Steff Lee Studios: Kino Bino Animation Studio is born

Hi Everyone,

It’s Steff here! I wanted to write to update you all with some news!

From the summer of 2018, my partner, Jack, joined me in my animated business venture and I was able to expand Steff Lee Studios to take on larger projects. We have worked together on many projects over the years and our combined years of experience and strong team spirit have resulted in some amazing work. As a duo, we were now more than Steff Lee Studios so we had to put our heads together to come up with a new name.

In April 2019, we officially launched Kino Bino. Our mission at Kino Bino is to continue to create fun, engaging and top quality content for use in education and by businesses. Behind the scenes, things haven’t changed. We’re still just as passionate about our creative work and our desire to provide excellent services, producing the very best work for our clients. Kino Bino represents both of us and I’m excited about this next chapter in my animation adventure.

You can visit our new Kino Bino Website and see what we’ve been working on in Our PortfolioGive us a follow on socials too! Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

Steff Lee Studios is still operating and we’re still working on some amazing animation and illustration projects, so do get in touch if you’re interested in working together.  

Steff x

Work Experience at Steff Lee Studios: My week at work

A Bit About Me

Hiya! I'm Freya and this week I have been doing my work experience at Steff Lee Studios to learn more about jobs in the art world. I am an art enthusiast and love drawing - especially characters from movies and TV shows I have seen. My favourite animated movie of all time is Tangled! In my spare time, I like painting, baking, and playing games. I love using bright colours in my artwork.

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This Week's Work Experience

I have been learning how to make digital or "inked" illustrations and seeing how an initial idea is turned into a fully-fledged animation.

Here is some of the finished work I produced this week!

These are some animations I made: The cat was made frame by frame, as was the bouncy ball. However, the cat was all hand drawn and the ball was made using the circle tool to make it look a little less messy!

This is an illustration I did of a mermaid for MerMay which I hand drew and then scanned into the computer to be digitally inked.

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What I Have Learnt This Week

This week has been really interesting, useful and eye-opening for me as I hope to have a career in art or animation in the future. I have learned how to do basic animation and I now know how to use different software and equipment that I wouldn't have been able to use or learn at school. Graphic design isn't taught at my school and so this has really helped me to see what a job in it would be like.

Plans For The Future

Before this week I knew I wanted to do a job that involved art but now I know that animation and character design particularly interest me. In the meantime, I plan to continue to draw and paint and share my artwork with the online community of artists. Maybe I will even try out a few animations at home! :)

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.