From conducted research and planning I have created my personal portfolio and industry roles based from research into the adverts of jobs I would pitch towards, the artists I would aspire towards the roles that have worked particular professions throughout their career and how I would brand myself to studios and industries. Below shows the documents that are important to this pitch.
Module Evaluation:
Throughout this module, I have experienced the fundamental aspects of gaining a understanding into industry roles, how to apply to them and how to research towards what they require and what skills and background experience they need when apply for advertisements. Throughout this research I conducted a better understanding that the skills I acquire can be used for many roles that have different set goals. These goals wouldn't have to be through the boundaries of animation, instead they would focus their aim around marketing, advertising and publication such as comics or production, to illustrations and video games. In turn, this makes me feel that my advanced knowledge and skill sets can open a variety of opportunites away from film making and animation. Even though I would start out in animation or film production as part of the action plan set up, I would be open to new roles in future if they are ever arisen or they are offered to me. What this can do is develop my skills, working in different patterns of how studios and industries aim their goals aswell as gaining experience from working closely with different professionals that have more knowledge and practical approaches in their field.
What I would take from this module is the experience of marketing my own brand towards potential roles and opportunites that will arise as I go along my career path.
When it comes to networking, having a portfolio can help achieve in getting noticed by different professions in roles I would be looking to pitch. This would include branding, Creative CV that reflects my skills and presenting the content professionally, marketable experience such as work experience and previous networking in festivals and exhibitions; logo and business cards and my major qualities that describe my skills and what I can do for the role that I would pitch for.
When it comes to interviews, having a good portfolio is a good way to get the job but it doesn't reflect how I would personally showcase myself towards the role.
To get a good pitch this would haver to include describing:
Degree (projects, specialist areas)
Placement (tasks, what you learnt)
Part time work (skills developed)
Reasons for applying:
Interested in the company (projects, goals, audience and style of working)
love of the subject (methods, theme and techniques)
What made me interested in the role (past experience, challenges faced)
Below shows a presentation by guest speaker lisa law on how to successfully network and how to
approach in pitching job roles in 10 minute presentation which will be shown in a future post and
interviews with the leaders of industries or studios that I would apply towards.
Storyboard Artist
As another pitch I would look into is storyboard artist I started to look at famous artists who have explored this crucial method in their career path. The link for my main research in storyboard artists is: http://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-famous-storyboard-artists/reference
Butch Hartman
This animator is very famous for creating Nickelodeon network shows Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. As he created, directed and written these tv shows, storyboarding was I think his most important process as these crucial points of creating the elements of the plot help keep the audience interested through each episode and understand each scene from crisp and clean pacing that helps the dynamics, action and humour of each show's themes.
Joseph Barbara
He is an Italian-American artist that has created, produced, written, animated and storyboarded a wide range of animated shows like Scooby Doo and The Flintstones. As part of the founding of Hanna Barbara studios with the involvement of William Hanna. The way he worked and created these shows had made worldwide fame of over 300 million audiences in 1960 that continued to grow as the same as the new introduced shows over the course of his career. What I find most interesting about his work is how he created the blend of humour to characters that can be recognoised in any theme he introduces throughout each show he took part in creating.
As part of creating a portfolio, we had another guest speaker to showcase how they have build their creative path through the animation industry and workshops. The second guest was Elizabeth Hobbs.
From her work she showed, she specialises in ink animation and printmaking animation.
How she produces her films is using ink paints, applying them upon layers and changing each frame with new movements over older frames in previous shots that would display the same character yet feel more alive when made.
This to me, showcases a recognizable style to her work through the way how she carries her stories through simple yet rich motions and character/ setting portrayals.
She mention in her talk when freelancing, we would need to make sure that we know what sort of workshop and team we are willing to work with as they could make suggestions, meetings and ideas towards where they want to take the production even of it doesn't fit with what the original artist/ Aniamtor previously envisioned that the beginning of the process. Yet being open minded and getting another view on the subject matter can envisioned a new direction that the original creator wouldn't have thought up before.
In some of her work like her printmaking, she uses film strips as the backdrop for putting on screen when she carves small images of her story into wood. These small reels would then be enhanced and blown up bigger for screening.
Her latest instalment she mention she was taking part in was a independent project called 'OK' where she shows a test of how she filters with sketches and photographs to craft a story about one person in her work. From all her films she introduces historical elements and plays upon the notion of how we perceive the original telling as she finds the halfs truths and tells them in her animation productions.
Here below shows examples of her work that she showed in her talk
As I started to looked into what I want to do as a freelance artist or going into a role that requires good art skills aswell as for animator is by looking into existing concept artists that I can inspire from from any profession which could be freelance, lead artist and set developers for films and video games.
One of the sites I found useful start up information on concept artists was from gizmodo describing how diverse these artists can approach their unique and individual styles and outlook that people believe these individuals can create their own movies if they wanted to.
Here is a link to the page: http://io9.gizmodo.com/10-concept-artists-who-should-be-working-on-their-own-m-1530717946
The most vibrant artists I think I would inspire from include:
Sergi Brosa, a character designer and illustrator who portrays art that envision distopian, futuristic setting that also showcases a sense of the uncanny valley from the dynamics and characters involved in the scenarios. They also tell the admirer that there are dark tales behind the story of these pieces as from a first glance they would seem chaotic, barren, apocalyptic, unusual and violent.
Claire hummel who is a freeelance artist that creates fan art that is
usually very popular on twitter but what i find most interesting about
her work is that the approach to use bright colours even if they seem
dark to change the dynamic of the setting even if she was changing the
colour on the same inspired topic. Aswell as fan art her approach is
recognizable in the 2013 video game Bioshock Infinite which was praised
not only for the developed characters, plot and gameplay but also for
it's visual style and art direction that made a great impact to driving the story was told and how the characters interact with
the environmental set pieces especially with the help of Claire's
character designs to blend well with the setting and personalities.
Ryan Church is an concept designer best known for creating aline themed art, scenarios and set pieces for blockbuster films such as Avatar, War of the worlds, Star Wars episode two (Attack of the clones) and three (Revenge of the sith) even the most recent episode seven (the force awakens)
From these links, I will research and present the finding on another post describing from what these artists have accomplished to get to where they am and why they love this type of method, skill and theme to create art pieces for films or showcasing what they can do over to a broad audience. These important aspects will generate what I want to envision for a career path and showcase what I want out of it when developing my skills further within my portfolio building.
As part of building a portfolio aswell as seeing other opportunities when they arise, me and most of my animation year when the Silent Signals talk that involved the work between six groups of two people of an animator and a scientist in the edgbaston Campus at the University of Birmingham. As we only saw three groups including one with one of our lecturers Samantha Moore that was apart of the different projects it was interesting how the most unusual partnership can end up creating something that makes the subject more informative visually and descriptive and have a better notion of how these two different professions can create projects that can be easily recognized they've been done by the scientist and animator in terms of what the subject is aswell as how to present that subject.
What was important to me overall of the talk is that as an animator it shows that opportunities can come from projects that wouldn't regularly be done.
Below shows some links to the event on websites relating to silent signal: http://www.vividprojects.org.uk/programme/silent-signal/ http://www.silentsignal.org/event/silent-signal-exhibition-at-quad/
below shows some photos I have attempted to take of the event and where it was:
Below shows the leaflet we acquired that showcased who would display their work aswell as an event card of the other dates that this event will have.
As part of looking into industry and freelance work we had a talk from animator Sandra Salter who attended as a guest lecturer in semester one to the 1st and 2nd years. She is part of a self made company called salty animation who specializes in different mediums of print to imagery production aswell as traditional methods of 2d animation through formats of hand drawn to digital.
The work she showed to us that was commissioned to festivals and other clientele included:
The Royal Oak which was a collaboration with poet Bendicty Newbery won the best animation audience award at the purbeck Shorts competition in the Purbeck film festival. This film told the story of royal Oak pub narrated by Tony Fish describing the daily routine it has to through and describing what happens a typical day in terms of the people and times other places around the pub effect their routines.
Illustration work like open sky productions project called the mighty prince that she contributed in to create the art around the purpose of the book.
https://vimeo.com/sandrasalter http://www.saltysanimation.co.uk/ http://saltysstudio.blogspot.co.uk/
What I learned of this talk is that she has a unique style that can be recognized by people watching her animations and looking at her illustrations. I also see from her years of experience how she presents her company branding, how she chooses her clients like channel aswell as the sort of subject matter and people she would work with.
List of portfolio content.
From looking at previous year's portfolio including Reg issac and Kamila Konczewska the main content we all must include to gain the requirements the brief wants includes:
Industry role: I would have to talk about my favoured career ideas from digital painter and concept artist
Career plan: current situation and ideal situation
Back up plan: this would need to be for in case my original path doesn't meet the plan
Required skills
Branding promotion
CV
Business Cards
websites listed (blogs, facebook pages)
showreel
networking and social media
festivals (if attended)
working with clients (like the Wolverhampton marketing team)
Bibliography
Personal branding and enterprise/ Employability award
From a talk from Lisa Price, the main aspects was to talk about identifying our marketing strengths when looking for employment. Like all companies they would be identified with a logo and vision that can be easily recognized. Having a brand can create loyalty to the customers and consumers; helping people connect with the concept of the company.
Branding is a part of strategy communication. In lisa's own words, it conveys a message to a target audience that look for the type of product they would want.
A way branding is produced requires researching the market that might be looking for the productions or products people are producing and effective packaging and products that is unique, diverse and different to other competitors.
All content described above is a good way of advertising the brand I want to showcase towards my own career path.
For marketing research this would have to include researching the types of opportunities I would find throughout the industries from contract, freelance aswell as permanent jobs. Sometimes these sort of companies that direct towards animation and other film based industries can be found on the products the companies themselves aswell as commercial adverts.
Some links to articles about how to research the industries include:
When it comes to research the most common aspects to look for when finding opportunities include:
What do they do?
Their client base they conduct work with
The mission and purpose of their industry
The roles they possess in the company such as animation assistant to producer
The type of films and concepts they look for in their film production
For a good product or story, they would require people to have qualities in creating the concept that meets their standards; the experiences I have acquired up to this point and describing myself in three words that best describe my most important qualities that effects with what I want in my career path.
The qualities that would be used to describe and sell ourselves to the industry include motivated, independent, reliable, committed, confident or passionate.
To showcase our experiences within the industry this would include:
Placements with application forms
volunteering such as work experience
freelance work
festivals which helps in creating a network of people to communicate with those that have been apart of the animation industry
Exhibitions from degree shows and creative briefs
Competitions
University Projects but have more studying can develop the employment experience better
As the course went on we started to learn what is important when creating a CV and an action plan for our portfolio.
Also as part of promoting what we can do in the market, I decided to start up a Facebook page on my university work and other art related activities that will be updated across each month. The intention of this process is to gain follows from anybody that interested in looking at my work from new followers to friends and family aswell as getting noticed by people who work for animation or other types of art related communities whether they are directors, producers, freelance artists or other type of employee.
The link for the page is down below. https://www.facebook.com/MattDanksArt
What I also did whilst continuing to research the role I want in future is to make a rough action plan of the current situation paragraph to get a starting point for writing this portfolio.
Here is rough copy of the paragraph:
Personal Action plan
Current situation:
Throughout
my entire education within secondary school, sixth form and university I have
taken on a wide variety of skills and knowledge that has persevered what I
wanted to gain out of life. From these experiences, what I deem most important
that shows what I can do include having a range of artistic media skills and knowledge that can be perfect for trying something new in animation aswell as
other film productions I would conduct in future practices; open mind and quick
learner of software that would conduct its main aspects of editing, creating
music and digital art; and advanced sketching and drawing skills that has
developed more frequently and better as time went on at university through
constant practice and using this skill as my main technique within the most
modules in my studies.
For the CV what we learned included:
The experiences have to chronological order to help indicate when what experience came first and what was the latest.
listed skills that been gained from these experiences which can be relevant to the targeted profession and company I would like to conduct researching and apply for.
The listed application information has be academic which can take normally up to two sides of paper.
The listed information would include contact details, skills, qualities, project work, work experience as key to selling myself to companies I would want to apply for. These would be apart of a career objective statement.
Other information would involve contact information list of professional emails, addresses, interests that relate towards the job application and online profiles such as facebook and blogs so they have another way to check out the work I've conducted.
I would also have to include references to prove this information is correct.
descriptions of qualifications, education, achievements and work which would also include dates in reverse order, where and what I studied.
Descriptions of current and previous employments I have had over the years.
The additional sections can contain such relevant content such as research, funding awards such as the type of competitions I been involved in whilst educating for animation and other publications.
Use effective grammar and punctuation aswell as present the information in an accurate, uncluttered manner and have the same sort of text font the same throughout. The main professional fonts would generally include Arial or Calibri.
As part of building up a portfolio, our first goal was to research potential industry roles we would look as this module progresses and what we would choose as a career pat.
The first step I took was to continue researching what sort of role I would enjoy doing after graduation and sending applications across.
For this, I started to look at common websites that would advertise different job roles within animation or other media industries. The first site was called http://creativeskillset.org/
From looking at this site I started to look through the catergory of animation and see what sort of jobs I would consider as a career path to tell in my portfolio.
My first initial choices included:
Digital painter
Storyboard artist
layout artist
concept artist
Runner (providing support through the animation and editing processes whenever possible
As I looked into each job, their was a decent amount of information about what is requirement in terms of skill set and attitude towards their initial set projects. But to make sure I really wanted to be either a storyboard artist or digital painter I would need to research the role more within different websites, job sites and people who have conducted this sort of practice in their career path.
I would also need to start advertising my work out into the world to gain new followers and eventually get into contact with different people that would already be a freelance animator or working for certain industries aswell as updating my vimeo account with updated showreel aswell as posting videos of my final film at university to showcase what I made in the past and then what I improved in the long run.
