About Tealeaves Pictures

Tealeaves Pictures is the name of a freelance self employed Art and Animation portfolio created by Welsh

Actor and Artist, Matthew Lee.

It works on creating small projects, such as short films, promotional videos.  Tealeaves Pictures produces a tailored animations for clients across a wide variety of animated mediums, including: short films, animatics, wedding videos and promotional trailers for amateur and youth stage productions.

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About the Creator

Matthew Lee was born in 16th August 1996 in Cardiff. He is a freelance animation generalist, storyboard artist, videographer and actor based in Bridgend and Cardiff. He has always been influenced and inspired by the stories and characters on the screen. He is passionate and interested in film and media productions. He is a hardworking and enthusiastic individual, who has the ability to work within a team as an effective team member, or on his own initiative when required. He possesses excellent communication skills, is considered reliable and can work to a strict schedule and tight deadlines.

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Early Days of a young artist

He started out as a young artist who helped design posters and cards for his schools. He was lucky enough to have one of his drawings be chosen for a Christmas card competition run by Acorn Recruitment Ltd. He used to make characters, props, sets or film logos out of plasticine. He is not really into sports but occasionally he used to reenact movies of his childhood. Sometimes at school to fill up time, he would act out the entire Simpsons Movie (2007) to his classmates. He used to make recreations of some of his favourite stories using his toys and living room. He would ask his parents to watch him act them out by imitating the characters (with different voice impressions) and humming the music, or, voice the dialogue scenes and have an existing soundtrack be played on a cd player.

Matthew liked to his own film adaptations of existing stories like A Christmas Carol or Beauty and the Beast, with his parents film as well as act out any of the supporting characters. These films they would share with his siblings for fun. After a while of watching home videos of stage productions, Matthew would build model stage sets out of cereal boxes and paper cut outs to make costumes for his characters.

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Introduction to Creative Arts

It was not until he started out as a member of Bridgend Youth Theatre (2007-2017) where he gained the confidence to work on and offstage in plays and musicals at the Grand Pavilion, Porthcawl.

In 2013, he studied Creative Media production at Bridgend College, where he gained the experience to work as a regular trainee with BBC It’s My Shout. He started out as a Stop-Motion Animator for the company's 'The Alumni' testimonial video (2014), but he also worked as a camera trainee for one short film, and two behind-the-scene documentaries. In 2017, he started to gain experiences as a supporting extra in feature film productions in South Wales. 

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The Beginning of Tealeaves Pictures

In 2015, he produced his first fully animated short film 'Veggie Rush!', which won an award for Best Animation (Age 14-19) at the Zoom Film Festival awards. He began naming his animation productions Tealeaves Pictures when he produced his second short 'The First Dragon' (2015). He studied 2D and Stop-Motion Animation at the University of South Wales, Cardiff, and worked a large variety of animation projects, such as adverts, animatics, character animations, and collaborations with student films, web series and has produced media for several creative arts societies. He was given a Special Achievement Award for his cooperation with multiple animation activities.

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During his third year at the University of South Wales, Cardiff, he has been improving his skills as a storyboard artist, animator and concept designer. He created Tealeaves Pictures as the name of his freelance self-employed business to gain experiences with film and animation studios based in the UK, and create the best contents that he can create for himself, friends and his clients.

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Matthew welcomes correspondence with any queries, projects or job offers.

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