The Pro Files: Will Eades

Will Eades is Lead Animator with RealtimeUK, where he shares state of the art premises with “one expert team of awesome digital artists”. Founded in 1996 with the aim of becoming the UK’s leading CGI studio, RealtimeUK makes cutting-edge CG for videogames, adverts and digital campaigns.

The proudest moment of my career so far? Becoming lead character animator in my first year at the company. I came into the company with a first class degree in computer games design and a passion for character animation, was given the opportunity to prove myself and managed to do so through working on some amazing projects: animating mini robots for LG, Snowmen for Sky Sports TV and big cat cubs for Microsoft’s new release for Xbox Kinect, Kinectimals. The Kinectimals project in particular allowed me to develop not only as a character animator but as a lead.

I have been really lucky so far in having some very experienced and knowledgeable teachers and tutors throughout my life, and now even more so in all of my colleagues here at RealtimeUK. There is a huge amount of amazing talent and experience so the advice I receive now, every day is priceless.

The one thing I wish I’d known ten years ago? At 15 years old I was going into my GCSEs not knowing what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be. I wish at that point I knew that being an animator was an actual career option. I was briefly introduced to it after 6th form whilst doing an art foundation course at college in the form of Flash. However, even then I didn’t think that I would actually become an animator, because that was something that real pros did.

My advice to someone starting out as an animator would be to animate as much as possible and accept criticism as a way to learn.

What gets me out of bed in the morning? At the end of the day work is still work and even though I bloody love my job, getting out of bed and into my car for the commute can be a pain especially in winter times. However, once I am at work the buzz of bringing a character to life makes it all worth it….and then I get paid!

The nicer the rig, the easier my job is.

Creative block? Get up and act! It’s funny the amount of weird looks I get from moving around in slow motion or pulling stupid faces in the mirror. It helps so much to understand the movements and emotions and immediately translates into your work. It also helps having great directors giving great ideas and feedback. I’d say to anyone who doesn’t have someone with great experience to look at their work to post on forums like the 11secondclub.com ones. There are thousands of people checking the work and although not all the feedback is great, most of it really does help.

My one main goal as an animator is to have my name on the credits of a feature length film and to have my friends and family see my work on the big screen.