Happy Birthday Blue Zoo!

Blue Zoo 25th Anniversary Party

Last week the BAFTA-winning animation studio Blue Zoo celebrated their 25th birthday with a huge party that brought together past and present team members, collaborators, and friends of the studio.

The event celebrated a quarter-century of award-winning creativity, from groundbreaking children’s TV shows to acclaimed commercials.  

Screen Skills: "Animation Trainee Finder"

Animation Trainee Finder Programme at ScreenSkills

ScreenSkills has launched the Animation Trainee Finder, a paid placement programme for animation graduates.

Animation Trainee Finder is being launched by the ScreenSkills Animation Skills Council with the support of UK animationStudios.  The deadline to apply is 27 September 2021.  

Free Animation Careers Event 5 August

We're recommending that all our animation students and recent graduates sign up for this Animation and Careers Event on 5th August at 4.30pm.

Hosted by Escape Studios, this free online Animation Careers Evening includes animation industry leaders Blue Zoo and Jellyfish Pictures.   To sign up for this free event, follow this link.

Blue Zoo and Real Time Rendering with Unreal

Blue Zoo's Tom Box at BlueGFX Expo

Blue Zoo's Tom Box explained the Blue "real-time animation pipeline" at the recent BlueGFX Expo in London, exploring new ways to speed up the animation process.

Tom described Blue Zoo as a studio that, since its inception, has "refused to accept industry standards", and has forged its own path in the industry.

Recently Blue Zoo have been pioneering the use of real-time rendering using Unreal Engine - trying to find ways to make the production process faster and more efficient. 

Blue Zoo Recruitment Stand Tips

Blue Zoo's Bader Badruddin at an industry event

Blue Zoo, one of London's animation powerhouses, has offered their Top Ten "Recruitment Stand Tips" for students hoping to impress at a recruitment stand.

Some of the tips are pretty obvious (number 1 is "turn up"), but overall this is a useful and informative read on how to approach potential recruiters at an industry event. 

Knowing how to approach recruiters matters, especially for landing that all-important first job in the industry.

Panel Forge Pro - Free Storyboard Software

At last week's Blue GFX Expo, Blue Zoo’s Tom Box announced that Panel Forge Pro, their new storyboard and pipeline tool, is now available for free for student use.

Panel Forge Pro, extensively tested at Blue Zoo on Miffy the Rabbit and Digby Dragon, makes use of 3D Layouts to save time in Storyboarding, allowing board artists to use low resolution 3D assets to help set up camera angles and layouts.  Good news then for storyboard artists, who can now learn to use this new software for free.

Blue Zoo Animation Internships

Applications for Blue Zoo's summer internship roles are now open. The 6-8 week paid placements are "like a real job but without the demands & expectations, allowing participants to develop and learn how a big animation studio works and real projects are run".

Blue Zoo Animation Masterclass

At the recent VFX Festival at Rich Mix in London, Blue Zoo's Tom Box introduced one of their animation directors to give a Masterclass in Cartoony Animation. Blue Zoo does all kinds of different styles of animation, trying "not to get known for just one style", but much of their work is done for TV format, where schedules are punishing and animators have to work fast.

Blue Zoo have to be creative, efficient, and find ways to stay competitive - even in a high-cost city like London, where rents and wages are much higher than overseas.

They also encourage their staff to get involved creatively, developing in-house projects which can be brought to the screen, and also doing short films - BZ Shorts - within the studio, developing new styles of animation and experimenting with new ways of doing things.

So what are Blue Zoo's secrets for a fast, efficient animation workflow?

Blue Zoo at MPC SIGGRAPH Event in Soho Wednesday 25 May

Blue Zoo, one of the UK's most innovative indie animation studios, is the star of the next SIGGRAPH event, on Wednesday May 25 at MPC in London's Soho, at 7pm.

The founders of BlueZoo will be talking about how they nurtured their fledgling company from an idea into a multi-million pound animation powerhouse.  Best of all, the event is completely free!

Blue Zoo Summer Internships

This year Blue Zoo are offering two six week internships in their London studio; one working in their commercials team, ideal for someone with bold ambitions to be an animated commercials director, and another in their TV series department for someone starting out on a mission to become an expert CG character animator! To apply head to https://jobs.blue-zoo.co.uk/

Calling all Bucks Animation Graduates - Blue Zoo are Hiring Junior Animators!

Blue Zoo Animation

Calling all Animation Apprentice Graduates! London's leading TV animation house Blue Zoo are hiring fresh talent. Getting that first job is always tough, and it's relatively unusual for studios to be looking actively for juniors. So, time to polish that demo reel, make sure your best work is online and free of mistakes, update your CV, and send it all in with a nice covering letter.

How to get a job in Animation - explained by BAFTA

BAFTA has been working with Creative Skillset to deliver a series of guest lectures at media universities across the country, aiming to bring leading figures in the film, television and games industry together with newly emerging talent, through lectures designed to inspire students to develop their creativity alongside their business and technical skills.

How do you make an animated TV series? - Blue Zoo reveal the secrets

Q Pootle 5 by Blue Zoo

Last week Bucks New University students went to the Blue GFX Expo at London's South Bank - a treasure trove of visual effects industry lectures and workshops. Among the excellent presentations was a talk by Adam Shaw of London's Blue Zoo, who created the animated TV series Q Pootle 5. In effect, his lecture was a fully-fledged workshop in how to put a TV series together from start to finish. So, if you have ever wondered - how do you get your own TV series off the ground? - here's how they pulled it off.

Meet Blue Zoo - Britain's largest TV Animation Company

At the recent BlueGFX Expo at London's National Film Museum on the South Bank, Blue Zoo founders Tom Box and Adam Shaw gave an excellent presentation about their BAFTA-winning young company - now the biggest TV animation co. in the UK.

Tom and Adam were very enthusiastic presenters, clearly excited about their company and about the future of TV animation in Britain. They also offered some excellent insights into how animation graduates might go about getting a job with their fast-growing studio. Below is a rough transcript of their talk, plus some of the questions they answered at the end.