Animex! - Atomhawk Design & MPC work on Guardians of the Galaxy

4:00pm

MPC presents: animating Groot

Greg Fisher Animation Supervisor, MPC

MPC Animation Supervisor and Teesside graduate Greg showcases the team’s work on the extraterrestrial, sentient tree-like creature Groot from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Bringing Groot to life was both an artistic and technical challenge, requiring a complex rigging system and variations including Groot Cocoon and Baby Groot.


On the monday afternoon there were two very very enlightening talks both relating to Guardians of the Galaxy.

The first of which was by a very pleasant man called Ron Ashtiani, a Manager of AtomHawk design, the Newcastle based company designed the concept art for the Marvel Blockbuster.

It was so exciting to go to these talks and see more of the making on Guardians of the Galaxy, what I really enjoyed was how, Atomhawk's studio worked, how they've risen from nothing, they've done a lot of shit work but they've finally made the big time, they've got some great artist's working for them and they powered through by staying productive. Once a week they have working lunches where one of them will impart some wisdom some tips and tricks on to inspire others and make them work faster. I thought this was just such a great concept. I love this. I did find that the guy wasn't a brilliant public speaker though, but I was super impressed by the work, we were fortunate enough to see it in the gallery printed out huge.


Atomhawk - UI Casestudies 2015 from Atomhawk Design on Vimeo.


www.atomhawk.com


It was also really interesting to see the making of Groot by MPC. And hearing about how they tendered for the character against some really big companies (they were against Frame store and they also bid for Rocket but Frame store got Rocket). How they had several designs and character tests in Maya. It made me realise that Maya is actually an incredible piece of software. I think I'm going to have to do more with it in third year just because so many companies in Industry use it. And I want to be on the same level as these big boys.