A New Chapter - Steff Lee Studios

It's been 3 years since I took the plunge into full time freelancing with the aim of setting up my own small creative business.  Work has been steadily growing and I've been involved on some amazing projects and met lots of great people along the way.  I moved into a workspace at Phoenix Square in Leicester's Cultural Quarter and am finally feeling much more like a fixed business than a wandering freelancer.   With the huge amount of projects coming in I have been collaborating with other animators, artists and musicians alongside the everyday running of my business - and it's been brilliant! :)

To reflect these changes I have created a brand new website under the name Steff Lee Studios.  
I'm still here, working on every single project. The only difference is I'm now backed by an extremely talented and reliable team of creatives enabling us to produce the best quality work possible.

So, What's New?

Portfolio

We have a brand new animation and illustration portfolio! Here you can read the briefs behind the projects and see what went into creating the work.  

We've also added some of the great projects we've been working on this year including The History of Tea animation we created for Ted-Ed and the Aches & Pains animations for BabyCenter.  

Animation Showreel

Along with the new portfolio we also have a brand new animation showreel.
This collection features the best bits from projects we've worked on over the last few years. 

Animation Process

This is a brand new section of our website where you can learn about the different steps that go into creating an animation. For those of you who are new to the process we hope this step by step overview will give you an understanding of how an animation is made from start to finish. 

Testimonials

Over the last 10 years of building up our portfolio and work experience.  You can now read straight from our clients about how we work and how we could be perfect for your next project. 

News

We've transformed our old blog into a News section. The old blog posts are still there if you fancy going back in time but from now on this section will be all about the present. We're planning to share updates on our latest projects and hope to give you a behind the scenes peek at what goes into creating our work.  

Norman The Caterpillar Book Launch

In October last year tragedy struck my social circle. Overnight my Facebook feed was full of tributes to a young man, Johnny Mackay, who had tragically taken his own life.  I  remembered Johnny fondly from my days of catching the bus home from school.  He was always smiling, extremely friendly and would always stop and say hello.  Suffering from a number of problems it turned out Johnny had reached a dark place in his life and felt like there was no other way out.  Mental health has always been something important to me, with depression and anxiety issues plaguing many of my family and friends.  After finding out about the suicide of a dear friend just a couple of years previously Johnny's death was a fresh reminder of the pain some people carry around inside. My friends Rac and Georgie, who were friends with Johnny, wanted to do something to help others who may find themselves in a similar dark place.  Together with Johnny's mum and sister they started Johnny's Happy Place with the aim of creating an environment where people could be themselves, eat, laugh, create and socialise.  They put out a call on Facebook for volunteers who wanted to help with their new project. After seeing the grief amongst my friends and feeling their pain I wanted to do something to help and immediately offered my services.  The result was an illustration of Johnny balancing a bike on his chin (something he was very skilled at!) which they are now using as their logo.  This spring Johnny's sister Charlotte got in touch about a children's story Johnny had written before he died.  They wanted to self-publish and asked if I could do the illustrations.  This was how I become involved with the lovely Norman the Caterpillar.

After months of working with Charlotte last weekend saw the book launch event for Norman.  It was a wonderful afternoon with tons of activities for kids, an excellent reading of the book and loads of Norman-themed stuff.  My absolute favourite thing was the Norman the Caterpillar cake made by Charlotte's cousin.  An absolute masterpiece!  Hundreds of people showed up, filling and overflowing the venue.  By the end of the day over 200 copies of the book were sold.  Below are some pictures from the day.

Norman the Caterpillar Book Launch

Norman the Caterpillar Book Launch

It was an honour to work on this project and be able to bring Johnny's story to life.  It was a pleasure to think that last weekend hundreds of children met Norman and Cynthia for the first time and I can only hope they will go on to become a bedtime story favourite.  The kids in our place absolutely adored it.  The story has such a wonderful message and to quote Stephen Fry:

"Everyone who travels in a different direction will fall in love with this delightful book."

The book is available to buy from: Amazon and the Johnny's Happy Place Shop.

Less than a year since starting, the girls have hosted several fundraising events and have set up Johnny's Happy Place cafe in Kettering.  The cafe is at the old Keystone building on Rockingham Road where I used to spend a lot of my free time at gigs and skateboarding.  They completely transformed the space I remembered into a lovely little cafe which is currently open on Saturdays and serves drinks, cakes and hot food with the menu continuing to be expanded.  If you're ever in the area you should drop by.

Arty Party Time!

So, last year my boyfriend and I hosted a birthday BBQ / arty party.  He put up two giant boards in the yard and primed the wall outside the house.  We then invited our family & friends to come along to paint with us.  We spent the day enjoying the sunshine, trying to cook food on the BBQ and most importantly, painting!  These were the results of that day!

That was last summer.  The summer of 2015 has finally arrived and we decided we wanted to do it all over again this year!  :D  Our birthdays aren't until the end of the summer holidays but with the great sunshine we've been having recently we couldn't wait until then to have another party.

Then... the perfect opportunity arose!

The art team, at the company I used to work for, wanted to have a get together.  One of the remote artists was visiting the UK and well it's only polite to show him a good time during his trip.  My boyfriend, who currently works there, suggested they all come over for an arty party.  I mean, who better to invite to an arty party than a whole art department!  So we invited the entire art team plus some of the originals who like myself have long since left the company.  It was great to get together for a catch-up and do what we do best, make art! :) It became a mini reunion / painting paint.  We had such a fun night that I wanted to share the results with you all!

If you're a creative type I couldn't recommend it enough as a party theme! Plus if you've got kids in the family they'll absolutely love getting messy and drawing on such a big scale.  So if you've got some space in your garden then stick up some boards, slap on some paint, choose your art materials (I definitely recommend paint pens for speed!) then invite all your creative friends over and wait and see what they create! :D