Post University - Exit Strategy

My exit strategy for after University is pretty straight forward. I want to mov down to London. As a storyboard artist, I want to make sure that I am around the place where all of the work is.

As is shown here, from a simple google search . the top most options for Storyboard artist are based in the London area. Also of the people I have contacted; Bianca Ansems, Jez Hall and Douglas Ingram, have all been London based and are some of the biggest storyboard artists in the UK right now.

I feel as though this is a logical step in my career, and as my family own a flat in Kent, I will try to move into it temporarily, with a friend of mine, and commute into London from there.

Overall from the flat, to the station and then into London, will take about 2 hours, which will be a pretty horrific commute, however for a temporary/cheap compromise with moving down South, it will meet our needs well enough. It will be a needs must sort of situation where we will have to make sacrifices for cheaper living costs, as straight out of Uni it will probably not be realistic to move straight into London, as living costs are much higher than the North.

A Talk with David Bunting

Today we had a storyboard pro workshop with David Bunting.

http://www.buntinganimation.com/

As he is a storyboard artist by trade for children's TV, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get some feedback on my work face to face, and not over email or LinkedIn as I have done with my other connections.

Here were my main takeaways from our conversation:

• Most recent work is good, at a very similar level to Bianca Ansems and Catherine Salkeld  when they were in my position. 
• My website is a bit too clumsy, a bit too open, it would work to be a bit more condensed. 
• It would serve me well to attend life drawing sessions "for a storyboard artist it should be like going to the gym" is something which he said to me. 

The comparison to 2 of my storyboarding heroes was something I will takeaway with me as it is a real confidence booster in my own abilities. He gave me a lot of constructive criticism, which I will take with me also, as it is very important to my development as an artist, also as a board artist, I will need to be able to take director feedback and respond in turn, as storyboarding is such a necessary part of the animation pipeline. 

He also recommended to me that I look into Lupus and Aardman, as both companies have been known to take on interns and he also learned storyboard pro through his work at Aardman, so I will contact both companies to see what opportunities they could hold. 

Pricing as a Freelancer

Today I attended a costing and pricing workshop at Uni, where it was explained the process of working out minimum spend and wage to charge as a freelancer in industry. I have realised that realistically that most jobs for a storyboard artist are short term contracts, so becoming a freelancer is probably the most viable option for me.

This is my notes from the workshop, at the bottom there is a calculator, which shows how to work out the minimum I can charge someone to earn what I need to earn per hour and per day, based on hours worked per year. This chart is quite unrealistic as a freelancer will most likely be working to the degree of 34 weeks a year, as opposed to 46, but it was a basic tester as opposed to a definitive cost list. This is also the absolute minimum, as a professional I should be charging much more per day than this.

Based on the BECTU salary guide, this is way less than I need to be charging to make a living rate in London.

The £513 is the day rate for a freelance storyboard artist based in London based on the British Film Designer's guild's rate card for 2017. This means I would be charging way less than the national average, however I am just beginning so I feel like this is somewhat a fair price.

Considering an MA?

Recently, I have been considering potentially taking on post graduate study after graduation, just as an extra push, to make me more hireable for an industry job, as I believe I still have a long way to go in my learning.

This is a new storyboarding masters course which I discovered through Tom Box on LinkedIn, it sounds like a great opportunity with a lot of chance for industry feedback. Here is a list of my pros and cons for post graduate storyboarding

Pros: 

• Industry feedback
• London based living 
• Chance of an £8000 scholarship
• Masters level degree 

Cons: 

• Cost association that would come from London living
• Little opportunity for part - time work as it would be a full time course 
• Skills to start with are skills I already have, so it would be a lot of repetition

Ultimately I don't think I need a masters degree, not at this stage in my career. I personally feel as though the cons outweigh the pros in this situation. Industry feedback is something I can get through my own networking opportunities anyway, so I feel as though this would just be me trying to stay in the education safety net, as opposed to getting a job. Also, I do want to be down in London, but without the prospect of a job this would probably not be very realistic. Therefore I will focus more on gaining industry experience, and trying to do a level 7 apprenticeship down the line at a studio if they will let me, I was told by Kate Lander at my Brown Bag work experience that it was possible to do at Brown Bag if you are employed there. 

Point of Contact 2 - Ex Tutor

I have tried to create a lot of connections during this year, but I had missed an important contact I should have looked into before all of this, in my ex tutor Martin, who happens to live in the same city as me. I thought this would be a good contact as he has his own animation studio, so I thought I could gain some work experience through this.

Luckily he gave me a very nice response, and said that I may be able to help out in his studio at some point in May, which would be good as it is when the final hand in is, and would be a great thing to put on my CV as work experience.

It would also be good for after Uni as I know I would have to move home to York for a while before I am able to move out, so staying around York and gaining experience would be a win win for me.

Interview Experience - Build a Rocket By Games

After applying on glassdoor.co.uk, I was contacted by "Build a Rocket Boy Games" for the role of cinematic storyboard artist. This was to be a Skype interview, where we would discuss my portfolio and my application. Here is the email that was sent to me, for obvious reasons I could not include email addresses and such forth as that is personal information.

During this interview we discussed my general process, and how I approached storyboards. I got the feeling however during this interview that I was not being taken seriously, and it was unclear to me whether they knew I was a student, even after putting it on my application. However the interview was professional and I was sure I was unsuccessful in securing the role.

Although I was unsuccessful, I am putting this one down to interview experience, and I now know what to expect in future when I undertake interviews for similar positions. I need to improve my interview skills, as I got a bit flustered when I was asked about my process, and when asking questions, I could have been clearer in terms of what I was asking. I should have been more assertive and handled myself as a professional as opposed to a student, which is probably a confidence issue.

Work Experience?

After contacting around studios, my contacting went pretty far as I got a reply from Brown Bag Films asking for some more information. This was the first email I received from Kate Lander:

Proceeding this, I filled out the work experience form. Which I asked for a couple of days. They also asked why I wanted the work experience. The reason for this is that I wanted to gain an insight to the industry that I couldn't get through interviews or books. The only way I could properly experience what it was like to be around an industry setting, was to go and see for myself.

To my surprise, I was contacted again, this time asking me to an interview, which I was very pleased with. I went along to my interview, where we discussed what the experience would include, and when about I would be able to come along. I was also asked some general interview questions as to why I chose Brown Bag and why I wanted the experience. I was interviewed by Kate Lander, and the interview ended with her happily offering me the work experience starting in the new year for the 3 day production pipeline program. I am incredibly happy with this result, and I will relish the experience that they can give me.

Application after Application

After making my CV I thought it best to apply for some potential jobs, whether it be because I believed I was in with a chance, but also because I wanted the experience of going through the application process, and maybe gaining some interview experience. Therefore I went for these websites to track down some jobs.

All of these websites have been incredibly useful in looking for jobs. So far I have used these resources to apply for Cloth Cat animation, Jellyfish Animation, Build a Rocket Boy Games LTD, Square One Resources, as well as internships at Pixar, Disney and Blue-zoo for storyboard artist internships. So far I have not received any sort of response from these companies but I will remain hopeful and keep applying for extra stuff.

As well as applying on these websites, I have contacted some studios about any work experience or studio visit opportunities which could potentially be around but not on any sort of job websites. The companies I have contacted so far have been Brown Bag Films, Little Fish Animation Studios as well as some others, I have tried not to contact anything too far away due to travel cost however I am trying to establish a connection with these studios.

Aesthetica Film Festival - Brothers Macleod

On November 10th 2018, I attended Aesthetica Film Festival in York, to attend a talk by BAFTA winning film makers The Brothers Macleod. This talk was advertised as being how animation is carried out in a primarily digital world.

However this talk was more about the ideas process about story telling, and how the 2 come up with their ideas, and how they get them funded to get given the go ahead. Although this talk had nothing to do with storyboarding, my professional practice, I found this talk useful, as it was explained that both take on specific jobs in the industry as well as getting funding to work on their own films.

This was an attempt by me to find out more of a wider context of the industry of animation, as opposed to me searching for something specific. As this talk was in my home town, and the 2 usually produce 2D animated shorts, I thought it would be an interesting talk to attend, which it was. Everyone in attendance was given an exclusive print by them, as well as gaining a bit more knowledge on how they approach their story telling process.

This story telling process did end up being relevant to storyboarding, as storytelling is a lot of what makes it a professional practice. I found this part extremely useful, as they talked about it more from a creative stand point. Although their storytelling is not usually focused on character based narrative, it was interesting and they kept it entertaining the whole way through.

Jim Mortensen Storyboard Resource

I have been trying to engage with Twitter a lot more recently, so I can have a bit more of a personal connection with industry professionals, and so that I can continue engaging with animation outside of Uni. I recently followed Jim Mortensen, who is an American board artist, who boards for the show "Trolls". He made a great resource online that I have been looking at, which I had to pledge money to in order to access, so that I could support my practice and also so that I could see his general considerations.

This is the opening page, I do not want to show individual pages as I feel this would take away from his resource, but I have found it really useful to see his take on boarding, and the advice included I will try and take away into future projects which I undertake.

Networks and Organisations

There are many animation events to engage with outside of University, these include but are not limited to:

• Manchester animation festival (runs November time) 
• Aesthetica Short Film Festival (in York) 
• London Animation Festival 
• Annecy 

There are also opportunities which are set up by studios in which they will review portfolio's and showreels and explain how they look at people's applications. I have seen both BlueZoo and BrownBagFilms doing this on certain occasions.

I have also updated my LinkedIn profile to become a lot more professional and specialised towards being a storyboard artist. As is also shown on this my website is also shown now in the profile page. I did this as it appears a lot more professionally before. 

Who am I now? And where do I want to be?

When I first started University, I wanted to be a 2D animator, telling my own stories with my own independent animation company. Now, however, since the start of 2^nd year, I am a Storyboard artist, wanting to work for a studio on TV, Film or Animation. I knew I wanted a role which could not just be specific to one field, and I have a passion for TV and movies, so I did not want to specify myself into just animation, I felt that varying my skill set was more useful for getting a job outside of Uni.

Currently my skillset is purely in 2D drawing and cinematography knowledge which helps with shot framing in my storyboards. I have a good knowledge of Storyboard pro, toon boom’s storyboarding software, as well as creative cloud applications and Autodesk sketchbook. I would like to expand to using 3D to aiding with my storyboards as this is a common practice which many studios undertake and would make me more of a hireable asset to studios.

My social media right now consists of my own storyboards and artwork, which is mostly fan art work, and should probably be more consistent of storyboards and motion drawings. Right now, as a practicing artist, I am on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and New grounds. My main one which I use is Instagram. I have my own branding which I use on all my artwork, I am recently looking into re working my branding to reflect my storyboards more. I do not think I utilise my social media effectively and I should look into posting more sporadically with more professional work.

Upon the exit of the course, I would like to join a studio as an in-house storyboard artist, however I understand that realistically, as a storyboard artist, most work will come from 6 month contracts or less, therefore I will need to take on freelance work in order to maintain myself. Eventually I would like to be a freelancer able to work on both animated and live action productions on feature films. They are 2 very different mediums but a lot of the skills are transferable.