Every Thursday we're opening the studio doors and answering all of your questions. Technical, industry, fandom or otherwise - drop your question in the comments below - and we'll hop to it. (We're fielding Q's on Facebook, Twitter and G+ too, if that's easier!)

Got a question you're just bursting to ask? Here's your chance!

First up from the comments below:

Gary Price asked “Hey I'm looking to start an animation course in sept 2015, I'm curious though do you need a degree or diploma or would you be just aswell to learn maya with Animation Mentor or iAnimate?”

Hi Gary, we checked in with our HR Manager Susan who replied:

You don’t absolutely need a degree or diploma qualification to work in Animation, although we do work directly with colleges to recruit.

We look for talent! Whether they have a formal qualification or not doesn't have a huge influence.

The applicants portfolio and level of skill is a huge factor for obtaining a role regardless of their academic qualifications.

Hope that helps!

Our next question is from John Toland who asks “Hi Brown Bag Films, love your posts, I had a question about your Animation process. How many frames or seconds a week do your Character animators do from start to finish? And how long does it take to make an episode from the start of animation to the final shot being completed?”

Well John, it's a bit tricky to give any exact figures as the time varies for each show and depending on whether it's for a series/film and whether it's a pilot or not. But we generally produce multiple episodes simultaneously for each series and it can take over a year to see one episode through from start to finish.

But for example, for the animation of a single episode, from the blocking stage of starting the episode, to the final retakes (online) can take about 23 weeks.

Each animator produces about 20 seconds of animation a week for a series. For feature films that drops to about 3 seconds! That’s JUST the movement though, that doesn’t take into account lighting, rendering, compositing, and sound.

Hope that gives you a general idea of the lengthy process involved!

Next up we have:

We turned to Peter Rabbit 3d Supervisor, Sean Forsyth, to field this one:

The model is comprised of a total of 9,794 faces, including his eyes, whiskers, jacket, etc. His main body itself is just 3,046 faces as we don’t have geometry under his jacket. And as he gets smoothed during rendering, that number is quadrupled at rendertime.

Hope that answers your question!

Our next question comes from Aditya Muhammad Mirza, who asks: How are the Octonauts crew formed?

Well Aditya, we asked Octonauts director Nicky Phelan who informed us how the crew came together:

Professor Inkling is the founder of the Octonauts, who brought the crew together. In the Very Vegimal Christmas, you can see how the vegimals came to live on the Octopod, and there might be a little more history of the Octopod coming up in the next season!