Tom Teller: A Few Of My Favourite Things

I’m a big believer in filling your space with things that inspire you, make you laugh or are just generally cool.

You can feel it in the work, it seeps in.

I’ve included a range of my favourite items I’ve filled my workspace with over the years, from practical, a barbecue, to inspiring, Akira and Ex Machina.

The Akira Box Set

My workstation at the studio is optimally located behind a wall of inspirational material.

Most notable for me is the full Akira box set.

The movie has always been a massive inspiration to me, and I’ve been working my way through the graphic novels over the last few years.

The art and world-building are second to none, and having Katsuhiro Otomo looking over my shoulder helps me lock in.

The Ginseng Tree

Over the last few years, I’ve slowly but surely added to the plant life throughout the studio.

It has been one of my favourite parts of building out our physical footprint, and topping the list is this small ginseng tree that continues to thrive.

These trees always remind me of little characters that could appear in a Ghibli film with their stout root systems and tiny leaves.

The Desk Doodads

Over the years, I’ve gathered a collection of characters and doodads that have ended up on my desk as both creative memorabilia and a source of comedic relief.

Our CG supervisor, Enrique De la Garza, printed a few of these, some characters from our music videos for Muse, immortalising our 3D scenes in the real world.

Flanking them are Flippy, the Houdini software mascot, and a decade-old miniature Kickstarter reward version of Kevin, the animated robot from my thesis film.

The Muse Simulation Theory Vinyl Set

One of the coolest projects we’ve had the pleasure of working on as a studio over the years was the Muse Simulation Theory tour and feature film.

The vinyl set has some awesome nostalgic elements and great art that really takes me back to working on the project.

We handled all the visual effects and much of the post for the movie, which was an absolute blast.

Directed by Lance Drake, we filmed the movie at the O2 Arena in London.

It was surreal to watch the band and production company Pulse Films create a live show while weaving narrative elements for the movie into the performance itself.

We also created video interstitials for the live show, cinematic sequences that played behind the band.

It felt very meta to be there filming a feature film with tour visuals we had created playing in the background.

We built Murph, the robot, in CGI for The Darkside music video, with direction from Muse creative director Jesse Lee Stout and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.

Murph was a skeleton-cyborg hybrid that I kitbashed from lots of cool assets on the computer.

It was extremely rewarding to see Murph go on to become the antagonist for the entire tour and film, coming to life as a giant inflatable puppet in the live show and battling Matt in an epic mountain-top laser battle in the film.

Every now and then, I’ll put the record from this set on my turntable, and with how many times we watched the film while working on it, I can pretty much close my eyes and see every frame.

The Napoleon Barbecue

I don’t have a barbecue at my place, so I selfishly figured we needed one at the office, and it’s definitely earned its keep on my favourite things list.

Whether we’re making breakfast sandwiches to start the week, or throwing on emergency hot dogs because a few of us forgot to bring lunch, it has become very useful.

Some of my favourite days since the addition of this culinary beast have been spent preheating the grill while watching our latest renders come off the render farm.

Farm-to-table?