It’s been a little while since our last run of staff profiles, as we were all wildly busy launching our first title for the Xbox One. But as we look ahead to what comes next and welcome more staff into the studio, we’re getting back showing you the people behind the games. Hopefully these will prove informative for those hoping to get into a particular line of work, but also entertaining enough to be worth a read for anyone interested in Rare or a general industry career.
In this edition: Ellen Parkes, Principal Animator. Go Ellen!
Rare: What’s your background and how did you arrive at Rare?
Ellen Parkes: Some of my earliest memories are of drawing and creating cartoon characters, and from the moment I realised I could do this as a career my mind was made up and I knew I wanted to be an animator. I researched what qualifications I would need and discovered that a fundamental knowledge of art and animation was a must.
With this in mind I gathered information about courses that would help and completed courses in Foundation in Art, BTEC in Animation at Bournemouth College, and finally a PGCert in Animation at the London School of Animation, Central St Martins.
After college I freelanced for a year in London where I was lucky enough to work on a couple of films for TV (Attila, Ivor the invisible) before moving to Shrewsbury where I’d been offered a job working on kids’ TV shows for an up-and-coming company. During my time there I became friends with some of the animators in the game department and persuaded them to teach me how to animate using a computer. I loved it!
From there I got my first job in computer games in a little family-run business where I continued to develop my skills before being lucky enough to be offered a job at Rare.
Have you found yourself doing the job you always thought you’d do?
No. When I started my journey to became an animator there wasn’t a whole lot of information about what skills I would need and I wasn’t even aware it could be a career, but I’m happy it found me.
What are your main responsibilities on the average game?
I get involved in a lot of different areas surrounding animation, and my role tends to change depending on the current development cycle. At the start of a project I will sometimes test animation rigs (game characters), before giving feedback to the riggers, and making suggestions on how I feel we could improve some of our animation tools. Then I might animate some of the characters for pre-production so the designers and engineers are able to test potential gameplay mechanics.
Which Rare games have you worked on, and what’s been your biggest achievement?
Kameo: Elements of Power
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
Kinect Sports, Kinect Sports: Season 2 and Kinect Sports Rivals
Although every project has had its own learning curve, I think my biggest achievement was helping to get a fully functional cut scene editor working for Kinect Sports Rivals and helping get the cut scenes looking so good they were used by our Marketing department.
What do you see as the top perk of working for Rare?
There are too many to mention, I love working with so many talented people who love cake as much as I do.
What do you find most exciting about your job?
I absolutely love bringing characters to life by giving them personality and then working with engineers to see them up and running in the game. But I think the most rewarding and exciting thing for me is finding solutions to artistic and technical challenges, I love to play with cool technology and learn new skills.
How would you describe your fellow workers in five words?
Talented, generous, dedicated, interesting and knowledgeable.
Favourite Rare game, favourite game on an Xbox console and favourite game of all time?
My favourite Rare game has to be Kinect Sports, purely because I had the best time challenging my family to hurdles (and helped my Granddad win). My favourite Xbox game is Xbox Fitness. I love the idea that I can compete with myself and also see how I rank against other people my age. It also makes sure I don’t cheat! And my favourite game of all time is Soulcalibur. It was one of the first games I played with my husband (and bonus – I won!).
Any good (printable) anecdotes or memories from within the walls of Rare?
There are almost too many to mention! Some of my favourite memories are from special events, such as seeing the amazing pumpkin carving creations at Halloween, or going on an impromptu Easter egg hunt around the studio.
I would have to say that my all-time favourite one is from last year when we were competing against the other UK studios on who had the daftest Christmas jumper. Turns out we are all incredibly competitive and totally up for looking daft if it helps us to win. I was up till the early hours pinning Christmas tree decorations and battery-operated lights to my jumper.
What’s the greatest artistic challenge you’ve faced so far, and how was it overcome?
Creating the cut scenes in Kinect Sports Rivals because it involved learning to script in XML. It was a completely new skill and I was a bit worried about breaking the game. The flashing red light of a broken build is a scary thing.
I worked closely with a couple of awesome Tools Engineers who were brilliant at explaining how and why something works a certain way, and how I could go about creating the result I was after. Learning new skills always takes a bit of time, but it was totally worth every moment and question.
What advice would you give to anyone thinking of applying for a role similar to yours?
Be passionate about what you do, and what you want to do. Keep examples of your work varied but make sure they are of the highest quality and make sure they are tailored to the studios you are applying to. Make sure you know roughly how long each animation/ drawing took to complete in case anyone asks, and if you took part in a group project make it clear which elements you were responsible for.
It’s always best to leave people wanting more, so limit demo reels to approx. 2 mins, and include pieces of work that show you understand the 12 principles of animation.
Check out the full Rare Life category to see everyone we’ve featured in past instalments!
Weighing up a career in the games biz? What roles would you like to see covered in future Rare Life columns? Drop us a line and let us know.