Cady Juarez and Jon Bero's Indie Animation Project Sol Search Explores Grief and Identity

Expert interview 25 years in animation, with legendary studios under her belt, and still the same obsession: helping talent rise. Dara McGarry, now Director of Outreach at DNEG Animation, has seen the industry change, tighten, and reinvent itself. She doesn’t speak of a crisis, but of adaptation. For her, animation is never a solo endeavor. The projects that endure are those built collectively—like Nimona, a film she often cites for what it represents regarding teamwork and perseverance. Her advice to students remains the same, regardless of the market: keep creating, even in uncertainty, because that is where it all begins. Full interview (EN & FR) here 👉https://lnkd.in/dRnkYq4i

Attaching weapons, cameras, or props in Unreal should not be guesswork. In this short clip, Gold Unreal Authorized Instructor Franco Vilanova shows how character constraints actually work inside Sequencer so attachments move correctly with animation. We’ve turned this lesson into a full on-demand training focused on real filmmaking workflows in Unreal. Watch the free evergreen Constraints webinar here 👉 https://hubs.li/Q042pWfB0 Live classes start 2/15 at 9am PT!

Response to Cafcass Post “Just because a process is designed for court use does not mean it is experienced as safe, coherent, or protective by children.” Reports, animations, and child-friendly summaries may improve understanding of decisions—but understanding a decision is not the same as being protected by it. What families and children experience in practice often diverges sharply from how systems describe themselves. When recommendations are produced primarily through paperwork, templates, thresholds, and risk frameworks—rather than sustained relational evidence—children can become subjects of process rather than holders of rights. This is not always the result of bad intent. It is the result of policy-driven systems that reward procedural compliance over lived impact. Key concerns parents, advocates, and professionals continue to raise include: Decisions framed as “child-centred” that rely on inferred risk rather than verified harm Recommendations formed through documentation pathways children cannot meaningfully challenge Emotional detachment being taught as professional safety, despite evidence that forced detachment creates long-term harm for children and workers The absence of clear, enforceable thresholds distinguishing protection from control When systems depend on paper narratives to survive—rather than outcome-based accountability—language can unintentionally become a shield against scrutiny. Transparency is not about better explanations. It is about verifiable standards, lawful thresholds, and proportional intervention. If a process would not withstand constitutional, human-rights, or due-process review without its paperwork framing, then reform—not rebranding—is required. Children deserve more than explanations after decisions are made. They deserve systems that cannot harm them by design. This is not an attack on workers. It is a call to confront structural incentives that place families—and professionals—inside processes that too often escalate rather than protect. Reform begins where honesty is allowed.

The most dangerous thing a parent can do is assume the system is designed to protect them by default. As a woman who has advocated for thousands of children and families across the UK, I’ve learned this the hard way: Not every system designed “to help” actually helps. And not every authority is safe to engage with unprepared. There are agencies and processes that operate through policy language, procedural pressure, and asymmetrical power, not transparency or child-centered outcomes. Parents often enter these interactions assuming good faith—only to discover too late that the system speaks a language they were never taught. Here is the reality parents and advocates need to understand: • You are not obligated to engage blindly or informally. • If you do engage, you must understand their policies, thresholds, terminology, and procedural playbook. • Words matter. Structure matters. Timing matters. • Anything said or written can be reframed, minimized, or used out of context. These systems are policy-driven, not empathy-driven. They respond to: – procedural compliance – internal frameworks – documentation, not distress If you cannot speak their language—clearly, strategically, and on record—you place yourself and your children at risk. That is not a moral failing of parents. It is a structural reality of how power operates. I have seen too many families harmed not because they were wrong—but because they were unprepared, uninformed, or pressured into cooperation without safeguards. Advocacy is not about emotion. It is about precision. If parents choose to engage, they must do so: • informed • documented • strategically • with boundaries And if they cannot do that, non-engagement and external oversight are often safer options. Children deserve protection. Families deserve truth. And parents deserve to know how these systems actually function—not how they’re marketed. This isn’t cynicism. It’s hard-earned clarity.

A while back we announced our new approach related to determining the amount of Hot Heel remaining inside the EAF vessel. We focus on the sloshing movement of the molten metal. Now: what does that sloshing actually look like? Check out this animation...

On our shortfilm “Au-delà des mots,” we wanted to push the animation as far as possible. We opted for a full keyframe, and put in everything we could: lip sync, facial expressions, bipeds, quadrupeds, musical instrument with the talharpa and body mechanics. This encouraging challenge allowed us to show unique emotions that are essential to storytelling. In order to deliver the shots, we needed to find efficient ways to create all these keyframes. This is why we turned to Rumba Animation, a software designed specifically for animation. It allowed us to copy animations from one character or scene to another, use much clearer animation layers, use dynamics to simulate the wolf's tail and directly manipulate the part of the mesh we wanted thanks to a controller-painting system. A huge thank you to our team: Themys Cheynel, Damien Poncelet, Leandro Leijnen, Romain Gueusset, Anthonin Hauy, Mathis De Sauvecanne, Lilou Tiprez, Timothé Vergught, Cyril Buisson, Antoine Barbannaud and to Jeremy Le Viavant for the entire music of the film. #VESAwards #VES #AuDelaDesMots #3DAnimation #Shortfilm #student #3d #Trailer #Rumba 

'The Fieldman Recordings' tests how AI-assisted animation can be used as a research tool — working with legacy recordings, constrained movement, and intentional imperfection rather than spectacle.

Our first "proper" ep, with our Design & Animation Lead Joel Hepworth takes us inside one of our favourite installations – an exhibit for the Lost Shtetl Museum in Lithuania. In three minutes, Joel and I chat through how we brought historical stories to life through thoughtful design and animation, working with Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) to create an experience that honours the memory of a lost Jewish community. Series 1 | Episode 2 Title | Can digital content have a human heart? Guest | Joel Hepworth Duration | 3:00 #LostShtetl #MuseumDesign #JewishHeritage #DigitalExhibits #MuseumAnimation #CulturalInstitutions #ExperienceDesign #MotionDesign #ProjectionMapping

The future begins with visual thinking. Illustrations created in MidJourney Animation — Veo 3.1 Fast Veo has introduced updates: it is now possible to export videos in higher quality — 1080p and 4K. This is not a trend. It’s a state. #AIFashion #MidJourney #Veo31 #CapCut #FutureInPastel

One for the animation nerds. A tiny tutorial on how to animate rope (and how not to), with a nod to our classic Lernz series. See more Lernz tutorials here—https://lnkd.in/e3mKe6NH P.S. Stay tuned for the re-release of Ready Steady Bang! 💥