Gooseberry: A Day in the Life of Character Mill

It's time to introduce another team that'll be building Gooseberry. Today, we're getting a glimpse into the world of James and Kim Neale from Character Mill in Sydney, Australia. Their day is completely different from Ben and Jonathan in London - have a look!

Hi there everyone, this is James from Character Mill all the way down under in Sydney, Australia.

Like everyone involved, we're really excited to be a part of Gooseberry, so for the "A Day in the Life of..." series here on BlenderNation, I humbly present a few insights into a typical day at Character Mill.

We awake to the creativity of our kids who are our major source of inspiration. Usually it's chalk on the back deck or scattered pages of coloured drawings yet more recently they've discovered glass markers so now almost every window in our house is covered in some kind of crazy kid graffiti. I love it but I"m not sure the neighbours agree.

During the rush of breakfast and cleanup, I remember that its my turn for school drop-off. Damn, no time for that lazy morning coffee in the sun. :)

We pile into my most-awesome electric van, battery now fully charged, all systems go, off to school.

Living near the beach, we sometimes stop for a quick swim and yes, today would have been perfect, yet school beckons. Maybe tomorrow. Usual route for school drop-off & lo-and-behold in the rush out the door, guess who forgot to pack the lunchboxes!!! :(

Kids away, it's a short drive to the studio hidden amidst one of the busiest shopping precincts of Sydney. Kim's already arrived so the aircon is on, and coffee is made. Check the emails as slowly the guys trickle in the door.

At CharacterMill, we recognized long ago that 9am starts don't suit everyone. Our studio starts are usually slow and our first meetings aren't until 10am or so.

Email reveals the work for the day. It's a mix between a new poster of our little green Gecko (our longest standing mascot), new titling and re-rendering of ~8 minutes of a water supply visualisation, some new page layouts for our publisher, and our Unity programmer guys are demanding more new assets for our latest app (soon, people, sooon!!)

Once everyone is briefed, it's mouse clicking time.

Lunch is scattered at best however on Fridays we usually try and murder a beer or three together. Today (Thursday) it's a sandwich at the desk, no time to move, frenetic mouseclicking and window shifting. When I'm not using Blender, my usual mix is Gmail, Openoffice, Freemind, WordPress, eGroupware & Unity, trying to manage remote artists, answer questions from inhouse artists, keeping creditors and debtors in check all the while keeping an ear out for new work opportunities.

While I'm supposed to be the Producer, I just can't help but get involved in 3d production which I love. Some days the best for me is when I can blend all day with no interruptions. (wistful sigh)

At 3pm, Kim heads out to pick up the kids leaving a fantastic trail of designs and artwork that I sort, distribute and send.

Tonight is our 8th Blender Session, a fortnightly free event where we introduce and teach Blender to the (substantial) 3d community here in Sydney. (check here for more info). Tonight 13 people showed up, including Jeremy Davidson (Sintel, Tears of Steel animator/rigger) , Alex Faiad (Guismo), and Jimmy Gunawan of Blendersushi so it was a fantastic session and plenty of interest from the new-to-Blender. Awesome progress.

By 10:30pm it's a wrap, I lock the studio and van it back home to bed. Rinse & repeat with a smile because tomorrow is Friday :)

[Bart: Check out Character Mill's website to see the awesome projects they worked on!]