 So I'm assuming you've all come to see a man have a meltdown on stage that's that's right. Yeah His hands good. Okay. See the artist the storyteller. So I guess I should introduce myself Do you know what I should have also done? I should have brought the bloody clicker. Shouldn't I get it? It's a great start. Hey, Jannick, you've got the clicker forget my own headman That is a strong start All right, all right, all right It doesn't work Thank you. So my name is Chris McFall. I'm the director of holopixel studios. We're a small We're a small startup Studio based in Cardiff UK specializing in creating original animated content But what I want to talk about today is it's about journey from going to from being a jobbing freelancer To actually telling your own stories. I think so many of us Learn blender because we want to make movies. We want to make Pixar. We want to make Illumination we want to make millions, you know, we want to do that stuff But we get caught up in trying to earn a living, right? So you take on jobs and they tend to be commercial jobs for me It's a lot of dancing sanitary products was my bread and butter for many many years You Every time I go to say something I'm like, oh, no, that's a curse word. You're not allowed to do that with blender content Yeah, so anyway 2018 I was a full-time freelancer. I want to tell my own stories I want to build my own world worlds, but I just had no idea how to get there I didn't feel I could go down the studio route and work my way up because I'm I'm 40 That would take some time. I Didn't have enough experience as a director to just cut the line and jump straight in I Couldn't self-finance my own project because Well, I'm a dad of two and money is tight and you know I'm not giving myself a sob story, but you know keeping a roof of their head That's your priority. You can't just sort of go I guess the children will have no shoes this year And I couldn't get any funding. I really tried I tried every year year in year out and I got rejections and one of the problems with getting film financing is the feedback isn't always that clear or Consistent at all. So you don't know who you're pitching to you don't know what they want So it's very hard to course correct. So for ten years. I didn't get any funding So why was I struggling to find my way? I'm gonna show you my old show reel from 2018 This isn't because who look at the pretty stuff I've done because I to be honest It's a little dated but there is I want you to pay attention to the last frame There's a little message at the end that I put there I think it's very telling as to why I didn't get funding, but we'll get to that later I don't know if there's supposed to be sound at this point Created by its entirety by Chris McFall the strange certain arrogance to that it's also not factually true because there's definitely some work by John Ball in there and Yeah, anyway, we'll come back to that so The first smart thing I did on the journey to becoming a storyteller Was pour myself into both the blender community and the local creative communities I went to as many events met as many people as I possibly could and irritated every single one of them I became very good friends with John Ball of Polk studio. You might know him from things such as absolutely everything That man is everywhere and Stephen Thomas the CG nerd who you know again a really good friend and we sort of What we'd do is we'd meet up every every week in the pub and we'd talk about these creative Goals what we wanted to do what we wanted to make and we would try to put together a personal a joint personal project would pool together and What we did was argue for two years Specifically me and John were both very stubborn We're both very opinionated and we just sort of butted heads for two years and that's not me slagging him off I was probably born most at fault there Stephen was very very patient and Yeah, we just could we wanted we wanted to set out on a journey together, but we couldn't agree on which way to go That was pretty much the size of it. Anyway two years pass from I think it was about 2014 2015 two or three years past and In 2019 something changes. So there's a there's Steve. There's John This is in my studio and we're just we're doing a video review of some of the animation we're working on to this next project So John gets a client in 2019. He's he's done some work from before he'd created some CG characters from they came back and said Hey, John, how'd you feel about bringing these characters to life and doing a couple of YouTube videos for us? And he went let me run it by the team came brought it to us and said, why don't we do this as our startup project? He said, yeah, okay, that sounds like a great idea So One year later, we'd made four episodes of saving soup that this is a kid's show The designs aren't ours, but you know, we did the CG work and brought it all to life There's lots of custom rigging lots of different stuff. We figured out pipelines. We figured out how to be a team more or less I mean, there's still a lot of arguing. I'm a very difficult man So this is saving soup. This is just a quick sort of exit trailer There we go Don't act like you're not impressed. I saw Daniel Bicid show real And it's got nothing on saving soup It's not the world's greatest thing, but that's not the point. It was a first step on the journey and And as I said what we learned what we got from that was we worked as a team and we proved consistently we could put together narrative pieces of animation and Cohesively sort of do it without killing each other And I think that's a really important thing that you need to be able to demonstrate one way or another So we got very lucky in finding that client or that client finding us I shouldn't have stared at the lights now. I can't see the screen So, yeah having a client gave us direction of a hierarchy because John had the money so therefore I had to do what he said and And a budget to sustain us whilst we worked and that's the key thing when you're going for the things It's we're all thinking about the money What are we gonna do how we're gonna keep a roof over our heads while we put inordinate amounts of hours into these animations So yeah, we had a pipeline we had a piece of work to showcase and we had another idea to move on with but we needed a producer End of the dragon So this is where my friend John James. Yes, everyone in this story is called John except for me and Steve because we're special Fortunately, I've been working with my old friend John James on a bunch of different visual effects projects And in 2019 just as soup was wrapping up. We embarked upon Setting out to make make a short film. We had a I had a really stupid idea for a film and John loved it So this was originally put entitled you've got dragons But then we found out after making it after having that line in the script and spoken to camera. Oh, you've got dragons We found out that literally around the corner someone had done a book called you've got dragons and a stage play So I was like, well, we still haven't got a working title for this thing. We don't we don't know what we're gonna call it It's been for about eight different names So, let me tell you about dragons. So dragons is a kid's horror film because that's a genre nobody asked for It's about a mother and her young daughter and they moved to a spooky old house in the Welsh countryside Only to find it is infested by baby dragons and they call in pest control who turn out to be a sacred order of knights Who go to hunt down the dragons? Hygiene since you now Just to add to that it is also an homage to the 1986 film aliens We steal most of the dialogue action and names and prompts and as a result The tagline is in Wales. No one can understand you scream I'm very proud of that tagline might be the funniest thing I've ever said or thought of It's not saying a lot anyway The whole thing's an homage to aliens and it's that it was filmed in 2019 But sadly in 2020 the post-production process faltered and ground to a halt Covid had hit into a on March 2020 the UK went into full lockdown on the same day I found out I was gonna have another child. I Persisted with it as long as I could and then as soon as the baby was born basically no spare time no sleep No, nothing so it comes it comes to a halt, but we'll get back to that later. I save it a lot 2020 is when things changed we applied for funding again This time not to a film fund, but to a creative business fund creative Wales We applied as a team We pulled our experience we pulled our resources and had a joint goal that we agreed on and didn't argue about for two years Which definitely helped we made a business case for the money with a creative brief attached and You know provided we got a little bit of funding We were promising employment opportunities in the area and International trade deals potentially and it paid off. We received the modest but very generously given grant From creative Wales that allowed us to make our first pilot So I again is the script. I'm just gonna say again Creative Wales. Thank you so much ten years. We waited to have someone put faithfulness in a monetary sense And and they really came up trumps and they've been very good to us ever since So the project is called on game land. This is one of the early sort of Production sort of stills and game land is the brainchild of John Ball from poked studio. I mentioned earlier So he had a concept Actually, let's let's get back to that. So the pilot was on game land This time rather than argue we came together to bring John's vision to life We had a pipeline a budget and a direction I took on some young animators Jay and Alex and a freelancer and they're in and I trained them in character animation in blender All was working live on commercial projects, including on game land and that is something that Going forward is shaped how we we're building our studio model Because they were trainees we've actually managed to get their wages paid for a year by the government They were on an employment scheme And that obviously meant that they weren't quite ready for production, but they worked diligently and enthusiastically and now Jay's still with us Alex has moved on, but I'm so proud of the progress they made And you know, occasionally, I think there's little moments in and game land, which are Less from polished and that is as much down to me with all the experience in the world The trainees, but it's what it's a wonderful way to to work It's a very hard way to work because obviously you're wearing multiple hats where you're rigging you're directing and you're teaching people the process And that's that's hard going so you setting yourself up for a bit of a chore But I thoroughly recommend it because it's always so rewarding to engage it with you know with the next generation of artists in that way So John's concept was simple and game land is set in the 1980s It's centered around error and a young boy obsessed with computer games getting pulled tron style into a computer game world John James the producer and I told everyone told you everyone's called John Set out on expanding the idea to give it more heart. So to do this. We introduced the idea of Elaine This is Erin's sister who was left behind when he got taken into a computer game world and 30 years later Shea enters on game land to save her brother in the process losing her memory So unaware of their connection the two siblings set out on a journey to save each other and that heart has Actually done it did it did wonders in transforming how we approach the characters rather than just being a generic sidekick Because obviously Elaine looks like this because they take on avatars when they go into the game So we don't recognize each other anyway. I'm over explaining one. I just show you it. So this is the trailer for and game land You might notice the rain rig being used right at the start. I'll explain that later. That's a game land. It took us a year I'm working full-time on it creating customer rigs Expanding our pipeline working new techniques to get the stuff together and done obviously training the animators But we're really really proud of how it turned out the idea is now that we have a pilot But we can take them shop around different studios Typically when you're you're working on pitching to people you just have a couple of maybe scamps little mock-ups a Script Maybe a Bible for it get outlining the arc and you're supposed to take that and sell it to people. I am running out of time I'm gonna have to move faster than this But yeah, we wanted to create pilots to show to demonstrate our ability and to demonstrate our ideas I'm terrible at pitches as you can tell it takes me 20 minutes to say hello So elevated pitches not in my 40. We're gonna move faster. Okay. I mentioned dragons earlier I'm just gonna skip straight to the trailer. This is very rough I do apologize. It was thrown together the other day just to have something to show you And the audio is way too quiet at the start and I do apologize, but it gets louder Easy to miss till they become a problem Particularly as they are mostly nocturnal, you know what that means Right The little girl starring in that video is my at the time six-year-old daughter Maddie The first ad was my partner Beth John James and his as of tomorrow wife Lauren producer and set designer friends came from Output woodwork and helped us in so many ways. They loaned us for house to shoot in I was Richard Roberts My friend Helen Lentis for house Richard Roberts lent us his swords and all this sort of stuff You'll see you can see here a lot of the external shots are fully CG because well lockdown we couldn't go out and Yeah, all sorts of shenanigans So it was a massive collaboration made possible by the talents and generosity of the entire team old friends and Yeah Whilst that's playing. I'll just continue to talk. I think I'm gonna have to wrap up because I've got like a minute The thing that changed From those early days is as you said, oh, I did everything on my own you can't work like that and You know have have people have faith in you to give you money because it's like wait He's gonna try and make a feature film all on his own. Is he nuts? You can't have that attitude you've got it. People have Different ideas to you but that doesn't mean they're wrong There's so many different right ways to do something and listening to those ideas You don't always have to say yes. I in fact, I thoroughly encourage arguing with your crit co-creators You don't always have to say yes, but you do always have to listen And if you know but someone in that team has a quieter voice than most then it's your duty to amplify it Anyway, this is taking way too long. I've got 20 seconds If you get the point, there's visual effects in the film Very dark ones apparently Yeah, I'm on you right so yeah, I think I just covered that covered that So an apprentice centered studio. We're looking to take on Staff on an apprentice base level and fill the education to industry skills gap that is currently happening We're looking to introduce more blender users to the Ecosphere in the UK because it's it weirdly the UK doesn't have it or didn't have a huge uptake in blender And we're looking to supply those Those talented creatives to other studios There's a number of Welsh studios which have already come on with us, but we're hoping many many more We've had the right sounds come back to us. It sounds like we're on to a winning idea It's gonna be a very tough road But because we can make them work on live projects, which don't have a time deadline because we're making pilots to pitch It's a unique sort of proposition Our upcoming projects. We have so many different creative ideas from ten years of You know failing to get funding. We've just got this backlog of ideas including codelings, which is my concept Which actually got funded earlier this year I Don't have time to tell you about it But I will be around for a few hours after the talk before I have to catch a flight to go to my producer's wedding The inconsiderate swine choosing to have a wedding during blender conference This is the one This is a 22nd clip so or even shorter. This is the one piece of rendered footage We have test footage. This is one of the bad guys choir. He's voiced by Dominic Diamond of Games Master fame I would love to tell you how that came about. It was the day my grandmother exploded Cheers Dominic So that's it from here We're gonna continue to build the studio and our stable of IP continued to train and develop the careers new Creatives and continue to collaborate and help each other find a way out of the maze Well the future holds for us We don't know the next steps are unsure an essential step for us would be to find get one of our concepts options To get our work in front of people But a few weeks ago. We found ourselves taking a step towards that showing on game land to and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to Say this but we had a meeting with Nickelodeon and they didn't say no so They didn't say yes either just to clarify that but we have a couple more meetings And even if they just give us some pointers along the way, we're very grateful for them to taking the time to see us I'm very grateful for you to take time to watch this talk. Thank you ever so much