Fete De L'anim: Ankama studios

Our video mapping workshops took place in Ankama studios. I personally have not heard about it before but I have been told that Ankamas video game Dofus is a video gaming phenomenon in France so I was really excited to take a tour around a successful video game studio .Dofus is a Flash-based tactical turn-oriented massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I was really excited that they work mostly on Flash so I immediately asked about internships!
Apparently Anakama does not stop at video games, they make comics, boards games, animations, movies. The studio is very independent and offers many services, they have a 3d printer, printing resources, translators, even a restaurant and a gym! It was a really cool studio space and it was really awesome to see animators at work, it really made me motivated to work in such  studio. Overall an awesome experience!!

(our projection mapping workshops taking place in Ankama studios)

Fete De L'anim: Creative diffrences

Well into production we were given feed back that my animation part could use some more effects like stage lights or something to give it more of a performance feel. As we had a person responsible  for all the after effects stuff as it was his only strength, we delegated his task to him. What he did was put a strobe effect on the whole animation part, which essentially made the animation disappear in an epileptic flashing. My take was to put less of the effect and maybe play around with it, like sync  it with the bass or only during the morphing. He did not understand what I wanted so he told me to do it myself. This made me very frustrated because I ended up doing his job for him. Apparently when I left to go home he changed it back to constant strobe which really annoyed me the next day.
I ended up telling him not to do anything did all of the effects myself. In the end everyone was happy with the end result. I am happy with how the animation turned but I was not happy with my teammates preformace which I made really clear to him. The thing I took from this was that every group project will have creative differences, and it is important to get other peoples opinion before any fight breaks out. Also there will always be difficult teammates or slackers its important to stay cool and your best because in the end you have to put your name under the project.

Fete De L'Anim: Re adjusting animatic

Basically after we finished up our animatic we ran in through the people in charge of the mapping project and asked if we could proceed with production. We also had a teammate added to our group so we had to redistribute the workload, and despite the severe communication barrier (the new teammate only spoke Chinese) we managed to eventually agree on our parts and start animating. In the afternoon we were told that our soundtrack has changed which was actually a pretty big curve ball. We had to re adjust the whole animatic. And work from there. We managed to figure out that the intro was the part that was extended, which was the after effects part anyway, so it was not that hard to come up with some extra content to fill the gap. It was quite difficult to to regroup and there seemed to be quite a bit of confusion in the group about the whole animatic situation which set us back for a bit. The day was really long and confusing and I was just ready to go home as soon as possible and just wrap up a 12 hour work day... The thing I took from it was- when it is important to stay calm and collected when running into any problems, no matter how smoothly the projects goes there will always be a problem. I am just really happy it did not set us back as much as it could have and we got back on track the next day.

Fete De L'anim: Storyboarding and animatic

After our brainstorming session we went on to pin down exactly what we want to do, put it together on a storyboard, then an animatic followed by work flow distribution to each individual. The idea chose was Freaks and since we went through each others portfolios we worked around how to play into each others strengths. Since my signature style is squiggly lines, my team mates decided they wanted to incorporate thatharge o, so I was in charge of the character morphing in the end. The initial idea was having circus performers appear normal but turn into freaks in one way or another. Anita and I put together a quick storyboard for our animated parts, as for the first part would be effects on after effects we left that up to Bernard.

The next thing we needed to do was to put this into an animatic. I put together a rough idea on Flash and my teammates liked it and suggested we stuck with it. The next day I went through the animatic again to make some tweaks and refine it out a little. We had a new team mate join us, and since he did not speak of a word of English it was difficult to communicate with him but I guess its all the more reason to have a good animatic so we could just show him instead of telling him. Instead of having to add more work because of the new teammate we decided to re distribute the workload and since everyone would have a small part, we could focus on the quality a lot more. We had a tutor go through the animatic, he asked us to expand some scenes and shorten some of them, also to change a transition so according to that I re-adjusted the animatic. Now it's just the matter of getting on with animating!

Fete de l'anim: Brief and brainstorming

We arrived to Lille on Sunday night, and first thing in the morning we were briefed and immediately thrown into groups and asked to start working on ideas. The theme for the brief is circus and the point is to create projection mapping animation for a display on the Lille Opera house-

 As soon as I met my team mates I was relieved that there seemed to be an immediate chemistry. We managed to bounce off each others ideas and communicate really well. We were given a music library to pick track from and create ideas based off the music. There was quite a variety of tracks but all of us seemed to click to a specific one. We had a couple of hours to come up with concepts. We first got to know each other and what kind of work we do. I seemed to have a similar animation style as one of my team mates, so both of us specialized in 2d animation and the other one specialized in after effects which could be really helpful for the post production part. So far the project started off very positively and it's really exciting to see what we come up with!

SWOT analaysis

In order for me to pursue a career in animation I need to asses my own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to create more effective strategies. SWOT analysis is just a good practice as a professional practitioner to keep your self aware of what you should be confident with and what to avoid.
My strengths-
I would consider my strengths to be 2d animation, especially when it comes to using Animate. I am very good at analysing und understanding movement and therefore frame by frame animation. Another on of m y strengths would be character design- creating believable characters and character concept work. I am good at drawing, its a skill that can always be developed further but I am happy with my ability to draw, stuff usually comes out the way I imagine it to, I also have done loads of research on how to draw human anatomy so that would definitely be something I am confident with. I would consider myself to be a sociable person and I get on with people most of the time. I have a thick skin due to my years of experience in hospitality so I am used to complaints and working with difficult people. I can be a really hard worker and I am always laser focused when Im working.

Weaknesses-
Time management is a thing that I always struggle with. I seem t get everything done on time but usually not to a standard I would like to. This means I don't dedicate time to perfect my work. I am not very easily motivated, and I would consider myself to be very tsk oriented. If I have a specific thing that I need to execute in a specific way I will not struggle at all, but when I have an abstract brief or something that is not specifically outlined I will really struggle. Extended practice is proving to be hard in that sense that It is very broad so I keep limiting myself t what I know and I rarely push myself to do something new unless I am forced to. More often than not I take a long time to pick up new skills and I tend to stay in my comfort zone. I can try to be a team player but often times I am more happier working alone. I can be communicative and collaborative but deep down this gives me load of anxiety and sometimes socialising feels like an extra task.

Opportunities-
In order to further develop my drawing skills I could attend life drawing sessions at uni or the Fenton, this would help me to develop my portfolio as well. Networking events could help me use my social skills as well as getting used to socialising with people from my field of interest. This and any collaborative projects might help me become better team player and become less of an individualist. Being exposed to a collaborative workload would just help me to get used to it and make me less anxious about teamwork. Festivals, Animation related events and any pursuit of inspiration would help me become more motivated towards my work whenever I have a loose brief.

Threats-
This one I really struggle with because it essentially juts speculation about what could go wrong. But I would consider my biggest threat would be my competition especially when applying for jobs. Another big threat would be losing motivation. I really fear that I don't have what it takes and would eventually mess up and give up. But that is more of an internal tissue that I would need to sort out with myself.

Job Hunting Strategies

Lately I have been really fired to find another job because being a waitress is fine while studying in uni but I feel like it is about time live up to my full potential. So I did not really now how to start but https://www.animatedjobs.com was a great start. By the time had to fill an application I realised my showreel as well is portfolio is not that strong, in the way that I could confidently show it to a potential employer. But I decided to try anyway, another thing I decided to try out was LinkedIn and I was really amazed with how easy it was to create a cv with it and then apply to jobs. It keeps giving me notifications about potential jobs or collaborations and its a really good way to stay in the game.

Another thing I have learned from my research is to have a strategy and being selective about where you apply. It might be that you do not agree with the companies values or the job might not be what you expect. Its not just the matter of seeing the key word "animation" and then just rushing to the application page. But it is very handy that my living situation is not a factor, which means I can go where the job takes me. I applied to all sorts of jobs/internships around UK. Come to think of it, it does not even necessarily have to be in UK.By this point my main focus is to develop a strong portfolio so I could be more confident when applying for a job.

Business Cards

Recently I have been looking into any business card ideas. Business cards are very important as well as handy because you can hand them to other people so it makes it a great networking tool. But in addition to that business card can be a way to give off an impression of you as a professional practitioner, and you always want to make a lasting good impression. I found a bunch of clever ideas people have come up with to leave a cool business card, therefore a cool impression.

I thought this one was really clever because the creators initials stand for the symbol of gold  from the periodic table and she designed her business card based on that. Makes this impression that her service is so expensive you couldn't afford it!

Business Cards

Recently I signed up to go to Lille Animation Festival which I am really excited about. I figured it would be a great opportunity to do some networking so I finally made some proper business cards. I made the design very simple because I image a business card is just for the purpose of exchanging contact information, as an artist I should leave the dazzle part up to my portfolio. I figure a small animation-themed picture would sum up what I do so I put up a screenshot of one of my current animations with an onion skin layer on to illustrate the motion part of the drawing. I made the typography metallic so it would pop  out a bit more. Also I imagine the business card can speak of how serious you are about what you do so I kept it professional.
Overall I am extremely excited about the business cards and I cant wait to hand them out in Lille!

Lifting Tower Brief pt4

When our work was finally submitted we got to see our the projections on the lifting tower. It was a really exciting experience, and later on it was displayed in Millennium square in front of the german market. Overall it was really cool to get some exposure as well as experience making commission work for a company and working with Lumen. The event was part of a bigger event which involved a bunch of christmas art installations being placed all around city centre so we got quite a bit of coverage. Also we got really fairly paid in the end so I was really happy took party in this brief, basically it was as a beneficial brief in every way.