31 Jan BWD Marketing Podcast – Shivesh Boodhram
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS7feQIg6k0
We interview our ninja animation specialist Shivesh Boodhram and find out what he does at BWD.
Interviewer: Welcome to On The Couch. My guest today is Shivesh, Chief Animator at BWD. So Shivesh, what do you do at BWD?
Shivesh: At BWD I like to think of myself as an all-arounder, mainly because I do a variety of tasks. Those include graphic design, web design, video editing, and animation. But more importantly, troubleshooting. I believe that if you have the ability to troubleshoot and solve problems quickly, it is very valuable. I would say I spend about 60% of my time just troubleshooting.
Interviewer: What does a typical day for you entail?
Shivesh: A typical day for me varies, depending on the type of work I’m doing. If we’re doing a normal design job, it’s pretty much the same as any employee at BWD. So Jade, our account manager, will give me a brief. I’ll spend maybe an hour or two just planning and researching. And after that I’ll just get into designing. However, if we’re doing an animation job, I’m pretty much offline to the whole of BWD, except for [inaudible 00:01:17] because him and I just sit and we focus on animation. He kind of guides me on the look and feel, and we just go at it.
Interviewer: So it’s you two that handle the whole process. So what’s the process behind creating an animation?
Shivesh: The process behind creating an animated explainer at BWD starts off with the initial meeting with the client. After that we then send them an animated brief for them to fill out, and based on that we create a concept look and feel, along with a script. We then send that for approval. Once that’s approved, we start working on the storyboard and the treatment and send that for approval. Once that’s approved, we start working on the first draft.
Interviewer: So what would you say is the most important part of your animation process?
Shivesh: I would say the most important stage is the planning stage. There’s been days where I’ve spent almost three days just on planning, creating assets I need for the stalls [SP], the graphics, and all of that. And then just two days animating. And I find that I came up with an overall better production.
Interviewer: It’s quite interesting. Planning is very important. So I think the question on most of our viewers’ minds is why choose BWD?
Shivesh: In my opinion I would say that we put a lot of passion into our work and spend a lot of time internally reviewing our work. That means everyone in our office gets a chance to look at every piece of work. We get different insights from different perspectives. To me, I think that adds value because all of us are unique designers but equally talented.
Interviewer: So it’s a very democratic kind of environment.
Shivesh: Yeah, definitely.
Interviewer: All right. Well, Shivesh, thank you for your time joining us here on On The Couch. Join us next time with our guest, Gugu.