WIP Animators blog

Chan, 33, animator, filmmaker. Currently working on a short film and improving my technical skills in Animation. My short film Desk to Dance is currently in the festival circuit.

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Progress with my magical girl rig thus far!

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Rigging my magical girl character on Toonboom!

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Another idea for a scene, with this I'm guessing you can understand the plot behind this story!

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Ideas ideas nothing set in stone here just exploring it in comics form made these quite some time ago.

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The two main characters in my magical girl animation that is currently being developed. In the long term I want it to become some form of long content such as a film or series but we will see.

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Some fun illustrations of my magi character that I’ve made over the years.

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After making the animation for the flip a clip competition I decided to expand more on the world building of my magical girl character and the man she saves from the demons. I made another short animation/animatic featuring two different worlds.

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Magical entry-FindYourStar

An animation I made in 2019 to sumbit to the Flip a clip: "Find your star," competition with a magical girl twist. The characters are my own and this entry is about declining mental health. It is about those times when things just get worse and worse and you just wish someone /anyone could save you. The song stars gave me the opportunity to explore that with music. This entry got me into a 3rd year of an animation degree at University which I have since graduated from!

Thanks for watching!

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Today I've gone back to finishing my scene build course that I brought almost a year ago.

I will be adding shadows to this scene a little compositing.

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We are all born artists. From our earliest days we are curious about the world around us. One of the first things we do as children is draw and color. Yet as we grow older and enter school we are told to put down our crayons and colored pencils and focus our attention on reading, writing, and counting. Teachers tell us to stop drawing silly pictures and pay attention! Our educational system, in essence, is preventing people from becoming artists. How do we start to encourage more people to become artists, and just as important, how do we help artists turn their artistic talents into highly profitable work? Art is not simply a hobby. It can just as easily be a career. This talk will answer these questions, and will share how the artistic profession will benefit from the foundations that benefit most other professions: 1) To remain curious, observant, and experimental throughout their lives. 2) To work collaboratively in teams, and not treat artists as "lonely outsiders." Artists are happier and more productive if we train, equip, and encourage them to work in teams, in exactly the same way that we encourage productive teamwork in every other human endeavor. 3) To teach artists about contract law, and how to protect their intellectual property. In addition to being Animation Skills Coordinator at Escuela Escena, Fraser is also the author of “Setting The Scene: The Art & Evolution of Animation Layout” which was described by Total Film Magazine as, “….a museum, a film school and an art gallery all in one”. He has been working in commercial animation since 1987 and his screen credits include “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, “Space Jam” and Disney’s “Tarzan”. Fraser currently lives in Guadalajara and has taught at a wide range of different universities, colleges and art schools in a number of different countries - including Costa Rica, Norway, Scotland, Lebanon, Ireland and Austria. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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How to Survive and Thrive When Your Uni Course Is Failing You:

By Someone Who Lived It

1. Recognise what your lecturer can’t offer—and accept it.

→ Stop waiting for a miracle. Start working around it.

2. Go outside the course for teaching.

Reach out to former lecturers—especially the good ones.

Even if they’ve left, they might still help if you check in.

Attend industry events, panels, or workshops (even if you're not funded—try to volunteer or go to free ones).

Tap into online learning—YouTube, Skillshare, Domestika, free Discord Q&As, etc.

3. Connect with alumni.

You're one of the only ones. That matters. You’re a potential link to the real world.

4. Join online animation and/or art communities.

Discord servers, Reddit animation threads, art Twitter, etc.

There are thriving peer support spaces out there.

5. Join a collective.

Look for small grassroots or indie animation collectives.

You’ll learn way more from a tight, active collective than from a dead-end uni module.

6. Befriend students in other courses.

Especially courses that have their shit together (illustration, design, etc.).

You can learn workflows, tips, and even share equipment or tutors.

7. Make non-course friends.

If you're socially active, this can seriously help balance out the course’s failures.

If you're more introverted, start with online communities or one-on-one peer chats.

8. If you want a real shot at working in the industry, you’ll have to go beyond uni.

→ Sad but true. Uni is the base—you build the real structure yourself.

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3D Modelling

I have a funny relationship with 3D art, I first started attempting it a year ago after playing around with it on a program called Nomad Sculpt. Through this program I was able to sculpt a 3D model human looking thing for the first time. I then attempted Blender numerous times before giving up, and then tried using Cinema 4D, which I was able to grasp much quicker.

I then got Maya around November 2024 last year and was able to model a train station straight off the bat. I really enjoyed it but I didn't have time to learn how to texture, and because I knew that my lecturer was expecting me to hand over my backgrounds for the 1st years to colour, I just rendered the line instead.

I think my render is on my old laptop, so here is a scene from my short film Desk to Dance with the 3D modelled train station, coloured in Photoshop but not textured.

I still have so much I want to try and learn. I particularly am obsessed with modelling 3D backgrounds even though it's something I don't really know how to do well yet. It's not something I'm trying to make into a career, so I can only do it when I have time.

2D paint-looking textures on 3D models is the new fashion, it seems. It is seemingly becoming more popular due to Arcane and Spiderverse. So I've taken it upon myself to learn how to do it, even though my digital painting skills aren't that strong. It will motivate me enough to learn it more.

An example of a studio that's done it recently:

Coffee Run - Art&Graft

The morning commute, the chaos of London, an intern’s struggle captured in an infinite loop, endless details, a perfect union across differe

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How surgery changes you.

I'm sure everyone responds to surgery differently, and I wasn’t sure how I would. I was even expecting my surgery for Endometriosis to be much smoother than it went. Long story short, it didn’t go well and I had two surgeries within three days.

Getting surgery in such a vulnerable area which is directly tied to your biology changes you. Your body is constantly exposed to many different medical professionals. To them it’s just a body—they see them every day—but it’s still your body, something you don’t willingly give access to without caution.

But when you’re in the hospital, you are not left with much choice in that matter. They will ask you to expose your back, take off your underwear, and stick many different types of needles into your arms. And you know you just have to bear with it and take it because that’s how they save you.

After going through something as stressful as two surgeries, you ask yourself, why would I ever let anything small bother me ever again? Particularly if it was a life-threatening situation. Suddenly your neighbours or housemates being loud at inappropriate times doesn’t really matter anymore.

The fact that you managed to survive it all and wake up the next day, every day, matters. Suddenly those dreams you left on hold or put on the back burner—become a priority—because the awareness that one day you won’t even be alive to do them anymore becomes too much of a painful reality.

The things out of your control get put on the backburner, ’cause you’re just trying to survive. You don’t have time to worry about the things outside of your control.

But most importantly, it’s a driver for change—to change something you have always done but wasn’t serving you. To be the person you want to be, or to keep trying despite the difficulty—because surgery is a vivid reminder of how fragile our lifespans can be.

Resilience takes on a different meaning. It’s not that I can get through anything, it’s: well, if I can get through that, then I can probably face the next thing.

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Comic artist turned Animator

I'm a year 2010 university drop out that returned to study for one year in Sept 2024 and graduated with flying colours in June 2025. I studied a combined honours of Animation, Film and Illustration between 2010-2013, and then Animation in 2024-2025.

Before I went back to university I was animating on and off for fun and my first ever animated video was for a FlipaClip competition in 2019. Still on YouTube: https://youtu.be/R9vvQzBqEKg?si=R7wF-wE3BxQWLwIq

I was very focused on just animating fun things and knew nothing else about the animation pipeline but as they say ignorance is bliss! I wanted to make a film but it wasn't something I could see myself doing anytime soon due to lack of time and resources, that is until I went back to university and met my course lecturer, who said her course could teach me. She also told me that animation can be a job as well, so I looked into it some more and that was when I discovered the studio pipeline and the many many jobs within it.

She wasn't wrong, her course did teach me how to make a film, it taught me a lot. But it didn’t necessarily teach me how to get a job in animation.

I've graduated now with no job, but that's okay because I have a complete film in the festival circuit and that's what I wanted, that is why I went back to study. My goal now is to make more films, but not just make films to also push my technical and story telling abilities.

This blog is to record that journey and all the hassle that comes with it, but raw and uncurated, with no audience in mind except me.

It is currently June 2025 and I'm unemployed, I haven't been unemployed since 2013 when I dropped out. I'm also disabled, and recovering from surgery. However this gives me more time to work on things, which is hard to do with a day job, trust me!