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.

Manchester Animation Festival - Storyboarding Masterclass

On 14th November 2018, I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the IEA storyboarding masterclass, run by industry professional Peter Western. Peter Western has worked as a storyboard artist in animation working on such productions as "The Snowman and the Snow-dog" as well as live action productions working on productions headed by such Directors as Steven Spielberg.

I found this masterclass to be incredibly useful and inspiring, as we were given storyboards to work on during the talk, with opportunity for feedback by Mr Western and also co-founder of BlueZoo Tom Box who was also in attendance. Mr Western was also kind enough to include his email on our worksheets so that we could use him as a connection after the masterclass.

Mr Western started the masterclass by giving us a bit of insight as to what it is he does when approaching a storyboard, and the worry that sometimes board artists forget the basics in an attempt to finish a board quickly as opposed to properly, which he admitted to have been guilty of in the past. He revealed that his general approach was to thumbnail straight onto the production script, and then get those thumbnails approved by the director. I found this a nice story as thumb-nailing straight onto the script is a practice that I like to do myself.

Mr Western also stressed to us the importance of the line of action, which is sometimes known as the 180 degree line, or action line, or other names which mean more or less the same thing, which relates to the rule in cinematography where the camera will never cross over this line to be the opposite side of the characters through a cut, as it can confuse the audience.

Proceeding the main talk, we were allowed to take some time just to work on our storyboard work sheets. Throughout this Mr Western and Tom Box walked around the room giving some feedback on our boards as well as asking us what we thought of the workshop.

After the workshop, I contacted Tom Box about the workshop, and the following was the correspondence that took place.

It was good to get the feedback and also have some input into storyboarding tutorials which were in progress at the time.

Building a CV

To build my professional profile more, I made a CV which sums up what I have achieved so far. This is my CV so far, with personal information smudged out.

Already I feel as though this CV is far too long for what I want to achieve with it. If I were an employer I would most likely say that the CV is far too long and needs condensing down. Some of it feels like padded out fluff which could be easily condensed. I will rework my CV for submission and try and use it for applications to jobs and internships when I feel as though it is good enough for professional use. There are some things which are unnecessary to be there, such as the use of sketchbook pro, this is not an industry standard tool, and therefore does not really matter to an employer. 

Business Cards

As I was going to MAF, I decided to design a set of business cards. Unfortunately I did not get my cards printed in time due to booking times etc but it was still nice to design them, and they are quite nice quality.

These are the designs for my first set of business cards. I am calling these tests, as there are aspects I would like to change about them, and due to not printing professionally they are quite easy to fray the edges. I have used the same red that I use on my logo and my website, so it fits with my brand, and I like the simplicity of the back being just the logo.

I will revisit this design in the future and see if I can upgrade it and get it printed on a website professionally such as Moo, or vista print, which I know other people have used. I think business cards are a great thing to have at Network events, so it was unfortunate that I was not able to get them printed in time for MAF.

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.