Amazing Indie/Freelance Animator Angus Dick has worked for Sony, BBC and Nicklodeon to name a few. His authentic style and fun personality has taken him far, check out his insight into the industry and his success.Kim: Hi Angus, good to talk to you, thank you for the interview.
Angus: Of course!
Kim: First up, what inspires you as an artist? What gives you ideas?
Angus: I am surrounded by animators and other people making things and we inspire each other with creativity. Some of my influences are 70's scifi, like psychedelic stuff, where people start going really crazy with aliens and stuff. A good point of reference for this is the 1973 animated movie Fantastic Planet. An artist who works in games that I love is Keita Takahashi. His work is beautiful. He art directed games like Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy. I always find he is not afraid of making things that seem a bit silly without much explanation. I really like the idea that you don't have to give a back story for everything, as long as things look good and feel cohesive.
Kim: How did you get in to art?
Angus: I always enjoyed drawing and doodling silly stuff and it never occurred to me that it was something that I could do for a living. I think that throughout my education I kinda inadvertently eliminated all other career options (I mean that in a good way!), working things out until I realised that illustration and animation was with no doubt the career for me.
I think people don't often realise that their creativity can be put to good use. Have a go at it and seize the opportunity! My first experience of animation was making small animations in Power point. If you set each slide of a presentation to advance after 0 seconds, the computer would play each slide like an animation. It was super limited, but it felt really good to make images move! In 2003 I discovered Flash. It had so much potential for creating animation that I ended up using it for several projects whilst doing a Foundation Course (its a course you do between High School and College). I ended up studying Illustration and Animation at Kingston University in south west London. University taught me the language of film, helped me to find more focus in my drawing, and really helped my developed my own style. We learned most of the software skills ourselves, which makes sense as software and technology seem to constantly be changing.Kim: What has been your favourite project that you have worked on so far?
Angus: My favourite project I have worked on so far has got to be Hohokum. The art director of the game (Richard Hogg) was a visiting lecturer at my university, and it became apparent that he and I had similar interests and he kind of became my mentor. It was a really fun experience because the whole Hohokum team was on the same wavelength, working with each others' ideas as we worked on the project. In ordinary projects, very often a animator is told very specific ways in which to animate a thing, but on Hohokum we were simply given the designs by Richard and told just to animate and interpret the characters as we wanted to. It allowed us, even though we weren't designing each character, to express creativity and make the characters our own. Our own ability was very much respected, which ended up with the game having a great collection of characters in living worlds that were fun and unique. I think that has really influenced me as I move in to art direction myself. Since Hohokum I have started a project in which I am the art director and lead animator and its really helped me to be open to other peoples suggestions and also push my own ideas a bit further.Kim: How can you succeed as an artist in games?
Angus: I think the key to success is collaboration when it comes to things like games and animation. Because it takes so much effort to make something, it's not good to do it on your own. Let's use an example of the game Fruitwolf. This was a game I made in 72 hours for a game jam. I worked with a coder called Mark Foster and music maker / sound designer Devin Fenn. The three of us worked really well together, giving honest feedback and regularly updating our priorities so that we could best use the time that we were given. We were really happy with the end result. I think Game Jams are the best way to build your portfolio because if makes you focus intensely on something for a short amount of time. You end up with a result that is quite complete, even if it's small. It's really, really good way of showing people what you are capable of in the games industry.
I think most of my success has come from meeting and making friends with people. At the end of the day I don't really think I am that great at drawing, but I think that because I work well with people, we can collaborate and make something special through our joint efforts. I don't think you should get too down on yourself about your art creating abilities; I guarantee that you are better at drawing than most coders in the industry!
Kim: What projects are you working on right now that you are excited about, if you could talk about that?
Angus: Oh yeah. At this stage I am working on a project that is about to go into full production. It is called Pool Panic and its a weird action adventure game about billiards. It takes place in a world where all of the balls are alive and the white ball is a bit of a social outcast because he has an addiction to potting everyone else. We currently only have a website. check it out at www.poolpanic.com
Kim: lol, That sounds like a fun game. Thank you Angus for sitting down with us today. It's been great to get more insight and good information about you and the industry.
He also very recently participated in a game jam in Manchester, England with his previously mentioned friends Mark and David. The event was called Jamchester, and they had to create a game in 40 hours. Their game Head Home won Best Game and Best Audio in the competition.
You can play it for free at https://clawmark.itch.io/
Angus animated the illustrations by Richard Hogg for this delightful danish ad.
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