Was not an easy step to leave wonderful monthly payroll world to risk myself into freelance quantum random dynamics… It had been almost 8 years at my previous job and doubts were just… human, you know?
But opportunity was there and had to take it: MagoProduction animation Barcelona based studio was casting compositors for their forthcoming animated TV series “The Flying Squirrels”, “Five friends venture into the depths of Dragon City in search of a sacred chest that fulfills all wishes. They’ll have to face the most powerful corporation on the planet and escape from the dangers of the underworld if they want to succeed where their parents failed. They are descended fom an ancient lineage of pirates and they are well-trained”.
So did a couple of tests (not my finest hour, to be honest) and got onboard.
From the very beginning started to learn a whole new method of working: ONLINE, fellas.
Almost the whole compositing team would work over Dropbox, Google sheets and chat. Used to working at-the-office as I was, this was quite challenging… I mean, helping myself from taking a nap after lunch, taking extra long breakfast time…
However, to my surprise, managed to put myself together almost instantly and kept a consistent pace all throughout the entire project.
Job was about plain compositing at the beginning: shots were assigned on a daily basis on Google sheets, passes were handed to everybody over Dropbox and we would just compose. After Effects would be the sole compositing software to get the job done.
Things, however, developed a little more complicated after the first month onboard: FX team vanished into thin air and composers would have to take their place…
Fun FX indeed, but shots would not be as fast to compose as when we started out… On top of that, supervising team was getting a little collapsed as well, so they asked me to help overview some other compositors work. Ended up supervising as well as compositing…
And all that lovely sun tan I would proudly wear on may, was almost completely gone by june… Loads of work to do, deadlines, etc.
But all in all survived the experience. Best opportunity I could ask for to take one-step-beyond into proffessional broadcast compositing.
Definitely, the perfect chance to learn compositing all over again.
Can’t thank enough people who put their trust on me from the start: Production Head Raúl Berninches, Director Van Velvet, and Supervisors Pep Carbonell and Dani Gómez Lorenzo. All of them lovely characters that led me into working at a truly pro level.
And special thanksgiving to Julia Giordano and Xavi Planas, both class A compositors who helped me and inspired me into deeply taking care of details.
So this is the latest open teaser from Magoproduction. I dind´t work on every single shot featured, but there are quite a few of my own. Please, hit it:
Flying Squirrels Trailer from magoproduction on Vimeo.