Argument

A fairly amusing animated short directed by Alexander Ilyash, the brief summary in the guide book provided already clearly explains the message behind this one. There is a tendency for arguments to form out of nothing between people, soon enough, even if they eventually forget the cause, the conflict continues to build between them, and in time causing another row to commence, leading to a situation that may unfortunately never end...

The word "me" was the only word shown at the bottom of the screen now and then when ether of them yelled out a single word, obviously signifying the stubbornness between the two characters as they continue to violently fling words at one another, refusing to listen to the other and determined to win (Even though we as the audience know that it will never happen)  the argument somehow.

The dove that constantly flies back and forth is of course meant to symbolise peace, which unfortunately, instead of getting the characters to understand, further confused and annoyed them as they tried shooting it down several times with the letters that escaped their mouths. Once the two characters unfortunately find themselves stuck in a deeper pit (Caused by their literal pile of angry words), two doves are then seen flying far above them, perhaps still trying to remind them in the distance to cease and desist in their arguments before they dig themselves a deeper pit...

Personally, I did not find anything particularly outstanding about the animation style used here (Simply because it is not to my tastes, not that there was anything bad about it), but I suppose it worked for the message it was aiming to put across for the audience (Namely conflict being meaningless and the stubbornness of humans and their refusal to back down and just move on) , the art style used did remind me of the style used in some of the newspaper comic strips, such as "The Sad Sack", "B.C" and "Non Sequitur".

Mute

Well, what a way to start off our first day at this year's Bradford Animation Festival (Though I had already readied myself for anything after watching last year's Student and Professional shorts...). Directed by Job, Joris and Marieke, "Mute" is a humorously gory piece of 3D animation about an unexpectedly joyful chain reaction that occurs among a population of originally mouthless people when they figure out a way to obtain mouths.

Unexpectedly cheeky and clever, one can simply cover their eyes and sigh in dismay, and perhaps cry a little from it all, or simply give into the fast paced, silly piece of animation and just try to enjoy it to the best of their abilities.

Despite how cringe worthy the various methods used to obtain their new mouths are, we all can't help but burst into fits at laughter at how over the top everything is in this animation short, it does help that these characters don't seem to be experiencing much pain when gouging/slicing an opening for their new mouths, or perhaps they are just that happy to finally break free from years of silence (And I suppose I can't blame them). 

I suppose it also helps that these characters look incredibly toy-like in appearance, with a light wooden texture actually given to them... no, we all still can't help but laugh and cringe at the same time when watching that ketchup coloured blood smear their new mouths as their sharp instrument of choice is pulled back...

Utilising Social Media

This week's session was focusing on Social Medias.

It is pretty obvious how incredibly important networking is, especially for those that wish to work in the design industry (Regardless of what area), while we perhaps take it for granted, it has given us the opportunity to expose ourselves, to share our works with others, to reach out to professionals in the industry, and so much more. 

Back before social media became what it is today, one would have to strategically figure out ways to get themselves exposed, it couldn't be shared worldwide and you really did have to carefully plan out how you wanted to get noticed. Still, it is not to say that things are perfect now with social medias around, despite all of the free perks they provide us with...

It sounds like a pain to create professional accounts and separate them from your personal ones (Especially when it comes to your art blogs), but I can understand why there is a need to do so. Whether you choose to be a freelancer or decide to open up a little company of your own one day, it is always good to have a professional face to those that you might one day have to work with. 

There are quite a few exceptions where incredibly sought after artists are able to simply mix both personal and professional works together in one blog, but we all obviously can't be as lucky as them. Either way, it is always good to find ways to solidify your professional presence, with portfolio sites being a good starting point.

How professional does one have to be on Twitter however? I have seen practitioners that remain quite formal, sticking to one area when it comes to their tweets and retweets (Such as work progress, upcoming projects, sharing the works of others, etc.), and I have seen others that are a little more relaxed in the content they write and retweet... mixing in what was mentioned earlier with more casual posts (Eg, "On the way home, just ran into a bush."). Does this depend on how high your status is in the industry? Or does it just depend on the individual themselves and the types of followers they attract?

Consistency should be taken into account when one commences on creating a number of professional accounts for themselves (That should later on be relinked and connected to one another for easier access for both the creator and the visitors themselves, making all these social medias work with one another) between it all, like a logo and or your username.

RSS is known as Rich Site Summary and is often called Real Simple Syndication, it uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information such as blog entries, news, headlines, audios, videos, etc. An RSS document (Known as "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarised text, and metadata, like the publishing date and the author's name.

Anything new will get updated into your RSS feed, it is an efficient way to help you pull together a daily mailing list, instead of you have to go through the trouble of checking each site one by one (Which could be a problem for those that don't have time to sit down and look through everything for hours).

Vine is a short form video sharing service, the service allows users to record and edit five to six second long looping video clips, and revine. A revine is where users can share other people's posts with followers. Some vines are revined automatically based on what is popular. The videos can then be published through Vine's social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And so while this service has been used mainly for entertainment purposes, one could make use of its popularity system in someway and create a preview of sorts for their works (As I believe I heard one of my classmates say).

Twitter's feature for creating custom lists is quite underutilised. These lists helps you organise your Twitter feed so that you can see tweets coming from people with specific interests and expertise that you might for any reason categorise into a group. As you begin to follow more people, this really helps to pull all of your design interests together, organising the noise .

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service that is mainly used for professional networking. It helps you organise your resume, CV letter and helps create a formal portfolio for you. LinkedIn supports the formation of interest groups, which will definitely prove to be helpful, the majority of the largest groups are employment related, with a very wide range of topics covering professional and career issues. Either way, by following professional groups that link to your interest, you will soon enough be able to create a helpful feed that you can refer to for various new and events.

And so with all of these available, why would it still benefit us if we still wanted to add in a personal portfolio site to that mix? It shows more investment and professionalism. While I have Wix account, I can see that it is not a very effective portfolio site unless I choose to pay for the features available. And so over the next few months, I will probably have to look into other sites like Carbonmade.

The trouble is that I feel that there are so many social medias that seem beneficial to me, but should I really follow them all? Or be more selective? Surely I can't efficiently keep up with all of them? Looks like there are a lot more things to add to my to-do list, I just hope I will remember to write it down...

Area of Improvement

Over the rest of the year (And of course during the year after), there are quite a few things that I wish to improve on to make myself a more competent candidate for the industry.

In terms of 2D animation, I hope to continue improving in my drawing skills (For both traditional and digital), aside from the usual need to improve on my technical skills (Particularly anatomy), I also wish to improve in the fluidity (To someday be half as good as James Baxter or Satoshi Kon) of my hand drawn animations. To achieve that, I will simply have to keep practicing as well as produce something new each day, be it for school, work, or simply for my own enjoyment. And as usual, there is the constant need to improve in other areas such as colour theory, lights and shadows, perspective, etc. 

The narrative aspect of my works remains of utmost importance to me (Especially as I wish to have several storybooks and comic books made for submission to various publishers in the future), while I have done several sequential works in the past, I believe I still have a long way to go when it comes to my storytelling skills. Aside from the pacing and style of my writing, there is once again the drawing aspect such as layouts, styles and colour palettes. And there is of course the conceptual aspect, such as character and setting designs. I will continue appreciating and studying the works of others as well as read through tutorials to better myself in that area.

While 2D animation will remain my first love, I would also like to improve on my 3D animation skills as well as expand on my knowledge from it (Seeing that it is still so highly valued by the industry in this day and age, I believe my reasons for wanting to improve on these two types of animations contrast highly to one another, but there is also the opportunity to combine them both someday to create something magnificent) despite the struggles I have faced since we began learning about Maya a few weeks back, I do hope to further improve my 3D modelling and animation skills as I go along nonetheless, learning about other 3D softwares such as AutoCAD, Blender and ZBrush would be most beneficial to me as well. I do hope to someday create some of my own indie game concepts to add to my portfolio.

And finally, while I have been incredibly fortunate to be watched/followed in return by people who I highly respect through several social medias (Eg, Tumblr and Twitter), networking and connecting with others in the industry continues to be a struggle for me, and while I might have improved a little in the previous year, I hope to continue improving in that area as I go along (Especially when I see most of my favourite illustrators and animators being so active on there).

SWOT

Our first study task for PPP2 is to do a write up on what area of practice we wish to particularly focus and improve on. But before that, we were made to fill up a SWOT analysis to get the gears turning:

Strengths:

• Decent Research Skills
• Dedication to seeing Projects through no matter what
• Hold a large variety of interests (Which helps a lot for brainstorming)
• Eagerness to develop new technical skills for new projects
• Follows an orderly step by step process for nearly all projects

Weaknesses:

• Networking and Social Skills
• Time Management (Could be better)
• Pretty low self esteem
• Over stresses self easily(Have yet to miss a deadline, but it's still not good for health)
• Adding to that, pretty unhealthy
• A bit of a perfectionist

Opportunities:

• Was given the opportunity to submit own works to the Liquid City series during final year project when study in previous art school
• Animation industry still needs more people
• Create several portfolio sites and continue in expanding collection of works
• Submit narrative works to publishers here in attempt to get better known
• Continue connecting with other through Twitter
• Just keep producing work

Threats:

• Competing with others in the industry
• Art theft
• Not being able to handle workload
• Time
• Health

Idea/Project Toolkit Notes

• 7 Steps to making a Better Mindmap: 

1. Start in the centre of the page
2. Use an image or picture for central idea
3. Use colours throughout
4. Connect your main branches
5. Make the connecting branches curved (For some reason it's easier to remember than when straight lines art used) 
6. One keyword per line
7. Use images throughout

• Mindmaps can actually be a fun work of art
• Brainstorming: Think of as many ideas as possible, encourage eccentric lines of thought, resist evaluating ideas until later, look for associations between ideas, make random associations (Random Words, think of their connotations instead of simply thinking of them literally) (Oblique strategies or twitter helps out with creative blocks)
• SCAMPER: Substitute. Combine. Adapt. Modify. Put to another use. Eliminate. Reverse.
• Substitute: Can you use different equipment/medium/materials/processes, swap a character in the story, a different location?
• Combine: Could two characters function as one (Be made into one), Time Management (Can several 'assets' be done one), combine skills of other people and strong pieces of concept art into one design
• Adapt (Good for Responsive Module): Could you use your idea for a Game or Animation in a non-broadcast context (Eg, Museum Display), Change role of character or situation, Reuse/Recycle materials/Old armatures/Props (Seeing that animation is a timely concept especially, keep a library of old works that can be reused for future works)
• Modify: What other contexts can be used (Settings/Themes), what could be emphasised, what can be added to make it better, more fun?
• Put in another work: Other Audiences, Research can be used for other projects later on, Save an asset for another project, share assets with other, retarget animated rigs for 3 models
• Eliminate: Can you improve the idea and make it faster and lighter
• Reverse: Swap roles (Such as the main role of Alien), look at a story back to front, doing a process in a different sequence, bad guy is a good guy - seeing from a different perspective
• SWOT: Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats

1. Strengths: What are you good at? Unique selling points, experience/knowledge, resources, innovation, location/geography
2. Weaknesses: Gaps in knowledge (Do I know this subject well enough?), things that can effect a persons ability on a project, timescales, reputation, commitment, planning
3. Opportunities: What do I get out of this? Networking/Partnerships, Building an audience, learning new skills, research, understanding markets, new developments, influencer
4. Threats: What do I need to keep an eye on? Time management, competition, changing technologies, distractions, audience's expectations, legislation/politics, environment effects

• It is suggested that you choose a brief that challenges you, one that pushes you to improve on your weaknesses, rather than simply taking the easier way out
• Popular briefs might be a threat, especially when you go up against a large amount of competitors
• Can strengths and opportunities match?
• Convert weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities
• The SWOT Toolkit is especially beneficial for freelancers, considering all the different briefs one will uptake from different clients

PPP2 Introduction

While we will still be writing about various practitioners, events and works of interest to us like last year, this year we will most definitely be getting more involved as well as focus on developing our area of interest (Eg, 2D animation, 3D animation, storyboarding, character design, etc.). We will also commence planning in advance for Level 6's PPP3 (Which will mainly be self directed studies).

Contents to Consider 

Events
Practitioners
Studios
Works
External Competitions and Commissions
Personal Jobs
Marketing
Practical and Technical Skills
Networking
Self-Employment or Freelancing
Audience Identification
Confidence when Presenting
Trends
Future Plans
Where to Apply your Work

Events to Consider Attending
Aesthetica Festival (York)
Though Bubble (Leeds)
Bradford Animation Festival (Leeds)
Animex (Teeside)
Sheffield Doc Fest, Documentary Animation
Technology Festival (Manchester)
College's Creative Tuesdays and Creative Networks

Deliverables

1. Portfolio of Blog Posts (20-30)
2. Learning Journey Presentation
3. Self Promotion - Marketing Material - Showreel (2 Minutes), Portfolio and Name Cards