Spotlight: Eden Hawkes
What's your name and what area of VFX or animation do you work in?:
I’m Eden, and I currently work as a Scene Build/Prep Supervisor for large-scale 2D TV Harmony productions - basically living in that space between the creative and the technical. In my spare time I’m also working on my 2D rigging skills, and one day I’d really love to wrap my head around scripting and creating pipeline tools too!
What was your journey into the VFX or animation industry? What got you into VFX or animation?:
I took a fairly traditional route. After graduating from AUB, I landed a job at a small start-up gaming app as a generalist. I enjoyed it, but I always gravitated toward storytelling and visual problem-solving. Eventually I secured a job in... you guessed it - Scene Prep, on a Cartoon Saloon project. Over that production, everything started to click. I realised I loved the behind-the-scenes craft just as much as the final picture. Scene prep became this perfect blend of creativity, structure, and teamwork - exactly what I’d been looking for without even realising it. From there, I naturally began exploring rigging and pipeline work, which felt like the next step up from the base skills I’d been building.
What does a typical day look like in your role?:
A typical day is a mix of reviewing exports with my “director’s hat” on and trying to spot all sorts of things, from staging, to camera moves, issues with the rig and hookups. I also spend a lot of time supporting my team as a supervisor. That means managing narrative flow, unblocking issues, and my team has all the resources to do their best work - I aim to give them the information to help them with the annoying part of the job like issues with shots not hooking up correctly, and maintaining good continuity before they ever land in my review inbox.
There is a lot of communication, a lot of quality checking, and a lot of “let me just wrap my head around how we can hand this over to animation and comp in the best way possible.”
What skills do you think are most important for your role?:
Good scene build/prep is really about setting other department's up for success and having solid fundamentals across departments. It’s an underrated part of the pipeline, but it can absolutely lead a project to success… or create huge downstream issues if it’s ignored.
As a supervisor, empathy is a big one too. Any role where you’re supporting a team requires you to keep people in mind first. I love helping others - but even more than that, I love seeing my team grow and thrive.
What tools or software do you use daily? Is this what you started working in or have you pivoted to this one?:
I’m in Harmony and Photoshop every day, plus production tools like ShotGrid, FTrack, and a lot of Excel. I didn’t start out being organised in spreadsheets - it honestly took me a while! but I’ve evolved with each production. I can now proudly say I’m an Excel wizard… or at least a wizard’s apprentice.
The tools change from project to project, but the core principles stay consistent. Each piece of software just becomes another language you learn to speak fluently. It's another part of the industry I love, as we are constantly learning and growing!
What's your favourite part of your job/career so far?:
I have had a few successes but they are mainly ones where I would need to go into technical jargon, but for me it's working out the problems and coming up with new workflows to help my team or the wider project. Day to day I love being part of the invisible glue of a production and watching a team thrive because the groundwork is solid. That feels really rewarding.
What's a common misconception about your job?:
That scene prep is only for entry level roles or “just organising things.” It’s actually deeply technical and hugely collaborative. A lot of people don’t realise how much detective work goes into making sure a shot behaves properly and how much it impacts the entire production downstream.
What challenges have you met as a woman in the industry?:
There have been moments where I’ve felt self-doubt, which I think is natural in an industry that is so competitive and has so few roles in the UK at the moment. The mindset I have learned to adopt is that sometimes you do have to “fake it till you make it,” and remind yourself there is a reason you’ve gotten this far. Know your strengths, and don’t be afraid to lean on the strengths of others to support the team. It’s not about the “I” or proving you can do everything on your own. It’s about working towards a shared goal and succeeding together.
What's one piece of advice you wish you'd received earlier?:
That you don’t need to know everything at once. Ask questions. Be curious. Fail, try again and don’t get disheartened if you see others succeed or pick up something quicker - you might just find you are stronger for it! Half of this industry is learning on the job and the other half is being brave enough to say, “I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out.” That's the kind of attitude that can get you far and suddenly you are ahead!
How do you balance work with your personal life?:
Something I am still learning and getting better at. I try to protect my evenings, set boundaries around overtime, and remind myself that the version of me who has slept, eaten and touched grass is a much better artist and supervisor. Naturally it's easy to bite more than you can chew; with an ADHD brain and a propensity to people please, I tend to be a bit of a ‘Yes Man’ but I have learnt to say - Let me think about that - to then give myself some time to actually reflect on my workload.
What's one stereotype you'd love to break about your field?:
That technical roles, like scene prep, aren't creative. Scene prep is incredibly creative! It's just a different kind of creativity. It’s problem-shaping, design thinking, and making order out of chaos so others can tell the story beautifully, effectively and still hit the technical needs of the production. Even though it is meant to be an entry level role its quickly evolving into a pre-comp department; similarly (or even exactly) to how the layout department would work in after effect for a 3D project, but with more emphasis on how animation will need to animate and how comp will want to do their pass on it.