Frames and family
Featuring Matt Thomas (and his daughter)
Something we focus heavily on with Animatic is how to strike a balance between utter ease of use, while still offering advanced features, ensuring the animation experience is simple enough for a beginner (i.e. a child, or first time animator), and expansive enough for a professional.
We take great pride when we hear and see stories of brand new animators creating an animation for the first time using Animatic, as well as when we hear from esteemed creatives and animators who have shipped work commercially for incredible brands and projects.
But the duality of these 2 distinctly different audiences is rarely more evident then when we hear from professional animators who use Animatic TOGETHER with their children. The magic of the experience of a parent or caregiver animating with their children or loved ones holds a special place in our hearts.
We’d like to share the story of Matt Thomas (aka OpenbyHand) from London, and his now 4 year old daughter. Matt is an incredible animator, with credits for Nike, P&G, Nowness, BBC, Glenmorangie, Bottega Venetta, and many more. Take a look at his work, showreel, and Dribbble profile to catch a glimpse of his brilliance.
Darren:
Hey Matt, thanks for your time and agreeing to answer some questions for us. Tell us about yourself, and how you got into animation.
Matt:
Hey Darren, thanks — I’ll try to keep these answers succinct!
I studied Graphic Design at university and graduated with a First Class Honours Degree with Commendation for Moving Image, picking up a student Gold Promax Award along the way — but by the time I graduated I had absolutely no idea what to do next or how to move forward. Eventually I went back to working in a local supermarket. Then one day, completely unexpectedly I got a phone call from Graham McCallum at Kemistry offering me a freelance job working on Christmas idents for Sky.
I still have absolutely no idea how any of this happened but I am still ever so grateful for that opportunity. Back then Kemistry were based in a studio in West Hammersmith and Gary Kurtz (the producer of Star Wars) was living in their loft, it was an amazing place to be around. I began learning After Effects from one of the Senior Designers after I confided in him that I had lied in my phone interview about being able to use it — I wanted to work there so badly I would have told them I could fly the space shuttle if it got me through the door. And that was that, suddenly I was working as a freelance animator!
Darren:
What are some of the favorite projects you’ve worked on?
Matt:
That very first project I did at Kemistry for the Sky Christmas Idents is still one of my favourites. Some projects I look back on and think ‘oh, that went well in the end’ — but with that very first project I remember it fondly in terms of ‘I cannot believe I got away with it!’
One other that comes to mind is when I worked with Modern Toss on a promotional series of animations for Kickers. I’d been a big fan of Jon and Mick (Modern Toss) for years and was fairly starstruck just to meet them, let alone work with them. It was a punishing production schedule and I was the only animator for all six episodes, and each episode featured three segments! I’d never done character animation before and had to learn very quickly how to rig their hand drawn characters using the Puppet Tool in After Effects. But it all got done, and once again I was very relieved to get away without having to tell anyone that ‘I have no idea what I’m doing!’
Darren:
Who are some animators or animation companies that inspire you?
Matt:
A few years ago I came across a film called Marfa by the Brothers Mcleod and I was very very annoyed with myself! All the way through watching it I was thinking ‘THIS is the sort of thing I want to be making!’ — I think that still counts as inspiration, right? Being so frustrated by how good someone else’s work is that you want to emulate it! Well, it was watching Marfa that kickstarted my own efforts to to have a go at hand drawn animation, having spent what felt like an eternity meticulously shuffling key frames around in After Effects. I had bought an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil initially just for drawing, but now I was on the look out for an animation app to use on it, and that’s how I came across Animatic!
Darren:
Can you tell us about any projects you’ve been able to use Animatic for?
Matt:
I did a project for Nike that required me to work in a hand drawn style and I used Animatic to create elements for use in that. I’d been tinkering with Animatic for a year or so at that point and I was intending to use it to generate placeholder visuals — but I was really impressed with the export quality from Animatic and figured I might as well skip the step of remaking those elements in AE and use the output from Animatic.
It was quick and easy to get the animations from Animatic into After Effects, clean them up a bit and integrate them into the main animation. The production schedule for that was very tight, so that really helped speed things up. After that I started using Animatic more and more and became quite fond of it — I started posting animated doodles on various social media channels. I found I had quite a collection of them, and thought it would be fun to include some of those Animatic animations for the backgrounds to the intro and outro of my current showreel.
Darren:
What is it that you like about Animatic?
Matt:
I love how easy to use it is, there’s nothing to get in the way of just getting on and creating a drawing or animation. It’s as close to just having a blank piece of paper and some pens and pencils as you can get on a tablet, you know — there’s nothing to lead or steer you in a particular direction but your own imagination. The app takes a backseat and lets you get on with the making — and I really appreciate that. I also love the main menu animation grid, seeing all your work wriggling and moving around on that each time I fire the app up is great!
Darren:
When and how did you introduce Animatic to your child?
Matt:
I introduced my daughter to Animatic a while back now. She was already using a tablet at nursery so I figured she might as well use one at home too. She’d taken quite a keen interest in an animation of a jumping teddy bear I had made for her in Animatic and she would love to sit and watch it loop — and she was absolutely fascinated by that main menu view with all of the animations looping in a grid.
Darren:
What kind of stuff does she/he like to do with it?
Matt:
When she was younger we used to make big sequences of doodles one after another, using a different colour for the background of each frame and then drawing all over it — and that worked out great when played back at a gentle frame rate. She really enjoyed it, and I loved the results so much that I took one of the ones we’d worked on as the starting point for an animation of my own! I’ll tell her someday that I’ve been borrowing inspiration off her :)
She’s four now and the way she draws has changed a lot since we started those first colourful crazy Animatic doodles, which I kind of miss! Recently she’s taken to colouring in a lot of my line drawing animations, which has had some pretty amusing results… but her drawing has improved a lot since we started, and I’ve become a lot less precious about what I draw which has been a really positive thing for me.
Darren:
What do you have to say to the parents who may not be professional animators, but may benefit from having their kids use Animatic?
Matt:
Oftentimes with creative endeavors the less you know about a process when you start out, the more fun you can have discovering it for yourself on your own terms. And I think that’s one of the great things about Animatic is it’s so refined that you can just get on with making animations and discovering how to go about it yourself. There’s nothing to be overwhelmed by, no fiddly interfaces or any feeling that you’d need a prior understanding of animation or animation software.
Darren:
What are the one or two things you and/or your daughter wish Animatic offered, but currently doesn’t?
Matt:
Hmm… I’ll have to get back to you on that!
