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Episode Director - Animation
Tiger Aspect

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	TIM F
00:02	My name is Tim F and I am the episode director on Mr Bean, the animated series.
00:07	The episode director works across parts of the production, assisting the director and also them looking at animation and design and art direction and being in the edits. It’s basically being on the shop floor really and making sure everything gets done on time and keeping the quality of everything where it should be.
00:30	I got to become an episode director by, I’ve been working in animation now for about 13, 15 years, something like that and I’ve worked my way up from starting off as an assistant and then becoming an animator, doing a bit of storyboarding, being animation director, being a co-director. It’s just working your way up really and yeah, I’ve found my way now, doing this job I’m doing at the moment.
00:56	I got to work on the first series of Mr Bean about 10 years ago and fore me, that was one of my first jobs that I did and it was going from being doing commercial work to then doing a TV series work and it was a really interesting time because I got to see the entire project all the way through from when the first commission came in, all the way through to when it finished, so very bizarrely and unusually in terms of series work. You usually do one series and then move on to next and on to the next, you usually get re-commissioned quite quickly, whereas Mr Bean finished and we did 52 episodes and then it all did its thing. But then, 10 years later, it’s come up again and I now find myself having moved on in my career from having had the opportunity of working on it at a very kind of like, sort of like not junior level, but at a lower level, to now here having the pleasure of coming back and sort of like working as a, at a director level. So it’s, yeah, it’s really interesting to do that.
01:58	At school I was very conscientious and was a very hard worker and pretty much knew what I wanted to do fairly early on in terms of my career path. So I was very interested in art and did art and design which is obviously very, very helpful in terms of what I do now. But also English was incredibly helpful because I do an awful lot of work with scripts and there’s nothing visual to do with a lot of that, that’s all to do with the English part of it and also maths has become incredibly important because a lot of it is working stuff out in a mathematical way, so with schedules and production part of it as well. So it isn’t just drawing pictures.
02:44	So after school I went and did an animation degree at Farnham and then, when I’d finished my degree course there. I went and did a postgraduate course at Central St Martin’s and that was just purely a six months’ training course in animation. Then I was very lucky to get my first job which was the place that I started to do Mr Bean.
03:11	In terms of a significant turning point for me, I guess was here at Tiger, I guess, it was working on Charlie and Lola as a lead animator and we went through the first series doing that but then to go on to the second and third series, I got promotions and moved into being an animation director and yeah, for me to have that confidence shown in me by an amazing team here, was a, yeah, was personally was a massive turning point for me, so yeah.
03:45	The way I thought about actually doing what I do as a job, was very much about that. It was thinking about, what can I do as a job? So when I was kind of like early teens, IU guess and you’re kind of at that stage where you’re starting to think about what you can, you know, career paths and what you can do, I thought well I really enjoy art, I’m all right at it, this is something I can probably do, what can I do, what jobs are there out there that you can do and so you start looking and then and animation is a job. It’s a good, it is a good job and it’s rather than an artist, where you are more commission-based and you’re selling your work and sort of like that side of it, there is an actual structure, there’s an industry within, for animation and I guess, on a more sort of like base level, I’ve always loved animation, you know, sort of, you know, loved cartoons and it just seemed to be a natural fit really, so that was why I decided to do it.
04:45	End of Tim F

Tim worked hard at school and always knew that art and design were his passions. In his early teens he thought about which jobs involved art and decided that animation was the best option for him. His first job was on the very first series of the Mr Bean animated series and 10 years later he has come back for the second series as episode director, managing a team of animators.

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£35,880

average salary

The UK average salary is £29,813

average weekly hours

There are 37.5 hours in the average working week

65% male

35% female

The UK workforce is 47% female and 53% male

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Description

? Artists create artistic works using appropriate techniques, materials and media; design artwork and illustrations; and restore damaged pieces of art.

Qualifications

No specific academic qualifications are required although a variety of vocational qualifications, degrees and postgraduate courses are available. Entry can be based upon portfolio work.

Tasks

Conceives and develops ideas and ways of working for artistic composition;
Selects appropriate materials, medium and method;
Prepares sketches, scale drawings or colour schemes;
Builds up composition into finished work by carving, sculpting, etching, painting, engraving, drawing, etc.;
Approaches managers of galleries and exhibitions in order to get finished work displayed;
Uses artistic skills to restore damaged artworks;
Liaises with writers and publishers to produce book illustrations;
Markets and sells finished work directly to customers;
Produces works on commission basis for clients.