ABOUT
Hello, my name's Harry Houghton and I'm currently a freelance Junior Rigging TD at Axis Animation looking for longer contracts or a permanent position.
I became interested in 3D animation when I saw a behind the scenes documentary of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones in the Summer of 2009, at the time I was going from second into third year of a BSc degree in Mathematical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, I was enjoying the course but was looking for a more practical use for what I was learning. About a year later my Brother bought me the book To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios which details the career of Dr. Ed Catmull. Inspired by this I went on to complete my honours project on Bezier, B-spline and NURBS curves and surfaces.
After graduating from university, I went to study at Aberdeen College (now North East Scotland College) on their 3D Computer Animation HNC program where I was taught to use Maya, 3ds Max and Photoshop and developed a liking for character rigging and animation. While on the course I successfully applied to Glasgow Caledonian University's 3D Design for Virtual Environments masters program.
While I was studying in Glasgow I had the opportunity to focus my master project on character rigging. As well as creating two rigs I also created a short animation which acted as a demonstration for them. It was a difficult few months but it was well worth it!
After I graduated from GCU, I was contacted by Aberdeen College and asked if I would like to return to lecture the course I had been on from 2011 - 2012. I said yes and taught classes of approximately 25 students Maya and 3ds Max from September 2013 until December 2014.
I realised that even with my qualifications and skills, because of the relatively few junior rigging positions and the number of other talented riggers looking to get into the industry, I needed to improve. Until this point I had been creating a lot of rigging tests but not combining them into one character rig, so over the next few months I did a lot of research and analysis on popular free character rigs such as AnimSchool's Malcolm and Animation Mentor' Stewie as well as further developing my own setups before I combined them into one rig which was skinned to the Sintel model from the Blender Foundation.
I speculatively applied to work at Axis Animation and got a job as a Junior Rigging TD and have been working there since 05/2015, I'm really enjoying it and have already contributed to some big projects!