Applying for an Internship at Blue Zoo Animation Studio/their talk at Manchester Animation Festival

I won't be discussing every single studio I'm applying for as I think I will find myself often repeating myself. I do however want to talk about the studios that stand out against the others so I can explain why exactly I have decided to apply for them. Blue Zoo is one of those standouts. The reason Blue Zoo is a stand out is because I feel it is a heavily CG 3D studio and I would not consider myself a 3D animator, to the point where the 3D animation I did have in my showreel I was advised to take out for that reason of calling myself a 2D animator. However, Blue Zoo is an animation studio that I really like.

I remember first hearing about them when I went to their talk on their upcoming Virtual Reality came Hoodoo.

Before I saw this talk, I admittedly thought of VR of being something of a gimmick. I didn't really take it seriously and I most6 definitely did not think it was going to last. However, this talk completely changed my opinion. Hoodoo VR is an incredibly immersive experience where the player follows around a blue cat on top of a mountain that he explores, narrated by Danny Wallace. A simple premise, yet i feel a concept that lends itself perfectly to this platform. 

I enjoyed the talk for many reasons but in particular because of why they were making the game in the first place. It was not for a client, where much of their work is client based, Hoodoo is a passion project. Even though creating a VR game is obviously an incredibly time consuming and laborious process, the creators seemed to love making it and were very excited about how experimental it was.

The reason of calling myself a 'primarily 2D based animator simply did not seem like enough of a reason to not try to contact this studio. Furthermore, I was very excited to see that when I was applying for Blue Zoo I could categorise myself as a '2D Animator'. Just because I want to work as a 2D animator, does not mean I am against working on 3D projects. To me, it is the cause and the content that truly matters and if it is a project I genuinely like and Hoodoo is one of those projects. I know I need to be looking more specifically now but there is also a part of me that doesn't want to narrow myself. Even though I work primarily in 2D I am always open to learning new skills and would still like to animate an 11 Second Club animation using a 3D Maya rig for example. At the moment I feel I simply want to go after the studios I like, there are many that fit my specifications that I most definitely do not like.