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WeThinkCode_
Nov 5 · 3 min read

CHATTING WITH MIKE BUCKLAND OF TRIGGERFISH

Above: Mike Buckland of Triggerfish (middle) with WeThinkCode_ student interns Ridge Dube (left) and Rutendo Nyakutira (right).

On Monday the 21st of October 2019, WeThinkCode_ Cape Town campus hosted a selection of the program’s corporate sponsors for a Career Day; giving the students at WeThinkCode_ Cape Town the opportunity to chat with and gain some insights into their prospective employers ahead of 2020’s internship season.

I chatted to Mike Buckland, a Producer at Triggerfish Animation Studios with over 20 years experience in CG Animation. Here’s what I learnt.

Triggerfish is one of the leading Animation Studios on the African continent. Specialising in longform, animated childrens’ entertainment, they have worked on plenty of notable animation projects not least the feature length films, Zambezia (2012) and Khumba (2013) which are both one of South Africa’s top five highest grossing films ever. Their pipeline of new projects is stacked full, with a new feature film, Seal Team, set to release in 2021 and a BBC Christmas special — following the successful Zog — set to air at the end of 2019.

It’s clear that Triggerfish have the animation gig waxed. So, where do their software development team fit in and what do they do? Mike explained to me that with an expanding business, Triggerfish realised that they needed more artists, but as they filled up their ranks with competent creatives, they become cognizant of the emerging need for good tech as the backbone of their process. They started out by building up a tech team from the interested creatives among them, who jumped on board to build multiple internal facing tools to support the animation process. With the goal of efficiency driving software development, they have since built a host of integrated tools ranging in implementation areas from animation, review and publishing all the way to automation. The development team works in an exciting, opportunity-rich and ever-changing space; working on different kinds of projects at different times in response to internal needs.

If your interest in Triggerfish is now piqued, you may wonder what it is they are looking for from young tech talent? At Triggerfish it is clear that the animation process is what drives the direction of software development and that means that it is really important that everyone on the Triggerfish team cares at their core and is excited about animation — young tech talent included. Mike’s passion for animation was so clear in our conversation that I could tell it would be fundamental that even the techiest person on the team would also need to really care about the creative process. Some essential characteristics of a Triggerfish team member that emerged from our chat are: creativity, enthusiasm, self-motivation, strong communication skills and a high regard for collaboration.

Considering their internal needs, the partnership with WeThinkCode_ for Triggerfish seems a natural one. With their growing need for self-managing, self-motivated developers, students learning these skills through the curriculum at WeThinkCode_ make for strong candidates.

In a delightfully cheesy end to our chat, I asked Mike for some words he might use to describe Triggerfish. What stuck out for me weren’t necessarily any of the single words he gave like “enjoyment”, “artistry” or “marathon” but rather a final sentiment that at Triggerfish the focus is to “do your best work and remove impediments”.

Click either of the links here if you are interested in finding out more about WeThinkCode_ or Triggerfish.

By Rachel Bolton
Rachel Bolton is based in the mother city, Cape Town, where she currently juggles part-time, remote work in the freight forwarding industry with full-time software engineering studies at WeThinkCode_. Vibrant and outspoken, she has a passion for beautifully designed web apps and sees a future career for herself in building them.

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