Its been a hectic start to the year with lots of news and things going on. First of all the biggest news to report is Blades Animation is relocating. We are currently based in the George Street Chambers in Birmingham. Today I picked up the keys to the new studio located in The Big Peg, I have started moving and hope to be fully moved in by the end of next week.
The decision to move was made early in January due to a number of issues but the largest being the floor. The current studio has a wooden floor and some of the panels aren't as sturdy as needed. This was causing problems with camera movement while animating, obviously not good. This meant the majority of January was taken up with searching Birmingham for a new studio location. I have looked at numerous places around Birmingham. Here is a list of the places I looked at.
It was really difficult to find studios that were appropriate. A lot of time was spent walking around Birmingham looking for different letting agencies or online searching. There's a mountain of office space to let in Birmingham but not so much geared towards creatives. All of the above would be ideal for creatives to varying degrees. In a future blog I will write about each of these locations in greater detail for others who may be looking for their own studio space.
In between searching for a new home we have focused a lot on networking and making connections with other businesses and film makers around the Midlands. One big problem for Birmingham is theres a huge amount of talented animators and film makers but the scene is very disconnected. There are different groups but none of them have links to one another and getting to know other film makers has proved to be a slow experience. By different groups I mean things like the Meet up events, animation forum WM, Creative England, Shooters Club etc. The amount of people at the events varies greatly and people aren't always aware of the existence of other groups or film makers etc. Its only through my recent use of Event Bright that I've found lots of new events to attend and have been chatting to others who have told me about some of these groups. They are not all in one easy to find location. ANNOYING!! I would highly recommend the event bright phone app, its really good!
In an effort to keep myself being creative I have hooked up with a number of different writers to initiate some new projects. These are specifically short ideas for the internet. There's no specific deadline but we hope to have something to show later on in the year.
Finally I've been out and about photoing things in an effort to improve my camera and composition skills. So please check out some photos I took from a ceramics workshop located in Sutton College and let me know what you think.
