I’ve worked at Affari almost three years and was originally hired as a Graphic Designer for fast-turnaround bid marketing projects. I graduated with a degree in Computer Game Design but fortunately, the skills were highly transferable.
When I joined Affari, the company was very young and consisted of only 6 staff and with an increasing and overwhelming requirement on animations, we had to outsource some of our Motion work to a few trusted suppliers in Nottingham. It was roughly 12 months into my role when I really began to notice that these projects were beginning to drain our resources.
After months of project management, countless drafts as well as intense planning sessions with both clients and suppliers, the final results still weren’t up to our usual standards and the careful attention to detail that is ubiquitous around our own studio seemed lacking.
I began asking my Creative Director, Ben Hankin and our Project Manager, Jake Parkin questions… probably too many, but by discussing and defining the problems, it allowed me to identify whether or not I possessed the power to change things.
Korie Cull who was a Senior Designer at the time and Mike Wood, a Graphic Designer who joined Affari a week before I did, shared my views on the topic and after many in-depth conversations on capability, we began to formulate a plan.
Mike and I went back to basics, spending our days, evenings and nights learning how to animate. We made it our mission to develop our own skills further so that we would no longer be reliant on suppliers and bring all of these projects completely within our own 4 walls, allowing us to control the quality ourselves.
“Many days we’d arrive at work exhausted, but so excited to show off our simple animated loops using rudimentary techniques we’d learned the night before, and slowly but surely, we were improving.
I was really starting to find my 2D feet in After Effects and Mike was exploring 3D animation in Cinema 4D.”
Learning in parallel like this allowed for much quicker progression of our skill sets. We were able to cover more ground and focus on key areas that we knew would develop the deliverables further for our customers. Inevitably we were approached by one of our long-standing client’s regarding a motion project that changed everything… a cluster of explainer animations. It was perfect.
Our Creative Director and Project Manager were a little apprehensive about accepting the job, this was a big development to take such a sizeable Motion based workload in-house for Affari. Nevertheless, we took on the challenge to take existing client content and create a few short animated clips within a very short timeframe.
We completed the challenge ahead of schedule, and to a higher standard than what was requested of us. The guys back at work were thrilled with the results, placing their faith in our abilities the job was accepted. And this was all just the start…
3 intense months of rendering, key-framing, rigging and adjusting animation curves. We lived and breathed Motion Graphics. We were subscribed to just about every thought leadership piece and educational tool, constantly developing ourselves and the Motion department as a whole. By the end of the project, we were battle-hardened Motion Designers! I hadn’t realised at the time (probably due to lack of sleep) but we were also the foundations of today’s strong and sturdy Motion Team.
We saw this as an exciting avenue and began to recruit. We hired another Motion Designer, Tom Bartlett. Tom came with a tonne of industry experience and an exceptional eye for detail, so from him, we gained some real insight and refined our workflows to new levels.
Then came Pele Newell, he joined the motion team armed with a passion for film, backed up by a solid portfolio of creative projects. Half a year later, the 3D powerhouse, Luke Evans, and 2D guru, Sean Lee, joined our team. All followed closely by Dominic Ridley, who joined us through an internship and quickly forged a path by spearheading our VR Development with the backing of our whole studio.
There have been some incredible projects over the past two years that have helped grow and shape the motion team but none have had as profound an impact as our first!
– Jordan Daniel, Lead Motion Designer.
