Saddington & Baynes come to Escape…

On Thursday 15th May, Escape Studios’ Visual Effects classes were lucky enough to have Chris Chrystodoulou, one of London’s first Graphic Paintbox artists and a cornerstone of Saddington & Baynes’ Creative Digital Retouching arm, come in to talk to them about the industry and the company.

With more and more CG replacing live action, Chris was in a perfect position to not only give helpful advice, but also an insight into the pace and direction with which print CGI advertising is moving- and what the students need to do to break into the commercial CG world.

Saddington & Baynes is widely recognised as one of the World’s leading post-production print studios, and is leading the way with digital retouching. With CGI being the biggest change in creative advertising since it went digital over 20 years ago, S&B are well placed to break new ground and innovate, pushing forward the realms of imagination with each new project.

Chris described how in moving from traditional forms of photographic retouching, S&B have translated traditional principles of camera techniques across to CG to help them develop high quality models and lighting- meaning the impossible is now the plausible. Stressing that the ability to produce complex VFX shots is not only essential, he also explained that it is exciting advertisers so much so that real-life models are being done away with in preference of CG- and that cost plays a massive part too. Suddenly projects that involved physically building models and sets over weeks for only one or two shots now take days or hours, and with photo-realistic interaction between CG and real people now the norm the future seems to hold no bounds for what is achievable.

Chris estimated that in the next year CGI will take up 40-50% of all print advertising, let alone the limitless possibilities of CGI interactive advertising, so the future for all those on our VFX courses wanting to work in commercials is certainly bright. With CG ever increasingly replacing reality, in an industry without boundaries it would appear that creation, innovation and imagination are all key to success in the sharp end of an already cutting-edge business.

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