No Room For Boffins

Interview with Ian Bird, eCreativeSearch, 2001

Don’t worry. Ian Bird, director, founder and visionary force behind London-based eYe Animation Studios, isn’t about to get all misty-eyed about the "good old days" of 3D animation.

Though he’s been part of the industry since its commercial inception in the early 1980s, his memories of that nascent era are, shall we say, less than rosy. "They were painful, painful days," he reflects. "People thought computers could never be used creatively because (the machines) basically had the IQ of a demented worm."

In those days, Bird was frustrated by the huge gulf between what it meant to be a computer operator and what it meant to be a creative. In the years since, the technology has gradually been demystified, and that has been a liberating process for him. Now, the boundaries of creativity are limited not by the machines, but by the people sitting behind them.

"Pulling the operation side away from the boffins*, you started to see better results. It’s been a meteoric rise from the days of the dreaded green design grid to, say, Jurassic Park," Bird says.

This conviction has had a strong bearing on the team he has assembled at eYe Animation over the last six years, and who help give the company its credentials as a complete production unit. Bird says, "I like to bring in people with disparate — not desperate! — backgrounds; from illustration and from fine art. Watching them come alive together with the new technology is a really nice thing to see."

Among eYe Animation’s ‘nice things to see’ are a host of award-winning UK TV ads (Ford Ka, Walt Disney, Ribena, Martell Cognac) as well as pop videos for international acts such as Sting and The Pet Shop Boys. Their rendering of the latter’s "Liberation" video for the IMAX 3D showcase at Cyberworld was, for Bird, "one of the more satisfying experiences." That the producer of Cyberworld called it "One of the most spectacular visuals ever created for film" doesn’t hurt, either.

Bird is constantly looking to blur boundaries — to confound the cynicism that says computer-produced images can’t be considered art. He has spent enough time debating directors who say that film will never die: "I’m always going to cinemas and watching film with bits of crap all over it. If that’s meant to be the charm and wonderfulness of film…well, it isn’t!" Can film ever be replaced? "It IS being replaced! Big time!"

He’s jovially ambivalent about Britain’s standing in the industry, proud of what has been achieved given the scarcity of resources, but still conceding that "the U.S. takes the risk. [Investment] here is all belt and braces. Venture capitalism without the venture."

For Bird, though, the recent viability of long-format programming is what’s wetting his whistle the most. Although his immediate projects including children’s TV, a delve into comedy ("similar to the Monty Python format") and reworking one of the most famous title sequences on British TV, his ideal future involves more live programming, interactivity, and decision making, and less spoonfeeding. And, of course it goes without saying, global peace!"

This brave new world of dot TVs can only succeed if the Internet retains its position as a relatively free medium, Bird says, adding, "I hope sticky government fingers can stay away from it. Governments are devoid of creativity."

And the capacity for creativity across every level of the production process, with ideas communicated directly to the people who will be animating is, Bird believes, what separates eYe from the post-production houses.

"We don’t want to be subservient to the edit suite. What you do with editing is a by-product, whereas we start with a blank screen and make something. I think that puts us on a different level, and slightly higher up the food chain. Others will disagree vehemently with that view, but that’s what we’ve decided to attach our wagon to." Ian Bird — on the wagon. Here’s to keeping it rolling.

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