In Motion London: Creativity, Community and New Perspectives

Last Friday, the Creative Division headed to In Motion London. Hosted by Playground to mark 20 years of championing the creative community, the event brings together motion designers, animators and the people behind the work through talks, workshops, panels and meet-ups.

What we took back

One talk that stuck with us was BUCK's, which explored what it means to keep growing as creatives in an AI-shaped industry. Their answer was refreshingly simple. It's not the output that makes a project special, it's the individuality each person brings to it, their craft, curiosity and collective knowledge. To put that into practice, BUCK gives their team a theme between client projects and lets them run with a concept. The most recent theme was "Jorts," which inspired ideas ranging from absurdly comical to deeply emotional. The two strongest ideas then get treated like a real client brief and developed into fully realised films, giving the team room to flex creative muscles and explore styles they might never touch otherwise.
Vincent Schwenk's talk offered a different kind of reassurance. Over the years, he's received a fair bit of stick for "always making the same thing." But his fixation on honing his craft was palpable, and he's a firm believer that you simply need to sit down and do the work. That mindset is exactly what's shaped his career into such a success. It was a good reminder that reaching his level of craft took years, not a lucky break. A similar thread ran through Ana Ramírez González's talk, where she spoke candidly about the ten-plus-year emotional journey behind her first independent animated short film, Agua Dulce. Between the two talks, the message landed clearly: mastering a craft takes time, and there's no shame in the years it takes to get there.
We closed out the day with LAIKA, the stop-motion studio known for its craftsmanship and love of real materials and light. We got a rare look behind the curtain of a project five years in the making, alongside a look at how far technology has crept into their process. Better cameras, 3D printing and editing tools mean their films now move with a smoothness closer to real-life puppetry than the jittery stop-motion of old, prompting the fair question of whether something's been lost along the way. The team's response, only half joking, was to ask whether anyone genuinely thinks animation was ever meant to look jittery in the first place. Even a studio built on tradition still has to keep moving with the times.

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Staying connected

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Twenty years in, and Playground still shows no sign of slowing down when it comes to celebrating art and its makers. In an industry that never seems to stop moving, In Motion gave us a rare chance to pause, take stock, and reconnect with the people actually shaping it.
"Every time we attend an event like In Motion, I look forward to seeing the latest work the industry has to offer, and I always come away inspired. But what strikes me as most valuable isn't the work itself, it's hearing from the designers and artists behind it.
There is something particularly special about being part of this design community. Casual conversation over drinks in between the talks sparks ideas with colleagues about how they want to progress their careers. It's reconnecting with old friends as we swap notes on our latest passion projects or how global events are shaping our studios. It's picking up new tech hacks or design processes from industry experts that help us develop the capability of our own studio.
It's so much more than being a passive member of the audience; it's about being part of a much larger organism, and sharing ideas in a way that adds something extra to the conversations we already have day to day. It's almost like a water-cooler moment, amplified across a much, much larger scale. We're already looking forward to next year's event."

Creative Studio Manager, Daisy Watson