Dawn Images

A dog searching for his owner, a black cat speeding through the streets in a matching black car, and an unlikely friendship that sparks between the two animals as they discover their inner superpowers. StarDog and TurboCat, a British animated movie, boasts a voiceover ensemble cast with Luke Evans, Nick Frost, Bill Nighy and Charli D’Amelio. However, what truly stuns is the animation — from golden streaked sunsets to neon city lights at night to the meticulously crafted animals with delicate plumes of fur. Behind it all is Computer Graphics (CG) supervisor Haris Ahmad, a British-Pakistani animator making waves in Britain’s animation scene.

Ahmad has been working at Red Star 3D, an animation studio based in Sheffield, since 2008, and started off his journey as a generalist artist after studying animation and visual effects.

“I specialised in certain roles in essentially cinematography. Within the last eight years or so, I’ve been leading computer graphics, all departments basically at the studio for various projects,” Ahmad told Images.

As someone unaware of the inner workings of the CG world, I wondered what a CG supervisor does. Ahmad swiftly explained his role.

“[It’s] essentially heading the computer graphics for the films, so it’s my responsibility to take the vision of the directors and the art director and actually convert it into computer graphics and lead that, and make sure that it’s something we can deliver within the budget. It’s a lovely blend of both technical and artistic skills.”

While he boasts a creative artistic background, his years of experience have helped him reach a place where he can make “quick decisions about what to do, how to do it and how to deliver it best as possible while make it good looking”.

CG artists, he explained, work with a lot of concept art, including characters, environments, sets and prop design. His job entails translating all of this — known as production design in a live-action film — into three-dimensional art, work that requires a very specific set of skills as well as a good grasp and understanding of 3D art and sculptural detail.

“For example, a set from a certain angle doesn’t necessarily work in an actual space, so it’s one of those things which sort of comes naturally to me and to the artists in general, where you’re able to take that information and you know how to bring that to life in a world that will work within the real.”

StarDog and TurboCat, which Ahmad dubbed an “incredibly low-budget project”, was done to prove to production houses that his team was capable of making 3D animated films.

“I was the CG supervisor on that, but the good thing is that it did exactly what we hoped it would do, bring us into the limelight of feature animated films.”

How does it work?

In computer-generated imagery (CGI), the first step is the artwork. The process, for Ahmad, starts on a piece of paper or through digital painting, and always begins with a two-dimensional concept.

“After a lot of scrutiny, since it takes months to to get a character basically designed, sorted and approved, we move on to a very simple sort of blocking of things in CGI. Sometimes, directors may even experiment with making little play models themselves to sort of get a feel for the 3D form of an object or a character, which is really useful because it’s quite a tangible thing that you can actually hold and see and comment on.”

Artists then begin blocking sculptural paths of things. Ahmad explained that sculpting in 3D is very much like sculpting with a real piece of clay. “Within the 3D environment, you essentially use similar techniques and similar tools, as you would with a piece of clay. You start off with a ball, and you start to sculpt them, and that’s how you create a 3D model and form.”

He maintained that artists could do all of this, and do it well, if they understood the principles of art and form. Without it, if you just jump right into CG, you’ll be clueless. “And things are quite expensive in CG, to draw something is a lot quicker than to model something. Hence, you have to follow this arc.”

Winning an Emmy

His acclaim isn’t limited to StarDog and TurboCat. For the last decade or so, the BBC has annually featured 30-minute short animated films based on the books of beloved British children’s author Julia Donaldson, a writer who has outsold the likes of Harry Potter author JK Rowling. The production company, Magic Light Pictures, hired Red Star 3D to make the Christmas Day special films, and Ahmad continues to lead the CG department in making these movies.

“We recently finished making Tiddler, which was shown on Christmas [in 2024] and are working on the film for next year,” he said. The big news? One of the films, Tabby McTat, won the International Emmy Award for Best Kids Animation in 2024.

Talking about the films’ animation style, he said it was akin to stop motion animation, and was inspired by animated films like Chicken Run and Wallace and Grommit. “It has this very specific British charm, but we’re certainly not trying to replicate that or fool anyone that we’ve made a stop motion film. It’s just taking elements of thse films, getting inspired by it and brigining it into quite a refreshing sort of computer graphics look.”

Although Ahmad and his team bring a fresher look, he’s aware that the source material must be respected, both Donaldson’s books and her collaborator Axel Scheffler’s illustrations. The task isn’t always easy.

“The style of the artwork has to be respected. And that’s something quite challenging, because, generally speaking, computer graphics can have a very specific computer graphics sort of look about them, whereas we’re trying to do something which satisfies that and respects the original artwork from the illustrator for the books, but also sort of nod to stop motion animation.”

Another challenge he faces is that creating the films comes at a cost — money. Part of Ahmad’s work is ensuring his project meets budgetary requirements along with artistic needs, and to balance that without sacrificing on the art is “a very tricky balance”.

The CG expert explained, “Creatively speaking, you just want to keep on pushing as far as you can. There’s kind of no end to creativity and what you produce, and I think one of the things which is really important in what we do is knowing when to stop.

“That decision of when to stop, how we deliver something, and what we deliver is all based on how best to get the director’s point and the story points across for a certain scene. We have in-depth conversations with the directors about each scene, about what they expect and what they’re trying to how they’re trying to direct the audience’s emotions, essentially in a particular scene. And we sort of reverse engineer from there to know what the best way to go about certain things would be to meet the requirements to deliver on that within the budget.”

The advent of AI

Budget, however, isn’t the only roadblock in the paths of computer graphic artists. A bigger beast on the horizon is Artificial Intelligence, as the likes of ChatGPT create pictures in different art studios’ styles. Ahmad believes AI is probably the next big thing that will influence how CG gets done, but not what gets done.

“A lot of people seem to be worried because AI essentially, as far as I understand, is mixing up a lot of data that is provided into the system, and that’s very good to be used as a tool for an artist but it can’t necessarily provide you with answers on what has to be done.”

He said that CG had seen massive technological leaps and that films from even 10 years ago feel visually dated. However, Ahmad maintained that that is where storytelling came into play, because good stories don’t necessarily require great CGI — they’ll entertain artists no matter what.

“I don’t think it [AI] is a threat to CGI. I don’t find it daunting in any way. We’ve found it very useful, because there are certain things that would have probably taken us an hour to do, which we can now do in 10 or 15 minutes. So it’s a tool which helps us be more efficient, essentially. What doesn’t scare me is it replacing artists, because it’s still not something that is creative in its own right. Like I said, it’s good at mixing things up, but it can’t create out of nothing.”

‘Immense talent in Pakistan’

“Proud” is how Ahmad described feeling when I asked how he felt about bearing the label of the first Pakistani CG supervisor of a full-length animated international film.

“It’s lovely, and whatever brings Pakistan’s name into the limelight is quite precious to me. I think Pakistan has had a very encouraging boost in the animation industry, which is superb, and hopefully, we can go from strength to strength within the world of animated films. I think there’s absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind that there’s immense talent in Pakistan — it’s a matter of channeling it in the right direction and within the right hands it can really prosper.”

He expressed interest in working with Pakistani animators, saying that he was looking into projects where he could collaborate in any way possible. When the topic of The Glassworker, Pakistan’s first hand-drawn animated film, came up, Ahmad stated it was “unfortunate” that he hadn’t watched it yet but had followed the film’s journey since its inception.

“It’s a very different beast in terms of, you know, the format, the media, but amazing, really amazing. I think it’s a matter of time and the right project to be there for me to join something.”

He was hopeful about outsourcing part of the work for his current projects to Pakistan, something he had discussed with Pakistani studios but wasn’t able to materialise due to various reasons. “I’m still hopeful,” he said, “and keep my eye out for any such opportunities or partnerships.”

Ahmad’s Pakistani heritage isn’t something he’s merely proud of, it’s something that has influenced his work ethic in certain ways. “I think there are certain cultural differences between Pakistan and UK, of course, and certain values that I’ve been brought up with, have certainly influenced that. And it’s something that others have mentioned in the past as well over here, which is quite cool.”

While his work isn’t greatly influenced by Pakistan because its for a very different marker and audience, Ahmad did direct a short film for the San Diego Zoo, a take on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, something he “really, really” wanted to work on partly because it was set in the Subcontinent.

“That was actually a project I brought a lot of of cultural background into and even just visuals, just the fact that we get a very specific something as subtle as the fact that we get very specific light in the mornings and the evenings in subcontinent is something that influenced my decisions for colours in the film the music certainly was, I would say, probably the most Eastern influenced music that I’ve seen in any The Jungle Book adaptation.”

Advice for future CG artists

In a realm with constantly evolving technologies and increasing demand for creativity, Ahmad advised future CG artists to concentrate on the creative side of things.

“I find a lot of people tend to get bogged down by the technicalities of things and in the ‘how to do something’. I think what you’ve got to focus on is what to do, rather than the how — the how is quite easy and can always be managed. The creative genius lies in the what and artists need to concentrate on the story they’re trying to tell through whatever medium they’re working with.”

The example Ahmad always gives his parents — because it’s hard to explain what he does — is that you can be a poet, but it doesn’t matter if you write poetry with a pen or pencil or crayon, it’s what you’re writing that matters.

“The tool that you use to write it down can be different, and it really doesn’t make any difference. So just like that, CGI is just another tool to represent your ideas.” He reminded CG artists that they weren’t computer operators: “When you’re working with CGI, you’re an artist who’s using computer graphics to represent your ideas.”