Position Statement: Looking Towards the Future.

This year had a lot of ups and downs, but I honestly wouldn't have changed anything. My college experience has given me the tools I need to excel in the animation industry. Although finishing this, I need to start figuring out what I'm going to do now. Short term wise, I would like to finish my 3D animation as a full 360 degree video. I want to polish how it looks so it will be good enough to put into my show reel, and show it for exhibition week. Along with this, I plan on finishing the commission I had planned with my Swedish streamer friend. I finally have enough time on my hands to finish what i promised him. After the end of year show, I plan to take a trip around Europe and enjoy what I can of this country before I leave for at least 3 years. In the mean time I want to apply as an English teacher on the JET program, which will set me up in Japan. I'm going to keep working on my portfolio and art skills, and hopefully a few years from now my skills will be good enough to get into a masters program at the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. After that, I intend to push myself more onto the European Animation Scene, or maybe work internationally. I'm not sure yet, life is full of possibilities and I want to be able to live life to the fullest of my ability.

My Year In Retrospect - Year 3

Presentation Boards

Personal Portfolio

Bianca Ansems

Bianca Ansems was a really interesting speaker that came into our school today. Born in Amsterdam, her path to where she is today is certainly an interesting story. What i find most interesting, however, is that when she started out she couldn't decide between what style she wanted to use. I empathize with that a lot, as i never really got a hold of a creative style when i was younger as well. In her words, as a freelancer she likes to adjust her style to suit her and her employers needs. She believes that working with so many styles helps to create a cumulative effect on her skills as an artist. She has experience experimenting with stop motion as a form of animation, but her main source of employment is working at the London based Cartoon Network Studio as a storyboard artist for The Amazing World Of Gumball.
Back in 2013, Cartoon Network decided to pump money into Europe's animation industry by setting up an overseas studio. This is initially where TAWOG was picked up. The format for the show was a sitcom, which differed from most of the other shows running on CN at that time. It had a mixed media approach to the animation, which posed a lot of unique and interesting challenges that the animators had to overcome. She came on board on one of the later seasons.
Bianca gave us some tips on how to improve our storyboard art. She told us to make sure that comedic timing translates across the storyboard. She told us that its good to create some scratch voice recordings for matching with the animatic. She also gave us insight into what goes on in between some of the phases of their production cycle.
She told us about layout, which is a transition between pre-production and production. It sets everything up with 3D beforehand so that people will know how to animate what when they need to.

She also told us about some of the things that go into working as a freelance animator. She told us to trust that work will come to you, but not to get complacent. Networking isn't building a network of colleagues, but a trust network of friends that you can work with. She told us to do good, consistent work, and to meet deadlines, and give more than what is initially asked for. 

She said that we will have to deal with bullshit briefs, and we need to be able to work under those conditions. She recommended that you help guide your client to make smart decisions, but know what battles to pick and when. She said that as a freelancer, you are a company. 

As a boss, you get projects, negotiate with clients, watch, organize, and interact. Make sure everything is in writing. and that your clients know you know how much your art is worth. Make sure you write invoices, and that if they don't pay within 30 days, make sure to follow up or charge interest. 

As an employee, you are the creator, you need good skills, and you need to stay on schedule. You also need to take care of yourself, and know when you're overdoing it. Only ever work with bad clients once. Sometimes you work with day rates and sometimes you work with a budget, but when you work with a budget, make sure your standards are set for the project and you know when to jump ship if need be. 

As a freelancer, you need to get an accountant. It gives an air of profession and it give you more time to focus on work. 

You should register as self employed as soon as possible.

You also need to make sure that when you work as a freelancer, all the members involved in the commission has knowledge of what you're doing. The five big things you need to survive as a freelancer is: a steady source of income, satisfaction in what you do, a good portfolio of work, trustworthy contacts, and proper experience. 

Respect your client, and respect yourself.

Goldenwolf Studios Presentation

Today I was in a lecture hosted by two of the leaders of GoldenWolf Studios. They're an small animation studio based in London, England. They started getting work straight out of university almost, and they've gotten relatively larger since then. They mostly do Contract work and Commercial Work as a source of income. Their studio is relatively relaxed, as one of the aims for the studio is that its workers don't have an ego, and that a team mentality prevails. They strive for the best quality animation they can, not leaving any room for "just adequate" work. They regularly take group trips in order for their animators to have a healthy relationship with each other. They want their employees to be in the mindset that work is play, and play is work, because if you don't love what you're doing as an animator, you probably shouldn't be in the business. A few years ago, Disney XD hired them out to create some idents for their bumpers. They created 20 different show themed idents, all using similar colour schemes and palettes. A method they regularly employ is using 3D as a base for 2D animation. They explained to us that sometimes you will be given very strange briefs as an artist, and that you should roll with the punches and try to make the most out of what they're giving you. Most of their clientele are American, so they got the chance to work with WaWa, an east coast sub restaurant. They made an advertisement for them in the style of Heinz Edelmann, who then proceeded to sue WaWa on copyright infringement grounds.

After they explained the history of their company and clients, they gave us some advice for the application process, as well as how we should conduct ourselves when in the interview process. They told us to apply for everything, dont undersell yourself, but don't oversell yourself either. They told us that we need to help each other out when starting out, and not to burn bridges, as its not a smart thing to do in the long run. They said we need to network as much as possible.

For our show reel, they gave us a list of tips to adhere to regarding the quality of it. "does it look pretty? Is there competence in what youre showing? Can your employer use it with what they want to do?"

They recommended we get an online portfolio, and to e-mail prospective employers and make sure to follow up with them. They said not to turn up to a studio interview without e-mailing first. They said to ask for advice in regards to what you need, and that we are our own brand, and we need to own that. 

Fete D'Anim - Day 4

Today was a really good day. We managed to bump out all the kinks in the animation and got it turned in on time. Tomorrow I'll be taking a day just to decompress from all the stress I had putting this thing together. I couldn't have finished this project without the help of my partners, and all the work they put in as well. We went out drinking after the viewing, and celebrated a successful project. It was really cool seeing my name up on an opera house in full view of over 100 people, and this is an experience I wont soon forget.

Fete D'Anim - Day 3

Today was probably the hardest day of all. I took over a huge portion of the cleanup on the final output AE file. I also had to finish the snake tail animation, and make a water animation for the background. Not only that, I had to create the intro to the animation, where a caravan rolls in and opens up. They gave us a new soundtrack to work with, added in a flute for the snake charmer to fit in better. I managed to finish it all, but theres still some work we need to do for turnin tomorrow, so Eloi is taking the project home and working on it all night. Most of it's cleanup, so it shouldnt be too hard. We're taking an almost finished export and using it to test out the animation on the building beforehand, so we have notes to work with. Hopefully by this time tomorrow we'll have this thing up on a building in Lille.

Fete D'Anim - Day 2

Today was probably just as Work intensive as yesterday. We had to clean up our animatic, and start working on the animation immediately. Only two people knew how to use After Effects, Me and a guy named Eloi. He knew the most english out of the group so I basically had to relay everything through him. We had the other 3 people working on asset design, that we would put into After Effects and animate with the Puppet tool. I made some animated snake tails for the Nagas, that I think turned out quite well. Here's a screencap from the finalized animatic, and the pattern I made for the snake tail.

Fete D'Anim - Day 1

I was pretty unprepared for this trip. I didn't know what I was going to be doing for the first half of the week, but It certainly was a learning experience. I woke up today at 8am and went to Ankama Studios, the french animation studio responsible for Dofus and Wakfu. When I got there we were put into groups and given a list of songs. I was grouped with 3 French speakers and one person who didnt show up that day. We had to pick 3 songs and come up with 3 concepts by lunchtime. The three songs my group selected was "Hindu" "Taiko Drums" and an ambient track I don't remember the name of. for the unnamed track we decided on a Trapeze artist in space, for taiko we decided on a drumming routine by traditional japanese taiko drummers, and for hindu we came up with a snake dance with Nagas. They decided to select our Hindu Idea, and we were assigned to come up with an animatic by the end of the day. This entire day was super work intensive, ive never worked through a project this fast before.

Lucifer Agenda Commission Work Pt.3

Today I rendered out the entire animation and stuck it on a drive for him to download. I like the low res look of it so its probably going to go on my show reel for this year as well. After I finish all my modules I'm going to return to this project and finish out all 3 animations for him so he can have a proper stream setup. I'm giving him a low price as well, since I don't want to charge too much to one of my friends.
Here's what the first video looks like.

Lucifer Agenda Commission Work Pt.2

I pitched an idea to him for the first animation. It's a BRB screen with a skull and a torch lighting the area. I'm going with a low res Diablo 1 look for these looping animations, so essentially a mid 90s dungeon crawler esque style. I figure it goes with his name
I comped up a general idea of what i'm going for and i sent it to him to get him hyped.

Lucifer Agenda Commission Work Pt.1

Today I've been commissioned by one of my friends online. He's a video game streamer, and he wants some bumper animations for his streams. I told him I would send over one of the three animations he's asked for, but as of right now I don't have enough time on my hands to fulfill a commission request, as i'm currently working on a school project. I'm making at least one to be able to keep him interested, long enough that i can finish my animation and other modules before i start on the rest.

Dipfest 2017

Another Year has gone by, and I've been commissioned again to create the poster for Dipfest 2017. It's a yearly superbowl party my brother puts on and It has become a small tradition of ours to do this every year. Coming up with ideas each year gets more and more difficult, as most of the images we use are chip/dip based puns. However i think i pulled it off again this year, as my brother seems to enjoy how it looks.

Japan Trip Pt.4

Today was the final day of the Japan Trip. First we took a train to Mitaka, a quiet suburb in Tokyo, to go to the Studio Ghibli Museum. We got to see a short film that is only shown at the museum, which was really cool. I figured today I would try and see if I could get a dynamic looking shot with the lighting, since it was really sunny out so I had direct natural lighting all day. After the museum trip we went over to Harajuku, where we went to a temple in a park and then into the fashion district. It was really fun to see all the clothing there, I even bought myself a hat. I'll probably remember this trip for my entire life, and i do plan to go back sometime within the next few years.

I have all the pictures i took in full resolution here 

http://imgur.com/a/xAVax