COVID19 – Making the best of the worst

“Unprecedented times” is a phrase which, within a matter of weeks, seems to have already lost a great deal of its potency.

The last fortnight (is that all?), has seen us going from working in our wonderful studios in London and New York to full working-from-home mode, trying desperately to not get cabin fever or Coronavirus – or both.

Now that the initial madness had subdued however, we have realised Jelly is actually in a relatively fortunate position, when it comes to creating content for the industry. We are in fact, largely unaffected by working-from-home rules, should there be any work to be done.

We represent directing, animating, illustrating and lettering talent from all over the world and all of our projects are produced or project-managed in London or New York to be delivered globally, therefore most of our production is remotely handled anyway. So working in isolation isn’t vastly different to how we work with a large tranche of our clients anyway.

We want to make sure that briefs, scripts and of course content are still being produced. Even if a project is quite far down the line, there is still a possibility to pivot it to animation.

“A strong idea can be pivoted to animation. It’s just a case of finding a style that suits and getting a good treatment from a strong director. Even if a director is attached to a project already and it was originally going to be live-action, there’s no reason why they couldn’t collaborate with an animation studio to get just as strong a result, in my opinion.” Chris Page – LBB: Don’t let Coronavirus Put the Brakes On.

All it takes is a bit of lateral thinking and an adjustment of schedules, after all the fantastic is sometimes easier to draw than it is to shoot….

Of course different animation techniques have different set ups. If you’re working with High-End CGI files then shifting work around can be a challenge without a dedicated fast broadband pipeline, 2D is bit lighter on Bandwidth. Our in-house animation team; KITCHEN were already backing everything up to The Cloud (just in case we had to work from home) in the weeks before everything kicked off, so the transition from studio to remote working has been pretty seamless.

We’re incredibly lucky to say that the changes in the way of working that are happening around the globe during this complicated time, shouldn’t affect our process and quality of our projects.⁠ We would like it if it was the same for everyone, yet with live-action shoots and events being cancelled left right and centre, it seems as though a large part of the industry may be put on pause for a few months.

So the road ahead certainly isn’t clear and we’re sadly far from the end of this, but we’re going to keep doing what we do best, crafting content (whilst remembering to wash our hands!)

Stay well, stay safe and stay in.

Jelly x