How would you describe your job?
I’m an animator and motion designer working in a five-man team of amazing creative designers. At Cub, we are specifically known for our ability to create distinct, animated characters that are rich in personality and charisma. We strive to be the best in the industry in creating characterful animations for brands all over the world.


Our clients include NFL, Premier League, BBC, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox and many more! On a day-to-day basis, I’ll be creating style frames for pitches, sketching and illustrating characters ready for animation, and mostly animating these characters inside of Adobe After Effects, ready for final output.

All of our designers essentially do the same thing – taking an illustration through to motion – however each of us has our own strengths and our creative director Fraser, along with co-owner and producer Ben, will usually pick the appropriate designer for each project, based on their strengths and qualities. I’d say my strengths lie in creating fun, quirky, character based 2D animation.


If you could pick one GIF to describe your job, what would it be and why?
This GIF (above) is perfect because not only does our creative director Fraser have hundreds of collectible wrestling figures all over the office, but also because I couldn’t tell if this guy [American professional wrestler, the Ultimate Warrior] was exhilarated or angry, which actually perfectly sums up how I feel about my work on a regular basis.

I absolutely love what I do, and it’s either going extremely well and I’m designing things that I love and am happy with, or it’s going extremely badly and I’m frustrated by my work and my inability to design. Imposter syndrome is real!



What recent project at Cub are you most proud of?
We were recently commissioned to create some really quirky characters for Zipcar’s marketing campaign. I led on this project, creating the style frames, background illustrations, and animating all the final characters. This was a big project for me and I was really happy with the outcome. Especially the pigeon, I’ll always be proud of that little angry pigeon.

What kind of skills are needed to do your role? Do you need any specific training to do what you do?

I think what we do here is pretty niche, just based on the fact that character animation can be quite tricky to master. We’ve worked out several formulas to do it at speed whilst also maintaining high quality. So yes, it does require a specific skillset acquired through quite a bit of training.

That being said, you can start learning at any time. I know tonnes of people who started in their mid-to-late 20s that are really great and super-experienced motion designers today. There are also infinite resources and tutorials online to help anyone and everyone develop and practice these skills, such as YouTube, Motion Design School and School of Motion.

How did you land the job?
I’ve been a massive fan of Cub since they started in 2014. At my very first industry job when I was 18, we had an animation team of three people, and we used to gawk at the stuff they produced. From then on, I was absolutely determined to do whatever I could to work for them one day.


When I was 20, I left that job and went to uni in Cardiff. My plan was to go back to my hometown of Brighton, continue freelancing and eventually move to London – as that’s where Cub was based at the time. But then the news came that they were relocating to Brighton!

This seemed too good to be true, so I immediately applied for a position, even though they had only advertised for senior and middleweight roles. So I went for an interview and it seemed like they wanted more experienced candidates, but then about four months later, when they had moved down to Brighton, they offered me a junior role! So it really worked out great.

For anyone hoping to get a job with us, I think the most important thing is to use online resources to practice your character animation. When I landed the job at Cub, I was doing quite a lot of personal character experiments and tests that helped to show them the skills I already had. The trick is just to keep creating, and if you love it enough, that desire and drive will get you to where you want to be.

What was your journey like when you were first starting out?

I’ve been really lucky to be honest; I’ve known from a young age that I wanted to pursue a career in animation and motion design. I first started by editing video games when I was about 13 and that’s how my attention was drawn to After Effects.

From then on, it spawned a passion and desire to keep getting better. This went on for five or so years, until a friend of mine got in touch about coming to work for a video production company as a junior apprentice animator. This role massively helped me get on my feet and working in a team of two other senior animators taught me all the basics of client work, and I learnt so much great stuff from them.

What I would advise is to try and land a role working in a team of other animators, whether it’s an internship, apprenticeship or junior role. I can guarantee you will learn 10x more and pick stuff up much faster working with people on real projects, than you ever can from online resources. This type of role allows you to build up a personal showreel that will essentially help you apply for any other jobs in the future.


If you could pick three things that you’ve found useful or inspiring to your work or career, what would they be and why?

Video Copilot is an amazing free website that I used in the early days of getting started with After Effects. It has so many unbelievable tutorials to help you learn the software. I used to do every single one that came out, and it really helped me get started with visual effects.

Markus Magnusson is a true wizard in our industry. I’ve always looked up to his work and it’s constantly inspired me to be as great as him one day!

The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams is an essential book for any animator, full of useful techniques that date back decades. It proves that original techniques are incredibly vital and still very relevant in today’s modern animation industry.

What would you say has been your biggest challenge along the way?
Finding time to be creative and complete personal projects whilst managing a full-time job, and also having some form of a life has definitely been a big challenge.

It’s really important that you test, experiment and constantly flex your creative muscles; this is the only real way you can improve. Don’t get me wrong, the projects we do at Cub are awesome, but I’m determined to reach a certain level, and I do sometimes overwork in the evenings and weekends outside of the nine-to-five.

I want to live my life and be good at what I do, but also I need to ensure I’m giving 100% at Cub. Finding that balance is definitely tricky.

What’s the best career-related advice you’ve ever received?
Never stop learning. Constantly engage with everything and anything creative. Read books, go to art galleries, do online tutorials, follow design pages on Instagram, watch films, paint, draw, take photos, hang out with creative people. The more you fill your entire world with creativity, the more creative you become, and the more you increase your ability to think of creative ideas.

This is all a natural way of learning how to push your own creative agenda. Even though going to that sculpture exhibition or watching that new film may not seem like it’s helping you get into motion design, chances are it’s subconsciously helping you thrive and grow your artistic understanding.


What advice would you give someone looking to get into a similar role?
Like I mentioned earlier, trying to get a job as an apprentice, intern, runner or junior is the most vital part of getting on your feet. If you can convince a company that you are hardworking and that you’re willing to learn, you will gain invaluable experience.

It’ll help you in all cases to not only get better at what you do, but also meet new people and make connections in the industry. It’s just a great way to get the ball rolling. From then, just keep going, keep making cool stuff and it’ll all eventually pay off. I promise.