Second year of university has begun for me and on the first day itself, we had a briefing known as 'The Rush Job'. Before the day started, my peers and I heard of horrible stories of having to spin out an entire completed animatic in 3 days for this particular brief. That sort of terrified me a little, as knowing my skills in animating- 3 days... it's definitely not enough.

When the briefing came around, it turns out that we were going to create a Christmas advert for Benjamin Cook in a week. I think the idea for this briefing was to help us start a mini collaboration with the Film and also the Television students. I was grouped with Hamish, Emma and Alex from Animation & VFX with Georgia, Lydia and Jack from Film/TV.

Briefing of 'The Rush Job'.
From there we discussed a storyline we decided to go with and distributed out the tasks. Hamish took on the task of making the animatic, Emma and Alex were helping with concepts, Georgia and Lydia were in charge of the script and also audio, while Jack was just filming the process of the entire production. I was appointed the job of the director/producer, overlooking the entire production.

After reading the script that was sent to us that day itself, it was clear that us Animation & VFX students and the Film/TV students were not on the same page on the vision that we pictured and discussed. However, after a few revisions, we managed to pull through and started the animations.

Here's our final animatic:


Despite the little hiccups, it was fun to be able to collaborate with the Film/TV students for a change and get to know how indifferent it is to be working with people across departments. It also helped in getting ourselves ready for another intensive term of animating. Without a doubt, I was happy with the group I was placed in. Everyone worked well together and was very productive with every task they were put to. I wouldn't mind working with them all again. 'The Rush Job' was an incredible experience, especially with Ann & Kathy doing a little act!

(Left-Right): Kathy, Ann & Derek.