Current reel includes only FINAL shots as seen in the films/TV series. Only the ones that were truthful to my previs are shown, but my personal projects that you'll find in the latter half of the reel might be of better use to see my skills. Full personal projects can also be found below.
PREVIS / CINEMATIC REEL ANIMATION REEL
PREVIS / CINEMATIC REEL
ANIMATION REEL
As I can only make personal short-films in my free time, which - considering the amount of time that it takes to create one - isn't much time at all, only the most recent project or two are a good showcase of my skills, as previous ones are already quite old at this point.
I'm always on the lookout for freelance opportunities and new fun projects, so if you have anything exciting in the works, or if you'd like to ask me any questions or just want to talk about the weather, feel free to drop me a message :)
You can contact me via email sebastiankuder@zoho.eu or through my socials.
This is very long, boring, and possibly painful to read, proceed with caution.
I was born in Kraków, Poland, where I spent the first 14 years of my life, then lived in the UK for 10 years and now I’m back in PierogiLand.
Since my youngest years (Yes, prepare for some cliché but true story) I’ve had some interest in storytelling and film. I actually used to take my parents’ camera and record LEGOs as I moved them around and I ‘voice acted’ as the minifigs from behind the camera, and later on I discovered what stop motion is through YouTube and saw people creating LEGO Stop Motion animations. After making this discovery, young me decided to learn to do the same, luckily at that age I wasn’t interested in actually uploading my creations anywhere (At least not yet), so no one online had to experience the immense talent (...or the lack thereof…) of my 10 year old mind…
Still here and reading? Aight.
Next came the desire to actually shoot something for real with actors (aka my friends).
At this point I knew how to use Sony Vegas and After Effects and as you might expect, most 11-13 year old boys aren’t really interested in deep and meaningful storylines, so… I was mostly ‘shooting’ my friends ‘shooting’. What do I mean by that? Well, check out this one of only a few short-films (If you can really call it that…) I was able to preserve from those days, here.
In this one it's me (right at the end) and my friend, plus my younger cousin, his younger brother and some friend of theirs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the original version, this one is a re-edited one from probably a year or two later when my AE skills got a bit better. I’m still cringing to this day when I see those end credits, I guess my 14 year old self had quite a rampant ego…
Around this age came the day when I moved to the UK, and as I still wanted to do films with my friends, we decided to go the Machinima route and create short-films in games. We’ve done a few in GTA IV but they’re all gone now unfortunately and all that’s left is the few much worse Minecraft ones… Which if you want to check out (pls, don’t, lol), you can do so here (our old Minecraft channel…) and here (a REALLY old, very unfinished film). They’re in Polish btw.
Are you still reading this? Jesus…
After that, I came to the conclusion that GTA and Minecraft are too limiting and going full-on into 3D animation is the way to go. So I learned Cinema 4D through YouTube tutorials aaaand I went into 3D Minecraft animations… Listen, I was 15 years old, what did you expect… Also Minecraft 3D Animations were quite viral around that time so I guess I wanted to be a part of it. Mine are obviously nowhere near as good as some of the top Minecraft Anims, but if you’d like to check them out, you can do so here.
Then, I finished Secondary School and got my GCSEs and went to college. At first I enrolled in a Film Course, but it turned out to be more oriented towards Journalism and News and not Film and TV.
Saddened by this fact and not sure what to do, I ended up talking with the lecturer (Hi Angus!) of another course of Animation and Games Design, who enlightened me to the fact that someone has to create all these cinematic cutscenes in games and suddenly I found purpose in life. I always loved games and especially cutscenes and cinematics but somehow my brain never connected the dots that this is actually a possible career.
So with my already found love for animation from before, I switched to Animation and Games Design where I learnt the basics of Maya and Unity, with the goal of becoming a Cinematic Artist one day.
To help with achieving that, after finishing this course (Level 3), I went on to get my Bachelor’s Degree in Animation at Escape Studios (technically University of Kent). During that time, I felt too impatient to render my animation pieces in a ‘traditional’ way using Arnold or V-Ray, so I decided to learn Unreal Engine 4 and use it as a ‘renderer’ for my animated short-films.
After graduating, The Third Floor believed in me enough to offer me a job as a Junior Shot Creator despite no previous work experience. I guess their trust in me panned out well, as now I’m still working there as a Senior Visualization Artist.
Apart from that, I was always an avid flight simmer and I hope to get a private pilot licence one day.
I also love music and I used to play piano (self-taught) but I completely had no time to practise in the years of studying and now I’m trying to get back into it.
