Daniel Templeton

My name is Dan. My key areas of experience in the creative industries have always been animation and post production. When I have been developing my skills creating my own short animated content, it also introduced me to post production as both areas are not only creative mediums but have been transferable to me in terms of requiring an attention to detail and can go hand in hand. 

My main skillset in Animation has been working as a stop motion animator. I created my own animated short film. An ambitious project in which I was creating/producing all the elements from script to final post production including animating all the characters. I have used Dragonframe as well as Adobe After Effects to combine 2D elements with the stop motion. My main focus is to develop my skills further in an Assistant Animator/Animator role. 

From my experiences in the last few years working on the Cbeebies Kids TV show Chuggington and working at Wildspace Productions in an assistant role, I have gained loads of skills and knowledge in post production workflows using Avid, Final Cut and Premiere and providing all the necessary assets to the editors so that they can cut their episodes smoothly.

I have been given support from an Access Rider called Work with Me who ensures people with a learning difficulty progress in their career and have reasonable adjustments in the job.

Jan-Dec 2023 – Junior Edit Assistant at Wildspace Productions, working on high end Natural History programme for Netflix, “Our Oceans” (TX 2024)

March- August 2022 Screenskills/The Pipeline - Edit Assistant and tech operator training course,including 4 week placement in media support at Plimsoll Productions, Bristol.

2021 – editing/completing independent stop frame animated film, with screening in March 2022

July 2019 - December 2020 - Assistant Editor for Chuggington, Series 6.

May 2019 – Institute of Animated Film, Dresden for screening of own independent animated film.

2017 -2020 – freelance animation/video work, including video editing for Weston GeneralHospital; community animation workshops with Creative Workspace, Bristol, Gloucester LibraryService and Southville Community Centre, Bristol, (editing clips for their social media platforms)

September 2013 to June 2018 - Bristol Music Trust, Front of House staff member, Bristol Beacon,part of a large team welcoming/helping audience customers at a range of shows and events.

May 2018 – Commissioned by School of Policy Studies, Bristol University to produce animatedversion of Annual Report and video project for website (filmed and edited)

Sep-Dec 2016 – BBC Face2Face Scheme, Bristol

June – August 2016 - Editing clips for Rio Olympics as intern at Floating Harbour films, Bristol.

April 2015 - Preparing EPKs and ‘behind the scenes’ edits –– Stay Still Productions, London.

Jan-Nov 2014 - BBC Listening Project – created a 3 minute animation for BBC Radio 4 website . 

I work as a freelance animator specialising in a mixture of Stop Motion and 2D digital and in Post Production I am an Edit Assistant/Assistant Editor. My passion is making and editing visually engaging short films using a combination of Stop Frame animation, 2D digital elements and other VFX.

The software I use for animation is Dragonframe, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate. For post production I have used Adobe Premiere, FCP7, FCPX, Avid Media Composer and Davinci Resolve.

I have mainly used Adobe Premiere. I have experience of trimming video and audio clips using in and out points, helping the editor export separate audio tracks for lip synching later, making shot lists with the timecode, colour correction, importing/exporting/backing up media to multiple servers and drives, synching sound to clips, mounting and unmounting projects, creating titles and transitions - also labelling/backing up of bins, adhering to naming conventions and file structures, transferring files using Shot-put pro or Hedge, and receiving shots through FTP site ready for downloading and ingesting.

Most of my experience is with Adobe Premiere, including use of After Effects, as I have used this for all my own work. I have recently become familiar with Avid and DaVinci when working at Wildspace Productions on a high end Natural History Programme for Netflix where I have developed many transferable and relevant skills as an Edit Assistant.

I welcome opportunities to learn new software and applications. I particularly enjoy matching sound/music with visuals in the post production process. I am creative, conscientious, have strong attention to detail, reliable, hardworking and a good team player. I am always keen to learn new skills and applications.

I also create my own animation work for commissions, competitions and for my own portfolio development and I am part of the ‘Bring your own animation’ network in Bristol.

In 2019/20 I completed an 18 month contract as an Assistant Editor on Series 6 of Chuggington for Disney Junior and Cbeebies, where I have been a full time member of the post-production team. At Chuggington, my role was to support the Editing and Production team of 5 editors by logging media, taking delivery and tracking all dialogues, records and sound mixes, with deliveries to and from a CG studio, animatic editing and final post production. My role also included many other support duties within that department and to the Production team that could change on a daily basis. This was an international/intercontinental production, which involved liaising with teams in the US and China.

Due to Covid, we were relocated to working from home half way through the contract. My responsibilities became tracking, ingesting, renaming and distributing all the UK and US dialogues to the Edit and Production teams. I was responsible for creating and maintaining a Walla library and researching dialogues for ADR and mixing. I also assisted with post production script paperwork and deliverables for Broadcasters.

I have a good ear for music and always been fascinated in matching the sound to the visuals. At Chuggington I would synch up storyboard images, layout shots and different phases of the animation to the audio in Final Cut timelines. I would help the dubbing mixers, composers and editors by organising and updating the Walla library and Music Stems by backing them up on shared servers with accessible bins. The end of my contract with Chuggington unfortunately coincided with the lockdown in 2021.

As an animator as well, I changed my focus to completing my own animation film. I used under camera stop-motion and completed the edit in Adobe Premiere. This, and another earlier animation short with a similar quirky style, were both screened in local cinemas, one being accepted into the HomeGrown shorts Festival. I live in Bristol and participate in various animation networks in the Bristol area. I intend to submit my latest animated short film to other festivals.

My company has given me support with a Work with Me Access Rider in which people with learning difficulties like myself can potentially have reasonable adjustments permanently in the next jobs I do as well as developing in my career.

I look forward to meeting and working with you. 

I received a BA Hons Animation Degree at UWE