Mike Cawood: Cinematics (1)
Mike Cawood’s interest in animation began while he sat glued to the television watching cartoons as a kid. He knew what he wanted to do by the time he was halfway through high school and began immediately to direct his career in the direction of animation. He went on to higher education and received a two-year diploma in Art and Design, all the while teaching himself how to animate in his spare time. At that time, he also began making short films at home. Eventually, he made short films in college as well.
It took him three years to complete an advanced Degree in Animation, in Wales. About that period, he says, “I had the time of my life pushing my skills as a filmmaker, and feeding off the enthusiasm everyone had for their work.”
How would you describe your technique in Animation and Cinematics?
I experimented in so many techniques over the years but ultimately specialized in traditional 2D hand drawn animation while using computers to bring it all together, mixing things up and blur the lines between 3D and 2D.
How did you get started at Rare?
I applied to Rare in 1999 and got the job (impressive considering I was an hour late for the interview—I couldn’t find the place!). After I finished off my Degree (First Class with Honours—Yay!) and picked up a few awards for my student films, I was put straight onto the creation of real-time cut-scenes on Dinosaur Planet (later to become Starfox Adventures). Although I did some in-game animations most of the credit for those goes to the other animators I worked with. Ultimately I stuck to making the cut-scenes for the duration of the project, using Maya and some proprietary software developed in-house.
At what point in the long course of the development of Kameo™:Elements of Power™ did you begin your contribution?
A number of the old Starfox team members moved over to the Kameo team in 2002 as it was going through changes that ultimately would result in the game being developed for the Xbox platform. Somewhere along the line I took over as the Lead Animator. So here I am today.
How did the change to Xbox 360® affect the cinematics of Kameo?
The biggest change was a massive increase in resolution and, along with that, the visual fidelity of the image that was expected. Although I’d always planned my cinematics to account for character model improvements and rendered my work at a higher resolution than was needed at the time, my system was really put to the test to reach Xbox 360 standards.
What processes are most important to the successful completion of your work?
Aside from the talent of the animators and modelers one of the most important things to keep on top of is communicating ideas amongst such a big team. It can be tough keeping track of such a big project and ensuring that you are all doing it justice at all times.
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