The Creative Report

A Link to my Report

When starting out on my creative report, I knew exactly who to contact and what to base it on. I knew I wanted to base it around storyboard art, and the one person who sprung to my mind was Catherine Salkeld of Bluezoo Animation, seen below on her linkedin and instagram. 

When looking further into her background, I realised how close in age we were, which was inspiring to find out how she had made such a name for herself in such a short amount of time.

Catherine's BAFTA win report - Linked here is the report from Sunderland University detailing her BAFTA win with only being 6 years older than myself.

I reached out to Catherine via email and was given a response only 40 minutes later, which was incredibly nice and I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with her as she represents to me how a graduate can become one of the industries top board artists only a few years after graduating.

 This was my original email to Catherine Salkeld.

When researching my creative report, I did research into the background of Blue Zoo animation studio, although this largely was left out due to my already exceeding the word count. Although I did do a lot of research into Catherine herself and her journey from Sunderland graduate to BAFTA winning storyboard artist at Blue Zoo, which I hope comes across in my report.

In future I am going to make a point of contacting professionals to better understand storyboard art as a practice, so that I can further my learning after 3rd year.  

What I will engage with over Summer

Over summer I want to engage more with my practice over summer. For this summer I have already applied for a bluezoo internship, as well as applying for a place to go to Singapore for an animation competition.

After all of that, or before, I want to engage more with my own web comic which I am trying to develop and find a platform for, I also want to revisit an animation that never came to fruition properly when I first made it.

 The webcomic I am trying to develop, with my own characters and designs.

The animation I want to remake over summer is "Pink and Blue" . This is my first animation from my first year, I was far too over ambitious with what I wanted to accomplish with a 15 second animation, and I changed my idea right at the end. Because of this, it never came to be the project I wanted it to be, so I want to remake it into a 1 minute animation which I can make into a proper animated short with the story that was originally intended for it. It is less about recycling stories as it is expanding upon them with more knowledge and experience than I had before. 

Working for no Pay

This was a message I received from a potential client, this is where I was really able to put my professional practice into practice, because although the client was mature and professional, his understanding of the animation industry was limited. Therefore the pay for the size of the project was far too little. Therefore I had to respectfully turn him down. Although it felt bad as this is one of the only times someone has approached me about my work, and the exposure would have been good, I have to consider myself a professional and to be paid as such. 

Final Presentation

For our final presentation, we had to reflect on our year and how we have engaged with the module overall. Here is mine:

I believe I have engaged well with my practice and branding this year, it has allowed me to engage with real world creatives and made me consider my branding and my online presence a lot more.

My Personal Showreel

For my last task in PP I had to create my own showreel using work from my first 2 years at University. I also used this for my bluezoo internship submission (which I imagine I was not successful with). There is not much to say about this however I am proud of what I have accomplished this year.

Now I can see some problems with how this is put together, however I will keep this as my personal showreel until I have enough material to make a new one. I do however want to update my showreel so that it relates to my specialisation more, which is storyboard art. 

YouTube link

Bluezoo Submission

Outside of Uni these past couple of months, I have been attempting to create a showreel and a portfolio which would allow me to enter into the chance of getting a place on blue zoo's summer internship for storyboard artists. I was not 100% confident with my submission, however I am proud of what I have accomplished in a small amount of time.

This is my complete portfolio which I wanted to submit to bluezoo for my storyboard art internship, however I could not find out how to submit it, but it was still good practice for me to put together. I am proud of the way I branded this and I want to continue to add to this as time goes by.

Life is a Pitch

For this module, in groups we formed a collective which we named Mumble Studios. In this collective I was tasked with making our showreel, and identifying our competitors. Our goal in Mumble studios was to create interactive animations for web pages and mobile games, and eventually break into the games industry.

This is the showreel I made using work from myself and 3 others from my group. I do not own all of the work shown in this showreel and am only using it for educational purposes. For this I made an opening which represents our studio, using a colour scheme that was passed on to me by a team mate.

I created a fake web page so that I could make an animation of an interactive web page, so that instead of playing a video, the video falls and deconstructs the page. This was not a necessary part of the project, but I wanted to mix practice into my smaller role in the team.

My Research

In my research I had to look specifically at animation studios which offered interactive animation. Here are the top finds in my searches.

   

These are the animation studios I found, however what I found is that none of these specifically offered what we were offering, as most offer animation in different stages.


After: 

After this presentation was given, I considered that in my research I should have looked into game studios, not just animation studios, and my perspective was a bit too narrow. In my focusing on the showreel too much, I hadn't considered that games companies would probably offer more of this than animation studios.

My Contract

Under PP, I have been asked to make an invoice form, and also a contract which can be used under my specific brand. This was not something I had currently considered and therefore I had to think about all of the things that I needed for each of these.

This is the invoice I made for my own specific brand. I used a template from microsoft word to help me with this, I tried to take out anything that related to the template, by trying to colour it so that it was as branded as possible. All of the numbers are fabricated and do not relate to anything that I have agreed on. 

I tried to be a bit more professional with my contract. I did not use any sort of template for this, and heavily considered what I should be earning. I decided on £15 an hour for my rate, as I considered that as a cleaner I earned £10 an hour, therefore I should be earning more after earning a degree in a subject, and for my skills as a practitioner. Here is where I considered where I should be charging a decent living wage based on my practice. This is something I will use going forward with my branding. 

A Rebrand for the Better

Throughout PP I have been considering my professional presence a lot more. I have been looking into my own personal background with the creative industry, and have made a change in terms of how I represent myself online.

AT_art - This was my original logo on DeviantArt when I simply called myself AT_art. However I decided to rebrand myself into something that was not my own name but catchy and something people could recognise and remember. 

TheBritsonian - When I was living in Australia, I decided a rebrand was in order, I decided to make it something quite quirky and memorable, and also something that made me stand out against my peers. For this I based my name on my home country of Britain, and decided the smithsonian was a name to base my name on. Mixing those 2 words helped me come up with a name I liked. 

Rebranding - Throughout PP I decided that I wanted my logo and presence to be different. TheBritsonian was something I have enjoyed being over the last few years, and wanted to continue. Therefore I decided to rebrand myself, this is my sheet of designs which I made to try and update my logo, I tried many different variants but 1 in particular stood out to me.

Colour Change - When making my new logo in Illustrator, I decided to try and change my colours. However I ultimately decided that my original colours stood out to me the most, and I kept my own colours. The red is a very specific red which I use in my art so I kept this exactly the same.

The New Britsonian - This is my final new logo, I love the way this came out, it is a vector so the quality stays in place, and I can now begin building my professional profile on top of my personal one. This will not be a hard task as I do not often keep my posts up and delete them if I believe them to be not good enough to represent me anymore.

A banner - From the font I used to create my new logo, I decided I needed to specify my practice a lot more, using this, I made a banner for YouTube, I used this to specify my interest in animation. I want to make a motion graphic which I can use in my showreel and on my social media accounts in order to represent this to its fullest.

My Copyright?

I have been asked about my own copyright and how I protect my online presence. Honestly this is not something I had considered before, as all my professional work is technically owned by the University and not by myself. I am also active on Instagram with my art work, where I have no watermark, and Instagram can technically can use any of my posts for promotional purposes if they should so choose.

What will I do? 

To better protect myself against copyright I am going to create a watermark to put over my artwork and set up my own website so that the artwork is all legally owned by myself as it is protected under my own branding.

I will use this logo to create a watermark for myself as well as brand my own website correctly. I may have a new logo by the time I get around to doing this. 

TheBritsonian - Domain

My first goal when making my plan for PP was to buy my domain for my website. I have already achieved this. I want to brand myself correctly and use the domain I have acquired to aid my creative presence online. I believe this will help me with jobs in the future and will give someone a place to go to see all of my work, professional and personal without any fuss.

Here is my proof of my buying my own domain.