Post Profile: Diarmid Harrison-Murray

VFX supervisor, director and artist at MPC, Diarmid Harrison-Murray came to the business late but shot through the ranks at CGI speed, to lead the creation of favourite CG characters John Lewis’ Monty the Penguin and the IKEA flying T-shirts. But his latest creature craze, he tells Adrian Pennington, is a badger

Diarmid Harrison-Murray has a thing about badgers. A year ago, late at night in central London, he stepped out of a cab only to see a badger waiting on the curb a metre away. It didn’t seem in the least bit perturbed to either be on a street in the capital or to have Harrison-Murray staring back at him. “It was a bit of a Crocodile Dundee moment,” he says. “There was mutual respect. It seemed he walked off with a swagger. I’ve been quite obsessed by badgers ever since. I’m just waiting for the right script to come along.”

That may come in soon as there is a remarkable amount of creature work being commissioned from creative houses like MPC, where Harrison-Murray is VFX supervisor, director and artist. “I love creature work,” he says. “It’s so difficult to do well. It comes in cycles but the amount of creature scripts I quote on and look at is incredible. I wander around the floor here and marvel at all manner of strange things being made. A lot of those have come here because MPC does such a great job. After a period when creature work went a bit more stop-frame and lo-fi-style, high-production-values CG is back in fashion.”

Cute penguin, flying T-shirts

Among the latest trendsetting CG characters is Monty the Penguin, heartwarming star of John Lewis’ 2014 Christmas spot conceived by adam&eveDDB, directed by Blink’s Dougal Wilson and supervised by Harrison-Murray. “When I moved to MPC I hoped I’d get a chance to work on John Lewis and with Dougal and I got them both within my first year,” he says. In fact, Harrison-Murray landed back-to-back jobs with Wilson, following up with the Joy Of Storage spot for Ikea via Mother, which saw MPC’s 3D team morph migratory birds into flying T-shirts.

“John Lewis was a real highlight for me because you worry about the weight of expectation that’s carried by the ad before it comes out,” Harrison-Murray reveals. In that respect it bore similarities to the Skyfall title sequence he made at Framestore in 2012, one of many high profile projects that pepper his CV.

“[Director] Danny [Kleinman] had great ideas about what he wanted for Skyfall, which at the very beginning he presented as a set of concept frames, like a pack of cards,” he explains. “I love being able to help directors materialise their creative vision. I’ll make some very quick technical prototypes to evolve the idea from a sketch into 3D. For me, working in a creative team where you can continually bounce ideas back and forth means the result of your collaboration is greater than the individual parts.”

Harrison-Murray’s natural talent and strong eye for colour and composition have seen him swiftly rise to the top. Armed with a psychology degree from Oxford, he moved to London in 2000 to work as a freelance photographer’s assistant on fashion shoots and still lifes. He taught himself Photoshop and spent time as a retoucher, but his ambition wasn’t satisfied. Friend Jake Mengers, [then CG supervisor at Framestore, now director at Passion Pictures] suggested he learn 3D animation package Maya and became his mentor, setting him challenges and projects. “I was driven to please Jake and I had a lot of catching up to do,” says Harrison-Murray. “I didn’t fancy getting into the industry at the bottom competing with runners 10 years younger than me.”

Driven to succeed in VFX post but without any formal portfolio or training, the 29 year old worked night and day for a fortnight to compile a showreel that would meet the deadline and the stringent quality test for entry onto a prized Skillset-funded VFX masterclass. He nailed it, completed the seven-month course and landed a placement at The Mill, immediately starting on a Heinz commercial for director Duncan Jones, and then a crowd simulation for Lynx.

After joining Framestore in 2006 as a mid-level CG artist, within three years he was head of 3D commercials. Taking charge of DJ Hero, a CG animation for Activision’s console game, Harrison-Murray developed a look that was part photo-real, part hyper-real and part nod to gameplay and which took a raft of awards including a gold Clio for Animation. “Until then, I’d integrated CG into plates lit by a director of photography, but this was fully CG from scratch and was more creatively fulfilling,” he explains. “It echoed back to my time in photography, crafting in light, tone and colour. It was a massive jump for me into a fully virtual world and was the first time I’d run a team of any size and creatively and technically it was a real landmark.”

A future in features?

Since DJ Hero, Harrison-Murray has enjoyed the creative challenge of a number of other fully CG projects, including The Big Fish for Three Mobile. In addition to VFX supervising, he also directed this charming, award-winning spot.

Now at MPC, Harrison-Murray has his sights set on expanding his directorial skills through MPC Creative, the facility’s bespoke in-house production service. He is nurturing a fledgling Houdini 3D department and nursing his own pet film project. Currently existing simply as a treatment with story and characterisation, the CG-animated short could be worked up into a fully-fledged feature, given the right backers.

“Feature work is always of the highest standard, but in commercials we have to be slightly more experimental in our approach. I don’t mean that the quality of work suffers, more that I’m not too fussed how you get there, so long as we produce stunning final images. On a film you’re in production for a year or more, so the discipline of how you get there is as important as the result.”

Harrison-Murray also thrives on the multifaceted, multitasking nature of short-form. “On the same project I could be breaking down a problem to solve it technically, talking creatively with a director, rendering shots and performing early compositing work,” he says. “One minute I’ll be making a photoreal penguin, the next I could be dealing with a giant fluid simulation or a collapsing dinosaur.”

Or even, one day, a swaggering badger…