Month: May 2023

I’m very happy being based in London and I think that staying here will provide me with the most job prospects as an entry level artist. However, I really enjoy the excitement of moving to new places and would be very open to relocating both within the UK and overseas. I will be moving away from London after graduation to have some time at home and spend a few months travelling, and I think that this will be a really good opportunity to consider my options and look into what the industry is like in different places. I would really love to move to another European city like Amsterdam or Berlin, and am also particularly interested in looking into what the industry has to offer in Scandinavia and Canada. I would consider going to America for a short time especially if I was able to work for one of the big animation studios, however I don’t see myself there for the long term. A good way to narrow down on my options might be to find specific studios and keep an eye on their career pages or send speculative applications. It feels slightly overwhelming to weigh up all of these options and look for jobs all over the world, but I think it’s good to have an open mind and look to move overseas while I can. Although I don’t have a clear path ahead of me I think I have made some good starting points and am well equipped to find my way into the industry, wherever that may be.

I find it difficult to keep on top of my website and social media when I am studying, however now that we are approaching graduation I have started to revisit my online pages. I always update my website over the breaks so currently my work up until Christmas is on there. I spent a lot of time on the design and navigation of my site last summer but it is something that I always struggle to be happy with and constantly want to change.

I want my website to be simple and clear, but I also want it to show some of my character, which is why I chose this design. Looking at it again after another semester at CSM, I feel like it’s time for another complete change, as my landing page doesn’t really reflect what I do anymore. I have done a really wide range of projects so its difficult to make everything look coherent on one page, but I notice that the way I display my work here would make if difficult for somebody to understand my style at first glance. I’m really reluctant to remove my 3D projects from university from my site because I worked so hard on them and they are strong pieces, however they are not at all relevant to what I want to do now. I might find a new layout that doesn’t remove them from the site completely but doesn’t have them on my main page.

As I update my site I really want to tailor it towards puppet and stop motion animation, and in general give it a much more professional look. The portfolio I made for my final project has given me a lot of content to sell myself as a mixed-media animator as well as a model maker and post-production artist. I think the best way for me to sell myself would be to have my landing page go straight to my showreel once I cut it together, that way the viewer would immediately see my strongest work and know exactly what it is that I do. I think it would also be interesting to include some behind the scenes pictures and footage from each film, it’s something I really love to see when I’m looking at other peoples websites.

I have been looking at the websites of successful stop motion artists who would be a relevant reference for my own site. I found it interesting that a lot of the animators I was looking at don’t actually have a webpage but instead use Instagram or Vimeo/YouTube as their portfolio pages. It might be more useful for me to update my social medias so that they are more on-brand as it’s a really good way of getting engagement and putting your work out there.

During production of A Sound Mind, I really enjoyed getting behind the scenes content and posting it to my Instagram stories. I found that I got a lot of engagement from them and people loved to see my process and outcomes. I find that I use stories a lot more than posts but I know that it is important to have my feed up to date so if people go onto my profile they can see my work right away. I definitely have a lot of content that I can post, and now that I am finishing up production I want to focus on sharing my animations and BTS content on my feed.

I also want to start utilising my LinkedIn page a bit more, it is a social media that I find very intimidating but many of our guest lecturers have highlighted how much of an asset it is to job hunters and recruiters alike.

As a huge fan of Caroline Leaf I couldn’t believe we had the chance to speak with her about her films and experiences. Fresh from wrapping my own paint on glass animation, I was really interested to know about Caroline’s techniques and her time spent at the NFB, where many amazing animations have been made. Although I was keen to get her advice I quickly realised how incomparable my current situation is to hers when she was animating, as sophisticated computers and specialist softwares like Dragonframe didn’t exist in her time. I find her work even more impressive now that I consider that she wasn’t able to see or edit her work as she was shooting. I wondered how much she planned out before she painted, as I often don’t have whole sequences mapped out beforehand. It seemed as though she worked mostly straight ahead but always knew where she was going as she approached specific movements or transitions. I have definitely fallen into the habit of relying on editing to improve my animation, and I would be interested to see what happens if I limited myself to total straight-ahead animation. It was also useful to see how she uses the medium and lightpad to create tones and play with lighting, I noticed that she would often change the colour of her characters, inverting the light depending on the situation they were in, which is something I would be hesitant to do. She advised to focus on the movement of what you want the eye to follow – a useful bit of advice for somebody like myself who often gets stuck on small details. I also didn’t know she had done so much animation using scratchings on film, I would really like to try this technique myself one day.

The thing that resonated with me most from Caroline’s talk was her reasoning behind choosing to do sand animation as her first animated film. She said that she didn’t feel she could draw well, and felt too much pressure when using a pen or pencil because of the many standards that are set. She used sand because there couldn’t be an expectation from it, she could create whatever she wanted without pressure of being “good” at it. This made so much sense to me and made me realise that this is exactly how I feel, and although I like the idea of drawing I rarely do it because I find it extremely intimidating. I think that I subconsciously leaned into stop motion animation because every creation is completely unique and there is a much broader spectrum of what “good” can be. This is definitely also why I lean towards painting and model making more than drawing when I’m coming up with concepts and characters. I always thought it was something I needed to work on, that as an artist I should be able to draw well, but hearing this from Caroline helped me to understand that I don’t have to work in mediums I don’t like, and that I can “take advantage of my shortcomings” in her own words.

I was surprised to hear about Caroline’s experience of working alone in the studio for so long. She spoke about how the long hours in dark rooms made her feel as though she was missing out on life, and I could feel that it still affects her years after. This wasn’t something I had ever given much thought to but I’m sure I would feel the same way if I spent most of my time isolated from others. I have spent many hours in a dark room over the past couple of years but I have always had people around and it’s always been a temporary arrangement for a specific project, I’m not sure I would like to do it every day. This semester I found that having a part time job forced me to be in a social environment each week which really helped me take a step back and feel refreshed. I think I should consider this when I’m looking for work in the industry as I enjoy working with others and being part of a team.

This q&a session was exciting and inspirational, the films we watched and the things that were spoken about made me feel really reflective about my own practice and curious to do more experimental films. I hope that Caroline feels all of her hours in the studio paid off with the legacy she has left in animation.

Thank you Caroline!