Summer Work experience

Archipelago Animation

Over the summer I undertook work experience at a small animation studio, local to my town.
Archipelego Animation use strong narrative, clear and compelling graphics, music and humour to engage, inform and inspire. There unique style is flexible, cost effective and produces broadcast-quality animation that get straight to the point.
Working along with a website explanimation.net Archipelego undertake Environmental Campaigns, Outreach programmes and public Consultations.

Green Deal and the ECO

My first job at Archipelego was to research a government plan "energy saving for your home and business" called the Green Deal.
The Green Deal works by making energy saving improvements to your home or business without having to pay all the costs up front.
The aim of the Green Deal is to cut carbon emissions by 34% in 2020 by implementing energy saving improvements such as:

• insulating e.g loft or cavity wall insulation
• Heating
• draught proofing
• double glazing
• renewable energy techniques e.g solar panels or wind turbines 

The Green Deal plan is set out in 5 easy steps 

1. Get an assessment of your property to see what improvements you can make and how much you could save on your energy bills.

• During the assessment an assessor will come and inspect your property, and discuss your energy use.
• Green Deal advice report, explaining the improvements you can make in order to determine how much you can possibly save.

1. Choose a Green Deal provider to carry out the work. You discuss with them what work you want done and whether the Green Deal is right for you.
2. Use the assessment to apply for the Cash-back scheme if you qualify.
3. Choose a Green Deal provider to carry out the work. You discuss with them what work you want done and wether the Green Deal is right for you.
4. If you go ahead with the improvements you must sign your Green Deal Plan - This is a contract between you and the provider stating what work will be done and how much it will cost. The provider will then arrange for a Green Deal installer to do the work.
5. Once the work is done you'll pay off the money in instalments through your electricity bill.

The Green Deal plan is implemented by a new government organisation called the ECO (Energy Companies Obligated). ECO is due to conclude in march 2015.
The organisation holds a legal obligation on energy suppliers to improve the energy efficiency of households through the establishment of three distinct targes

• The carbon emissions reduction obligation (also known as affordable warmth)
• The Carbon saving community obligation
• The home heating cost reduction obligation

This organisation replaced the CESP and CERT from January 2013.  ECO is expected to be around £1.3 billion pa compared to the £1.5 billion CERT.

The ECO has two key elements to the scheme:

• Affordable warmth (fuel poverty targeted) -25%
• Carbon savings (largely for hard-to-treat homes) -75%

ECO brokerage mechanism:

• Currently CERT and CESP are currently controlled by utility companies.
• Under the brokerage system at least 50% of ECO funds can be bid for.
• Competition should allow insulation firms to be more innovative.   

Whilst I worked at Archipelego they were commissioned by the government to create an informative animation explaining what the ECO and Green Deal is.
For a majority of the time spent at the studio, I had to research other companies that had made videos about the same deal, who were not commissioned to do so.

That's a Moray

After the first couple of weeks researching I was given a practical task to work on. The studio had a lot of e-cards created in the mid 2000's on flash. Joe my boss believed they were outdated and needed polishing.

I was given all the artwork and asked to reconstruct the same animation but on Adobe After Effects. The e-card was an 

This gave me a excellent opportunity to improve my AE skills, homing in on new tools to experiment with. Such as the Puppet pin tool, which I used to animation the fish