Spotlight Series: Ethan Mainwaring-Taylor - Trainee Junior VFX Artist

The Aardman Spotlight Series is back for 2025, and in the coming weeks we will be profiling four Trainee Junior VFX Artists embarking on traineeships at our Gas Ferry Road studio.

First up is Ethan Mainwaring-Taylor who shares an insight into his experience working on the upcoming Shaun the Sheep series, and offers advice for those wanting to follow in his footsteps.

What is it like working in the CG Team at Aardman?

Working in the CG team at Aardman is unique in the best way possible. It is a massively collaborative and friendly environment. The VFX pipeline is well thought out and you quickly grow into the team and workflows. Everyone in each department works closely together, including with others in production outside of the CG Team. Making it a unique friendly environment where everyone comes together to make the project successful.

Describe your typical day

A typical day for me involves a commute down the motorway to the studio. I settle myself in by having a morning catch up with the team and VFX Supervisor, whilst logging into my machine for the day. A lot of the production is run through Flow production tracking (aka Shotgrid). So, once I am set up at my machine, I will check the project I am currently working on and see if I have any new tasks set or amends to make on Flow. I then will open Nuke and the shot I need to work on, using Aardman’s very handy launcher program for shots, and crack on!

At 1pm we usually go down for lunch in the canteen, which is always a nice break for the whole CG team to have a catchup and reenergize for the afternoon. Generally, we will have a dailies session or review about halfway through the day with the team to review shots and check up on how things are going. Depending on the project sometimes you are lucky enough to do dailies in the cinema room which is rather exciting. This allows me to version up a comp to respond to any feedback from the dailies session before the end of the day. Often there are some sweet treats passed around too, which I am particularly fond of in the afternoon.

Towards the end of the day, we begin to wind down and log off, uploading the latest WIP (work in progress) comp render to Flow. Whilst working on Shaun the Sheep series 7, I enjoyed playing darts after work with some of the production team. We had a lot of fun with the darts trying to win a free breakfast sandwich, but not so fun for the person that had to pay for it.

What new skills have you learnt during your traineeship?

I have learnt so many skills it is hard to name only a few. My communication skills have really improved, particularly through communicating with Directors and Supervisors during reviews. I have learnt a huge amount about stop motion and the VFX pipeline around stop motion, such as working on animation shot on twos and the range of lighting states shot in addition to the main take. It has been amazing to work with the variety of plates that are shot simultaneously, allowing you to comp in stereo and improve keying through silhouette plates to name just a few advantages. I have really pushed my problem-solving skills to the next level, working on some challenging projects and seeing how so many talented compositors approach the shots and come up with solutions to problems has really helped me improve those problem-solving skills. Furthermore, I have a much better understanding of how film, series and shortform projects run as I had an amazing opportunity to work on a huge range of project types, so my adaptability skills have greatly developed.

What are your career ambitions?

My career ambitions are to continue building my career as a Compositor. I feel much more confident going for Junior Compositor positions now and feel I have a much better understanding of what it takes to be a Compositor on an industry production. Looking into the distant future I have greater aspirations to be a VFX Supervisor or Comp Supervisor and it has been amazing to see first-hand what it takes to be a VFX Supervisor at Aardman.

What was your study route, and which course or training did you take?

After sixth form, I wanted to study Game Art at University but was open to other digital creative industries. This led me to finding Escape Studios. Escape Studios at the time had three undergraduate courses in Animation, Game Art and VFX. Where Escape Studios shone for me was that it was in the heart of London, meaning it was surrounded by some of the biggest creative companies in the world and had many industry links to them. This meant I could get a big step up into the industry and make connections for work whilst studying. Furthermore, Escape Studios taught the same first year to all three courses, enabling a wide range of skills to be learnt and for you to find your own specialism. This allowed me to change from Game Art to the VFX course after my first year of studies, which is what I did. During the first year at Escape Studios, I just fell in love with Compositing on the VFX Undergraduate degree. It was the perfect marriage of both creative and technical skills, and Nuke really clicked with me as a software. The Undergraduate course at Escape studios allowed me to learn a huge variety of skills to get me started as a Compositor, and being taught by industry professionals meant those skills could transfer to my first job. But also, it was massively influential in growing my professional people skills. By working in intense team projects generating short films built not only my professional teamworking skills but also gave me work that is showreel ready.

Are you part of any CG/VFX Communities?

I have recently joined the ‘Bristol+Bath Anim/VFX’ group on LinkedIn, so I am very excited to go to some of their meet ups as it will be an amazing way to stay in touch with people I already know and meet new people in the industry. I would highly recommend that anyone getting in CG/VFX make a LinkedIn account and get following people, it is a massive hub for all things VFX including meet ups, talks and job opportunities.

How did you start out in the industry?

Aardman has in fact been my start into the industry and I feel very lucky to have started my career at such a creative and special place. Escape Studios was the gateway into the industry and my tutor Klaudija was a huge help in inspiring me to become a Compositor. I had worked on a few external short film projects whilst studying there and was also a Studio Assistant whilst still in my final year of studies. So, all these things have massively helped me to start out in the VFX industry.

If you could give one bit of advice about getting started in the industry, what would it be?

My advice would be to find a course that you can trust to be reliable. Make sure it teaches you the industry standard methods, whilst building your professional skills. Make sure the course you take will be worth your while, it can be quite easy to learn poor techniques or not use the correct industry standard software. Also, don’t neglect those professional skills, it is massively important that you can successfully work in teams and have other important skills such as problem solving and willingness to learn more. Finally, get LinkedIn and make those connections!

What do you like most about working at Aardman?

I love the Portuguese almond cake most about Aardman… Jokes aside from its very nice cakes, Aardman is massively creative which enables an amazing work environment. Everyone that works at Aardman is so supportive and helpful whilst being some of the most creative talent I have had the pleasure to know. It is very rare to find anywhere anymore that has such a freeing environment for creatives to make amazing projects a reality. I love how all the departments work so closely together, which builds a great sense of community. Aardman really accommodates to everyone and is very flexible to your schedule.

What is your favourite Aardman character and why?

My favourite character must be the chicken, I mean Feathers McGraw. Similarly to Gromit, I just love how so much character and comedy can be brought to life through the magic of stop motion animation with a character that is silent. I think Feathers has such a unique, sinister yet comical, animation characteristic that you can’t not love him. I also particularly like his many disguises that could fool even the best detectives of course.