LAUAN602 - Study Task 1 - Who Am I Now? The trilogy.

Who am I now?

I am a character designer, with other skills including clean up doing lineart and 2D animation. I specialise in character design as this is something I enjoy doing and it is something I am good at doing. When considering my clean up skills, I am quick with line art and I do it to a slandered. My animation skills have improved and feel comfortable to say I am an animator. As I have a specialism in character design, this is the path I plan on following for my future. I am active on twitter, instagram and I do have a linked in account but I am less active on it. I feel I need to be a lot more active on each account this year as It is my final year. Last year In a presentation I stated I would be active on my social media, which I have not upheld. This year I plan to hold myself to that statement.

Skills 

Drawing

Character Design

Clean up

Animation

Online

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

Studio Brief 2 - Creative Report

Here is my report from contacting a professional.

Study Task 3 - Contacting a proffesional.

I sent an email to Kenneth Anderson :Website: asking him if we would be ok with me asking him a few questions about being a character designer, which he responded that he would be happy to help.

My email :

Hello,
My name is Medi-Haf Edwards, and I am a student, studying Animation at Leeds arts University (Leeds college of art).
I was wondering if you would consider answering 5 questions I have regarding being a character designer. I adore doing character design myself, and your answers would be really helpful to me.
Please note that your answers will be put into my blog.
I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you very Much

Medi.

 Kenny's Response :

Hi Medi!

Sure thing, feel free to email them through. Happy to help.

Cheers!

Kenny

I then sent him an email asking the following : 

Hi Kenny,

Thank you so much!

Here are my questions.

How did you get into the industry?

What advice would you give someone who wants to get into character design?

Do you feel that it is better to specialise in one style or to have a variety of styles? 

What is it like working in the character design industry?

Does most of your work come in the form of a brief from clients or do you self-author your briefs?

I really appreciate you taking the time to answer these questions.

Thanks again,

Medi

Around a week went by and I sent Kenny another message to check that he had received my email, which he responded he had been busy and would get back to me as soon as possible. 

This weekend I received a response from Kenny.

Hi Medi,

I hope you are well! I have answered your questions below. I hope they are of help to you!

All the best

Kenny

How did you get into the industry?

I studied animation at art school with the intention of working in animation as some kind of artist. After graduation, I started my career working in games and animation production - in many ways I was in the right place at the right time to get the first jobs I did. The skills I learnt in these jobs became very useful when I later on decided to become a character designer. It was really just a matter of setting up my freelance business and putting the word out there - eventually work started coming in. Of course I had spent a lot of time improving my design skills prior to this point and only took the plunge when I felt I was ready.

What advice would you give someone who wants to get into character design?

It would depend on their current skill level. I think first things first, learn how to draw, especially the human form, but also how to use tone and colour. Fundamental drawing ability is a must! Then focus on taking those skills and learn how to design, how to stylise the human figure, how to caricature and draw from the imagination with personality and emotion. Dedicate a lot of time to this - without good character design skills, the following will be irrelevant!

Once comfortable with character design, it is good to get some experience in some form of animation production or something similar. This could be work experience, an internship or a junior level job. Maybe even some freelance work. The important thing is to start learning how to take direction from someone else and to draw to a brief and start figuring out how to design within certain limitations and a certain context. For example, a character design for a high end console game might be very different to one for a pre school childrens show!

I think flexibility is a good thing to have - by that I mean being able to work between different industries. Characters are everywhere, from advertising, to animation to illustration. To survive solely as a character designer it makes sense to take advantage of all those markets.

Most of all, don't give up. Some really talented people will walk into character designing for the big studios with little effort. However, if you are like me, it will take years to get any good at designing - stick at it and play the long game if its what you are really passionate about. 

Do you feel that it is better to specialise in one style or to have a variety of styles?

I think a bit of both. It's good to have a style that a client can come to you and say, we love your style! Will you design something for us? But its also good to have a degree of flexibility, as a good designer will have to adapt to a particular brief. It also makes good business sense - a degree of flexibility will open more doors for client work.

What is it like working in the character design industry?

It's a job at the end of the day! There are good days and bad, boring jobs and fun jobs. And of course all the stuff that comes with running a business - taxes, expenses, marketing, dealing with clients etc. I wouldn't say there is a specific character design industry, more like various creative industries which rely heavily on character design such as animation, games etc. Sometimes a job will be so much fun that the characters draw themselves - others it might take so long to nail a design that it becomes a chore. But the key thing is, it allows us to draw almost every day, which is pretty cool.

If you are freelance, like I am most of the time, it can be good and bad working from home. Its great having the flexibility of when and where I work, when I take days off etc. But it can get a bit lonely at times, working alone all the time. And of course, irregular pay, no company benefits etc. It is a tough life at times! But when you see your characters come to life in a kids tv show, or on the front of a magazine - it's all kinda worth it.

Does most of your work come in the form of a brief from clients or do you self-author your briefs?

All my work is client work so I am always working to other peoples briefs. The only time I'm not is when I am working on personal projects but I don't really consider them work. Maybe one day though I will be the position where I can work to my own brief, create something and then sell it to make a living, whether its a graphic novel, a TV show idea or a series of illustrations. That is probably the ultimate career goal for a character designer, to sell something of their own, bring their own creations to life and to the world.

Study Task 10 - It's Showreel Time

Here is my showreel , I really enjoyed  creating this. I've used personal, first and second year work in this, and even animated the title to make it look a little more professional.

How I've developed.

I feel during the course of this year my art has improved a lot, I've worked as a line artist for a series of animations now, and am pleased to say that my line art has definitely improved.

This was my first animation from first year.

And here is an animation I did the line art for during this year. 

Personally I feel I have definitely improved the smoothness of my lines, keeping them all intact unlike my first animation. Which I feel it was loose and poorly done, it had a lot of wobbles in which I feel I have bettered a lot in the course of the last two years.

Study Task 9 - Life's a Pitch Page

The Life's a pitch...pitch.


For this project we had to pitch our idea for a company to the class (clients). My role for this brief was to be the agent/social media person. 


I created a website, so that are company had a home for people to be able to visit us and join.

1. 2.

3.  4.

I started by making some colour palettes for the website, and sent them to the group in order to see which they liked the most,  which everyone seamed to agree that the first set of colours would be the best.

I made the basis of the home page, an advertisement page and a page of example animators people may want to hire.

Our company is a place for small animators to be hired, whether that be straight out of collage or somebody just looking for work. Its also a place for companies to hire people quickly and easily. 

 To boost our company's online presence, we’ll keep an active feed on our Facebook, twitter and Instagram pages. Each page will have its own unique style in how we promote our selves.

Our instagram will be more of a showcase for artwork our employees and staff create. Our twitter will be more focused on giving up dates on what we’ve been working on, and a way for companies that we may have made partnerships with. And our facebook page will be a way for people to get in contact if they need to, and a way for us to show contests and promotional deals we may have.

After Effects

I have done a little research into after effects, as its something I've been wanting to learn a little more about anyway, and though now would be a good time to actually look into it. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/animating-puppet-tools.html

I looked into how to layer things so that you can move one part of an object and keep another still and layered over the other. 

Texturing

With this new brief I've had do a little bit of texturing which isn't something I've done before. But I really enjoyed it surprisingly.

I had downloaded a few new brush packs onto my computer and did a little playing around with different brushes and the textures they made. I really enjoyed working with the watercolour brushes the most as they really gave the paper-y sort of looks I was going for.

Study Task 9 - Life's a Pitch Page

This week we decided to discuss what our Life's a pitch project would be about. We began by having a meeting with Mike and told him our ideas for the idea so far.

As Andy, Bach and I are all heavily character design based we decided our company should be heavily pre-production based.

Here is a document that Bach and I created on how we plan to make our company.

Name of group: Product Owl

Random word generator

What is our unique selling proposition?

What are we?

• Collective?
• 
  

Do we want to be working in a group with people that work the same, or do we each have  a unique selling point.

Software that we would use. - and why?

Costs - how will we be paid, what goes on rent?

Do we want to work in a studio or do we want to work virtually?

We need to talk amongst each other about specialist abilities.

We share character Design with each other.

Short term employees, specific styles etc…

So if a character designer is better at one style they may be chosen.

Easier to approach -

We take less time.

More down to earth generally

Welcoming - like a third party website almost.

We give the push need for you to get out there.

Helpful company.

If there was a single person it saves you having to negotiate. We sort out prices for you, making it easier. We can make communication between the artist and the client, we are a third party, here to make it easier.

We help narrow the search down for both parties as we find we both are looking for. Saves them trouble of signing contracts. We help with making it easier.

Companies pay us to pay them.

Delivaroo for people.

Pick and choose whos best for you.

Concept art for the website

- character design

- illustration

- other stuff.

Pre production company.

We can further develop stuff, we can create designs or further develop existing ones. if  companies want to change a character - revamping it maybe - we could do that. We could do turnarounds etc… colour’s pre production crap.  Variations generally.

I like it.

Simple but very effective.

Concepts.

• Website
• Logo
• Buy ready made studio space
• Character designs.

http://freshcutcreative.co.uk/

http://www.arbuckle-industries.com/pre-production-services

https://realm-pictures.co.uk/

Slogans :

A simpler way to meet professionals.

Places for people to display art. Streamline interface - easy access. Instead of having to look at profile after profile, you can narrow it down to groups. Most pay will go back to artist, but we would take a small service fee.

We provide a studio space for you to work with the software and such. As a collective we go out and look for opportunities for people.

If we grow as a company we’d like to make partnerships with companies, insuring that we will always be able to help.

Study Task 3 - Contacting a Professional

I contacted my professional around a week ago now, and still haven't had a response. And it occurred to me, as the professional i contacted worked at Disney for a while, i wasn't sure if I would be aloud to use her answers regardless.

There for I've contacted another artist over instagram and am awaiting her response.

https://www.instagram.com/snarkies/?hl=en

.

Study Task 8- Commissions/freelance Page

Commissions : 


I've been researching into commissions and doing freelance work, as I would really like to be able to sell my work, but was unsure how to go about pricing my artwork. 

During the lecture, our tutor explained a lot about how selling art works, and how contracts are formed, for example I was unaware that an email could be seen as a binding contract.

When agreeing on a deal it is important to consider costs, travel expenses, if any martials are needed and there costs. The terms are really important, it is also important to clearly state a cut off time, giving them a deadline to agree on the contract. It is also important to state the time frame it will take for you to create what ever you have been asked to make, as you want to be clear on when they will receive there artwork, and to include times for you to show your progress so that the client can review if these match up to their expectations.

Important things that you must discuses with the client before agreeing on anything.  

1. Budget
2.  Can and when is it ok for you to use the work in a show reel. 
3. How is in charge of your work, so that if you have questions you are aware of who to contact.

Making an Invoice. 

It is important to correctly make an invoice, as this is your proof of payment. 

Invoice : 


Business Name 

Contact information 

Recipient's contact information

invoice number

Terms of Payment

Itemize the services - A columned box of what is needed.

A total 

Pricing  : 

Day Rates

£52.50 per day

£262.50 week

£13,650 year

Working Freelance : 

£180-200 per day