Interview: Ben O'Brien

On London

I studied in London. And as soon as I left I knew I was going to go back. 

I was in my early twenties at the time. This was the late 90s and it was a great place to be and loads was going on there. I started out in animation, went out on my own for two or three years then went part-time for an animation studio. Two friends and I wanted to grow our folio and so we talked about setting up a little studio. Which we did. 

There were only three of us in the company but we managed loads of freelancers. I suppose you could have called me a creative director but it wasn’t really like that. We had been to college together but had different skills. Jay was more focussed on web design, and had a brilliant grounding. I loved creative and Adrian was great with all things film.

After a while though, it felt like every freelancer was better than I was at animation and had a better understanding about how characters moved and that side of things. Those were skills that didn’t really appeal to me. I found out that I preferred the way things looked to the technical side. So I started drawing and quite quickly fell totally in love with illustration.

Around the same time my lifestyle changed and I realised that I wasn’t really loving London any more. Maybe it was an age thing. But there was a period of time where I had a studio in London but I hadn’t had a meeting with anyone in almost six months. Or rather, I had never needed to go for a meeting. At that point I had to ask myself what I was doing there.

I met my wife at a similar time and we sort of ran away together. We ended up in Cornwall and started seeing the other side of life. Buying a house, being able to get a bus to the beach and feel a bit more stable was great. By this point my clients were globally based, largely thanks to my wife. So there was no need to move out of a small town. We had our son and it was great. 

But a few years in we started to miss city life. Fi [Ben’s wife] is from Melbourne so is used to city life. We found Frome, which is an amazing place and isn’t as big or expensive as Bath, Bristol or London. It was a really good choice for us and it allowed us to visit London much more easily for fun or for work.

We’d been away from London for long enough to enjoy it as a holiday but it wasn’t home any more.

[More to come]