Production & Visualisation: a week in the life of Ed

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Ed in the fluid studio

Hi I’m Ed, a CGI artist in the Production & Visualisation team at Fluid. We’ve had a plethora of projects on our plate recently and I’m hoping this blog will give you an insight into the sorts of things we tackle each week! So without further ado.. 

Monday  

First thing in the morning (after coffee), I set about re-immersing myself in the working world by opening Teams and Outlook, catching up on any messages or emails, and gauging my workload for the next few days.  

Every morning we have a short P&V catch-up call to keep us connected, discuss any challenges we might have and schedule projects in our team. Nothing crazy today, but I need to prepare some files to present to a client later in the week.  
We’ve been supplied with some architectural models for a very large retirement village, but we need to optimise and prepare them ready for use, so most of my day was spent making sure we’re ready for the client call. It’s a lovely site with loads of green space, so it’s going to be great to see these CGI renders progress.  
 
Tuesday 

My two favourite dogs are in the office today (I won’t say which), a nice perk for Tuesday!

I’ve been preparing a few things to share with the Strategy & Creative team this morning, and dropped in to show them after their morning meeting. We’re looking to bring more 3D elements into motion graphics, along with using CGI to assist with art direction in brand or product pitches where possible. I really just wanted to involve S&C in my thought processes and hopefully excite a few creative folk at Fluid.   

After lunch I finished up with the architectural site so I’m confident we’re ready to walk through it with the client and choose some angles for the final images tomorrow. 
 
Wednesday 

Today I’ve got something slightly different, I’m preparing some product models to be textured and rendered. The final images need to fit an existing style we established for a catalogue of products, alongside hero images for the client’s website revamp. When finished, I submitted them to our in-house render farm in hopes they are ready to be reviewed by the client in the morning. 
 
In the afternoon we had the client call to walk through the retirement village, these are a great opportunity for clients to shape the final output of their CGI images as they can direct us at this early stage of development as to which areas of the site they would like to show off, tweak camera angles and so on.  
 
Thursday 

We’ve had the go ahead for a CGI animation for Scholl – a client in the medical sector, so today I’ll be 3D modelling a digital twin of the physical product the client has supplied us with. Once it’s modelled, it’s then ready to use for any kind of content you can imagine. In this instance, we’re animating it to show how it’s used, and providing still images for marketing material.
 
We’ve updated some of our workstations in the office so throughout the week I’ve also been setting up my new PC with all the necessary software and licenses I need to work, as I’m looking to switch over soon.
 
Friday 

Fridays come around quick this week! We’ve got our agency-wide catch up call at 11, but aside from that I’m jumping into Unreal Engine to assist with an exciting new sales tool we’ve been developing internally. This is new ground for us as an agency and moving to a real-time game engine for CG projects is an exciting step that opens so many doors for future projects. I’ve got an email or two to send before I clock off, but then it’s a sunny drive home at 3pm to start the weekend.