North Wales firm welcomes HPC Wales project

The development of HPC Wales will make a massive difference to creative media companies in Wales, according to Alan Moult, director of North Wales-based Motion Blur Ltd.
The Pwllheli-based firm has an international reputation and a strong client base supplying the creative industries with digital art and computer 2D and 3D animation.
Mr Moult said: “Due to the geography, running a business in Wales, particularly here in Gwynedd, North Wales has always been extremely challenging.
“The internet has changed things, largely for the better, but not always. This instantly accessible, global market and delivery conduit has also brought stiff competition, making it hard to compete in a difficult climate.
“HPC on the ‘doorstep’ could go a long way in redressing some of the balance.”
Motion Blur has collaborated with Glyndwr University in Wrexham on a number of occasions and hopes to build on its successful links with the academic world.
Motion Blur has a strong track record. The firm won a Promo Cymru Golden Pixel Award for “Best Use of Animation” and has produced animated short films, online games and designed celebrity branding (all for S4C).
The company is on the BBC New Media Approved Suppliers list and has already supplied the BBC with art and animation for their Dr Who hit (BAFTA nominated), online project “Comic Maker”.
The company also created an online Dr Who game.
Mr Moult added: “Due largely to our extensive industry experience there have been no problems in finding clients of a high calibre. However, the area we fall down on repeatedly is missing out on extremely large jobs that seem to come our way from time to time, but that require a completely different set up at very short notice.
“There is often an imminent start date with this type of job and companies are prepared to throw money at them. Usually these are for short term periods and without any learning curve downtime. It’s difficult to get the professional skills in place at very short notice when projects are sizeable.
“Equally it’s not viable to carry big talented teams and the processing power to deal with it through the lean periods in between.
“Of course, having a readily-accessible HPC facility does not translate into providing that kind of instant workforce, but there is a degree of synergy between the two: we would all hope that the boosting of the computational culture in Wales that would be engendered by provision of the HPC machine would be likely to generate a supply of additional labour that could be called on at relatively short notice (e.g. raw graduates and recent graduates operating in cottage-industry mode).
“Having an affordable HPC node in a local University with a solid HPC track record, as we have found at Glyndwr University, would certainly have given us a winning chance by enabling us to retain significant amounts of production in the UK.
“I’m convinced it’s not just our own company that is missing out here, but the wider creative community and Wales itself.
“Based on my own personal experience there is great potential to bring large scale projects to North Wales. Accessible, affordable HPC would be a great place to start in helping to make this happen.”
Note: Glyndwr University is solidifying its investment in North Wales' creative industries by building the aptly-named £2.4m Centre for Creative Industries, projected to open this year.
See - http://www.walesinternationalconsortium.co.uk/news/N10_Glyndwr_Creative_Indu.shtml
See earlier posts starting at -
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-40m-super-computer-project-for.html