James Wildgoose

Permafrost is a short film about an ice fisherman who gets stuck in the middle of a snow storm. After building a fire to keep warm, they see what might me a group of people who might be able to help them. In the darkness of the storm, they must decide whether to stay by the waning fire or go out into the cold search of help, guided by only a faint light in the distance.

My name is James Wildgoose. I am a Sheffield based animator, currently studying animation at Sheffield Hallam university. I have always been a fan of video games, first picking up the hobby through my uncle, which is likely one of the reasons I often found myself gravitating towards 3D animation throughout the course. Having said that, by this point I had used 3d software before, trying blender on my home laptop to follow tutorials I found on youtube. I found an interest in this and decided to do a games design course in college, which focused mostly on environment creation, but gave me at least a basic understanding of most of the main areas of 3d. Through this, I was able to try my hand at
animation, and I found that I enjoyed that particularly, alongside texturing in substance painter, leading me to apply for an animation course instead of progressing in games design. On the animation course I got to experiment and try my hand at 2d and stop motion as well as 3d and although I found a great amount of interest in these, I ultimately stuck with 3d for my final project. I think one of the reasons I lean towards 3d, despite having some previous experience, is because I came from more of a maths and science background at school, as opposed to arts, and many aspects of 3d software can ultimately be broken down into maths related terms, which I find a bit easier to wrap
my head around. ‘Permafrost’ will be my largest project to date, as well as the first time I have combined many of the different aspects of 3D that I have practiced and enjoyed before, such as texturing and animating, with new ones like sculpting and particle effects together to create one finished short film.