. So, it turns out, as always: when you get to real "combat" tasks after school, at first you sit in terrible stress. It can be very difficult to recover sometimes. And we came up with our OCA Studio School - an online internship for animators and 3D artists.

We want to build the learning process in a different way. In real production. We have our own series, ready-made interesting characters with their own personality. Every episode has its own script. And the script is already a kind of framework: if you're used to working with free academic assignments, it's not so easy for you to play something cool within the script without experience. We have a team and we need a certain amount of interns. This is all a great baptism of fire opportunity. We put interns right into a real production pipeline. So, if someone decides to get a job in the industry after our school (and participating in a real project is a significant contribution to the portfolio), they will no longer have that notorious gap between school assignments and production realities. This is a finished animator with experience.

Now we have started the pantomime group, which is working with us on the first series, and the first group of beginner 3D modelers. Our supervisor Evgeny Lukoshkov created them from scratch, and they will also be able to contribute to the series and model assets for future series. Now we are finishing work on simpler characters, writing a script for them - and we will be able to open a group for beginner animators. Very soon we will open a set in the group for the 2nd series. And before that, we will start a new course in "Body Mechanics". After this course, trainees will be able to try their hand at the series.

In general, we have a lot of different interesting ideas, it's too early to talk about all of them. We always welcome new people. So if you are a specialist in modeling, rigging, animation, shading and textures, lighting and rendering, effects or compositing, or just want to volunteer, we would love to have you join our friendly team. If you don't know how, but want to learn, we already have or will soon have internships in all these areas. And if you just think you could be part of our project, write us. We have our own small but cozy public where we share news, advertise internships, tell all sorts of useful things, and analyze the work of subscribers.