Making the most of a second chance
6/3/2010 11:47:27 AM
Darren Locke has a career most digital animators only dream of. He is the Lead Compositing/VFX Artist for Keyframe Digital Productions Inc., located in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Keyframe is a full-service digital art, animation and visual effects studio that has won numerous awards for its cartoon specials and has established a strong hold within the digital effects community.
In the area of television broadcast the Keyframe team has produced digital effects, digital screens and fully animated 3D characters for the television series’ Mutant X, The Ultimate Adventure Company, Wild Card, Monk, G-Spot, ReGenesis, Swarmed, Solar Strike, PlayMakers, The Dresden Files, The Summit and most recently a Canadian/French co-production for Prodigy Films called XIII.
For Locke, getting his foot in the door at such a prestigious company came with a solid education and time.
Locke graduated from College of the North Atlantic’s (CNA) digital animation program in 2000. Prior to that, he had the opportunity to attend a school in Vancouver which helped train artists and create program games for the Nintendo SNES and N64 gaming systems. He applied and was accepted, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to attend because of inadequate funding.
When he heard about the CNA program, Locke was determined to be in the classroom.
“When I heard about the Digital Animation program starting in Stephenville, I wasn''t going to let this one pass by. I looked into some government grants that had been set up for new digital media and got funded for 100% of my first year and 80% of the second year.”
Late in the second year, Locke’s class had a visit from Keyframe representative, Darren Cranford, who wanted to look at the class’ demo reels and critique their work. The company was looking to hire people for a number of projects they had on the horizon.
After graduation, Darren spent a few months sending out demo reels to companies. A few rejections later he got a call from Keyframe. They were looking for a co-op student with the possibility of full-time employment once the co-op was completed.
“I took the co-op job and moved to Niagara Falls. During the six-month co-op placement I worked on a couple of projects. The main one was a TV movie called Prince Charming with Martin Short and Christina Applegate,” explains Locke.
“We were doing pre-visualization where we create a low resolution model of some of the sets used in the movie and we helped the director create some of the camera moves by using the 3D camera to move through the virtual sets that we created. By using these virtual sets, we can help the director layout shots before even stepping out on the live action set. He could have his scenes setup ahead of time and save money for the production company.”
After his co-op was completed, Locke was hired on full-time and has worked on some big projects. He proved himself capable of working on pre-visualization and has since worked on a variety of television shows and feature films including; Mutant X, Adventure Inc., Don''t Say a Word, K-19: The Widowmaker, The Dresden Files, XIII and Warehouse 13 to name a few.
Locke has accomplished a lot since his CNA days, proving hard work and determination are worth it, especially when he enjoys his career so much.
“I love learning new software and I try to keep current with any new techniques and tools that can help make my job more efficient. I love the challenge that comes with trying to re-create things in CG that exist in life or create new things that don''t exist. It''s a great job that I enjoy every single day.”
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Media Contact:
Pamela Spencer
Public Relations Assistant
College of the North Atlantic
709-643-7928
pam.spencer@cna.nl.ca