Becoming a graphic designer was the obvious (and only) career path available to Ned Wenlock upon completion of a visual communications qualification in the 90s. While he adored telling stories, drawing comics and cartoons, and dreamt of becoming a children’s book illustrator, Ned said there just weren’t any job opportunities that ticked those boxes for him.

So, he spent the next 10 years as a graphic designer. While working in the children's department at TVNZ he began experimenting with motion graphics which ignited an area of interest for Ned. At that point he asked himself ‘why am I still a graphic designer when it’s always been my second choice?’ So he moved on and found a job with Fat Ltd, an animation company where he was able to learn on the job.

But it was creating music videos in his spare time that led to Ned being discovered as an animation director, later branching out on his own and starting his own design studio. In order to train himself in a new direction, Ned made a commitment to himself to create one music video each year as his own personal project, which he did for 10 years. He would hear a piece of music that he liked (often by local bands), approach the band for their approval, and then produce a short film. With music as the starting point, Ned then created the story and characters for the short film, working hard to reflect the emotional voice portrayed in the music. His most successful music video was ‘Apache’ for Australian band Danger Beach, which gained momentum online and attracted a number of animation work offers from overseas. “Doing something online that goes viral really helps to get work overseas. You can’t predict these things though, it’s just luck.”

Ned’s most recently celebrated the success of his short film Spring Jam released last year. In contrast to the music videos he made using a music track as a starting point, with Spring Jam, Ned worked completely the other way around developing the script and characters ahead of anything else. The result is a delightful film about a young buck with undeveloped antlers devising some very inventive methods in order to charm a mate for the ‘spring jam.’ The film has screened at 35 film festivals all over the world so far and has collected a number of awards along the way including, ‘Lightbox Best Film Award’ and ‘DEGNZ Best Director Award’ at Show Me Shorts, ‘Short Film Audience Award’ at Leeds International Film Festival, ‘Colour Box Award’ at Flatpack Short Film Festival, and most recently ‘Best Animation’ at Chromacon Art Awards.

Ned started Oneedo Animation and Motion Graphics Studio in 2013, and is enjoying having the opportunity to take on work projects that he feels challenged by or particularly connected to, commenting that as a creative working for someone else, you don’t often have a lot of choice on the types of projects you work on. From his home in Paekakariki, Ned now works on animation projects for clients all over the world. His producer, who was previously based in Sydney, now lives in Palmerston North, and Ned said they work largely over Skype, reflecting that being in the same office, or working from a main centre just doesn’t matter any more. The only down side of working remotely for Ned is missing the day to day happenchance experiences that come out of bumping into people on the street.

The biggest challenge for people working in the creative space Ned feels is about staying relevant and continuing to produce fresh ideas amid changing trends and technology. Speaking briefly about the imminent arrival of Virtual Reality, Ned said this will have a big impact on his field in the next three years, changing the way stories are told and “really disrupting what we think of as normal entertainment.” In order to keep evolving creatively though, Ned constantly seeks new ways to challenge and influence himself, commenting that it is so very easy to regurgitate the ‘same old stuff’ and take the safe route sometimes, “but then when you look at your body of work, you end up hating it. If it gets to the point where it becomes laborious, it’s time to change. It’s about disrupting yourself.”

To see more of Ned's work, check out http://www.oneedo.com/