Sammy joins Teesside’s Potter animation army

Teesside University graduate Sammy Wu was hooked on Harry Potter from the beginning - ten years later his name is on the end credits.

Sammy is one of 17 Teesside graduates from the University’s School of Computing to have worked on the finale in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.

The film, which broke UK box office records last month by making £23m in its first weekend, has passed the one billion dollars (£609m) mark at the global box office.

Sammy, 26, from Putney, London, is a Teesside BA (Hons) Digital Character Animation graduate. He said: 'At first when I was growing up, I wasn’t interested in the Harry Potter books. Then a friend asked me along to the first film and I was hooked from then on, I wanted to watch them.

'Never did I think that I would end up working on them, but here I am. It’s great to know that I’m one of 17 Teesside graduates to have worked on such a huge film.'

Sammy works for the central London-based Framestore, one of the largest visual effects and computer animation studios in Europe.

Animex Sammy decided at the age of 19 to study animation so attended several University Open Days, including Teesside’s. He said: 'I liked the way Teesside presented itself and the fact that it had its own annual animation festival, Animex. That really topped it for me. You had more artistic freedom at Teesside to apply certain things and the library had incredible facilities. I also enjoyed the nightlife; the Students’ Union was fantastic.'

His route to Framestore came through unpaid work experience. Sammy said: 'I’d applied to various animation companies for work experience and my brother Terry suggested Framestore. They gave me one week shadowing a runner, the person whose role involves setting up meetings, client hospitality, reception cover and making sure facilities are kept clean and tidy.

'I mentioned to Human Resources that I wanted to work in animation, so they set up a meeting with an animator who was working on the TV hit Primeval.

'I was called back after that week to work as a runner myself, which was a really good way of getting to know the team and animators and gain access to all the buildings. I could just ask away, people were very friendly, about any area I wanted to get into.'

During this time he was appointed to an animator to mentor him. Sammy said: 'This helped me further develop my animation skills. I was very grateful for that, it’s a learning school at Framestore. You’re always a student and it’s a fantastic place to work.'

He was given secondment within the prep station department, during which he worked on 'Deathly Hallows Part 1'. This involved degraining (removing grain) and clearing dust from a raw scan in preparation for the compositors. Compositing is the process of combining various visual elements into one image resulting in an illusion that all of the elements belong in the same scene.

He added: 'I worked on quite a lot of shots and haven’t seen the finished film yet, I can’t wait to. I’ve seen Part 1; the Kreacher animation created by Framestore animators was an incredible piece of work. I really enjoyed Part 1 and can only now judge the two films together.'

His secondment expanded into rotoscoping for 'The Clash of the Titans' (2010) and 'The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader'. Rotoscoping is the process of 'stencilling' the actors from the set to create a matte.

He added: 'As a result of this work experience, my role changed during 'Deathly Hallows Part 2' as I left running and was promoted into the paint and roto department. I was required to rotoscope a couple of shots of Hermione and Ron Weasley and painting out tracking markers on green screens. Following this, I was involved in Steven Spielberg's upcoming movie 'War Horse' and recently was appointed to co-ordinate and lead a team of paint and roto artists for the upcoming movie Johnny English Reborn.'

Chris Williams, Head of Animation and Visual Effects in the School of Computing, said: 'It's great to see Sammy and a large group of fellow Teesside graduates making such an impact on one of the most successful franchises in movie history. It shows potential students that choosing to study with us creates opportunities to become involved in an exciting and fast moving industry.'

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