The NL - Tim Kings-Lynne Interview

INTERVIEW WITH A VFX ANIMATOR

Tim Kings-Lynne is an animator with feature film visual effects company Rising Sun Pictures, and his work appears, most recently in Get Smart, Speed Racer, 28 Weeks Later and Charlotte's Web. He spoke to Darryn King about his job (in between work on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince).


What do you do in a typical day?
When I get in, one of the first things we do is do the dailies review, which is a team meeting with the supervisor and everyone on the team, so we can review all the work submitted the night before. We give feedback and discuss progress and the plan of attack for the next day.
After that the feedback is distributed, and I review it for myself and actually work on it, which is the actual animating. You work on it through the day and at the end of the day you submit the next daily.

Is your work mostly independent or collaborative?
I guess animation as an independent skill is fairly independent, but it is definitely a team-focused job, especially VFX. Peer review is pretty big, especially inside the animation team. But basically we try and bounce as many ideas as we can. It kinda helps the quality - hardly any of the VFX I know of can be done yourself. It helps the quality but also removes what we call 'diva culture', which would be problematic - because it's such a team thing, you don't want someone who carries on and makes things harder for everyone.

Do you get assigned an entire sequence, or just parts of a sequence?
Usually you're assigned shots that are part of an overall sequence of shots for the film. You all have to work your shots as a team to make the whole sequence successful.

You were Lead Animator for Charlotte's Web - what extra responsibility does that entail?
You become a conduit to the supervisor, watching over feedback and keeping an eye on things like consistency, and essentially trying to motivate the team to do their work as best they can. You're essentially responsible for making sure everyone on the team gets it done. That can include giving feedback on shots and animation, but also testing rigs, testing out ideas, working with other leads of other departments.

Many of us have seen behind the scenes at Pixar, which seems like heaven: animators strapping themselves to planks of wood and filming themselves doing stupid things. Are there those sorts of antics at Rising Sun?
There can be. It wildly depends on what kind of job you're on. On Charlotte's Web, we tried to encourage the character kind of stuff, and people basically were responsible for doing that themselves. People used video references - you could make your own, but we also hired a local actor to come in and do the lines as well, just to get a different take on them - anything to generate new ideas. There's a lot of planning.

Do you have a favourite project?
To tell you the truth, Charlotte's Web was one of my favourites, mainly because the animation work was very challenging. It was also a very well-known character and a pretty hard character to make feel emotive and human. But ultimately very rewarding and the end result was very good.
Recently we're doing work on Where The Wild Things Are. It's a really interesting film, and has a great aesthetic to it. The animation is really great as well. I personally love the projects where the animation is challenging, and on Wild Things we're doing some groundbreaking stuff. Basically new ways of doing old tricks.

So much creative liberty do you have?
To be honest, visual effects is in essence a service industry. I like to think of it as design rather than straight-up art - you're working to a brief. Ultimately it's someone else's final call on things and it's their briefs that you're<