After studying animation and VFX at university, Kris began his career 12 years ago working freelance for game studios and post-production houses honing his skills in 2D and 3D animation, concept development, story-boarding, VFX, compositing and illustration.  He began working at Norwich based agency Soup in 1998 as their first employee.  Soup now employs some 60 people and has studios in both Norwich and London, and Kris is now the studio’s Lead Animator and Senior Motion-Graphics Artist, working collaboratively with his team to develop animated content on cross-media platforms for major international clients.  Kris's work has won several major industry awards and featured in national publications such as Creative Review, NMA and Campaign.

Kris’ role is to oversee the production in the animation related areas of Soup, which he sees as "that of taking information, digitising and regurgitating it into something new”.  Soup is a service-based company, frequently working with other people’s intellectual property; this includes large entertainment companies, broadcasters and corporate ventures.  Considering roles for animators Kris notes that animation is a very diverse industry and can involve the creation of any kind of content; from a screen saver on a mobile phone to title sequences for films.  He considers there to be two types of animators: Character animators - who create more traditional character constructs and lip sync work and Special effects animators who create environments and effects.

Kris notes that “there are many new career opportunities for animators besides traditional animation series production, which in terms of creation is moving away from the UK.  New growth areas include motion graphics and visual effects”.  Kris sees motion graphics as a “way of showing information”.  “It relies heavily on animation and is a moving way of presenting graphical information.  It’s a design process and through your own creative ingenuity information is conveyed to the audience”.  In today's digital climate, he is a “great believer in developing artist’s traditional skills, helping to build a solid foundation”.

Kris’s Advice:

1.    Within commercial animation you have to be able to respond to people’s direction and criticism and it’s important that you take on board advice that people give to you.

2.    It’s also important for you to understand and experience the working environment; work experience is a good way of doing this as you get to see the work process and production in action as well as to observe differing roles within the company.

3.    As a freelancer you do get paid more, but you have to keep things going, you always need to be thinking ahead to the next job.

4.    Pitching for work can be expensive, so it’s often worth spending less time on creating a test piece of animation and concentrating on the concept, getting the client to buy into the way you are thinking through still images and scripts rather than something you have half finished on screen.

Kris pointed out that in terms of opportunities in animation the UK industry is changing and graduates need to be aware of this.  There is a very small amount of TV based production in this country, with slightly more pre-production activity.  Some animators choose to work on shorts or small films but these require lots of energy in order to seek funding.  However, there are many opportunities as we see the UK’s reputation grow in visual effects and motion graphics production in both feature film, commercial and corporate production.