Award-winning Animation Director Steve Lawson joins our BA (Hons) Animation degree programme!
Last year our BA (Hons) Animation degree programme welcomed award-winning animation director, storyboard artist, animator and writer Steve Lawson to its lecturer team, bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience from his roles working on a diverse portfolio of projects with companies and institutions such as Nickelodeon, Disney, Channel 4, BBC Studios and more to our degree students.
Read on to find out more about his background and ambitions for the course:
Steve Lawson, from York, is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and storyteller. Speaking of his background he said “I’ve been animating for over ten years, having started playing around with filmmaking and stop-motion around 2013.” He completed his degree at Oxford Brookes and attended the National Film & Television School for his MA in directing animation. Steve’s first job in the film and television industry was back in 2015 on the indie feature Scott and Sid, starring Tom Blyth, by the time he graduated from Oxford Brookes School of Art in 2017, Steve was honing his craft as a stop-motion animator and director.
In late 2017, Steve moved to London, where his first job was to direct the animation on the Channel 4: Random Acts film Ready or Not. Thereafter, Steve took on a range of freelance commissions, which ranged from character design to website building, before joining Spiral Productions as an Assistant Producer. There, he worked on major projects for institutions like the Science Museum and the National Museum of Qatar, contributing his skills in story, editing, drawing, designing, producing and writing. He reflected; “After working on projects for Channel 4, and for the Science Museum and the National Museum of Qatar as part of a production company in 2018, I embarked on an intensive two-year Master’s in Directing Animation at the prestigious National Film Television School in Beaconsfield: where Nick Park created Wallace & Gromit in the mid-1980s.”
Steve accomplished a lot in his first year, which saw him be taught by people from Aardman, Laika and beyond. During his second year, the pandemic struck, but Steve managed to lead a team of nearly 150 people to produce his award-winning MA graduation film Build Me Up – now available on YouTube’s DUST network – during which time he was mentored by John Stevenson, the co-director of Kung Fu Panda and animation director on Shrek. Build Me Up won a range of awards, including the prestigious Verna Fields Award at the 2022 MPSE Golden Reels.
He said “after graduating, I was finally able to shift my career focus towards animating, directing and storyboarding full-time, working on projects like The Tiny Chef Show for Nickelodeon as well as for clients like Lego/Universal, Nexus Studios and Disney/Hasbro. While studying, I became known for my storytelling and leadership abilities, and my collaborative and helpful nature, so moving towards directing came very naturally.
“I have developed a versatile skillset and am uniquely qualified across a range of disciplines, which is the sort of thing I am keen to encourage in students as I balance my active professional practice with helping them into the exciting and ever-changing world of animation.”
In 2023 Steve was offered a place on BAFTA’s Connect programme, in recognition of his commitment to pushing regional storytelling and non-London-based animation projects, he commented, “I’ve enjoyed networking with a wide range of potential collaborators as I continue working on projects both of my own and for clients.” Most recently, he directed the music video for Nikita Faie’s Insomniac and is currently working with an Emmy-winning production company to write and develop a series based on Build Me Up, amongst other projects.
When asked why he got into teaching he said, “I believe in getting the best out of others, and have a genuine desire to help people. Having gone through all the trials and tribulations of the secondary school: university: ‘wrong’ industry: film school: ‘right’ industry pathway, I am keen to pass on whatever lessons and knowledge I can from my breadth of lived experience. I suppose that another key aspect was the desire to join a thriving community, and one that is not only studio-based, but one that celebrates the uniqueness in staff and students alike, and that allows me the freedom to balance the exciting prospects of teaching and sharing with my existing practice.
He said his ambitions for the course and students are “varying and multitudinous! The course and the institution as a whole possess a huge amount of untapped potential, and I think what I’m most keen to do in the immediacy is to help students broaden their horizons and skillsets.”
“We have a great variety of styles and approaches, which is exciting, and I’m keen to help students harness their individuality in a way that will maximise their potential as young professionals when they leave the course. The foundation of good animation is great storytelling and having worked on a range of narrative-led industry projects, as well as commercials and work in other media, I am well placed to advise students.”
“I am keen to get more story-led content into the course, and also to begin teaching some stop-motion, which some students have already expressed a keenness to try. Having had an excellent time down at Aardman recently, I’m keen to grow our relationship with them, too. Ultimately, we want this course to be the best it can be, and to become a true calling card for both the institution and for Hartlepool.”
Check out Steve’s website here or follow @StevesGuide on Instagram to keep up to date with his work.
If you are interested at studying animation at degree-level make sure you check out our dynamic BA (Hons) Animation degree programme. Find out more here.
