Category: Events

Week 17 (19th Jan.)

Monday Jan. 19th – Today we had our first set of meetings for Brick Lane/Purr Point with me as a producer. In the morning it was just the production team discussing what we wanted to get from the other two meetings, and figuring out what we would need from the other teams. In the second meeting we met with Joshua and Owen for game dev. They walked us through the Game Design Document and we made small tweaks and solidified all the aspects of the game that were still unclear. I had wanted to get a breakdown of all the steps they needed to take so Leila and I could make a Gantt style timeline, but we ran over time on the meeting so I had to email them for that later. Leila and I organized a meeting for ourselves on Wednesday to go through what they send us. Finally we had a meeting with the Art team. We got Kofi to take on the role of lead character designer, and then we went through everyone’s work so far. This meeting also overran due to the bulk of the staff being on the art team. Leila and I have a lot to do to get the schedule together by Friday, but I think once we sit down and get all our materials sorted out, we’ll be able to come at the rest of the project swinging.

After all the meetings I had a list of emails to fire off as well as booking my own DPS tutorial, but I got through that admin quite swiftly.

Finally, in the evening, we had a DPS assessment briefing, this honestly was just a session of Hamish talking at us about reflective writing, but I’ve never really had any issues with that, and I am a very strong writer so I admittedly did not get too invested in the session. We are still a ways out from when I feel I would start writing this report so while I did tke a look through the brief, I’m not compelled to do much work on it yet.

Tuesday Jan. 20th – I forgot to mention that toward the end of the vacation, I got an email telling me to come to a recording at LCC for that film part ‘Male Radio Voice’. I had no idea I had gotten the part, but today was the day we went in to record. It was quite a fun experience and the filmmakers and my scene partner were all very fun. I was a bit nervous because I had to do improv in an accent but ultimately it came out well and I’m excited to see the final product.

After the recording, I worked on Sawtooth, and rejigging our presentation for Creative Conscience. I added new slides describing our manifesto and did a check for who would actually be working on this as a SIPs project versus just working in the studio. By the end of the week I want to fix up the discord so we can move our contact point over there as it is a lot more accessible than Teams.

Wednesday Jan. 21st – I spent most of Wednesday organizing materials for the Brick Lane game. Leila and I had a call to discuss the schedule, but Maliha ended up joining and letting us know that there would be a big break due to a new Live Brief. We adjusted some of our timeline for that and then discussed what we wanted from each of our teams before we take that break.

Thursday Jan. 22nd – We had a meeting with Maliha for Brick Lane. Leila couldn’t attend but Maliha and I worked on coming up with an agenda for our team meeting. She suggested Leila and I took over the responsibility of chairing the meeting which I agreed to since I really want to gain hands-on production experience from this. I was always a very anxious child and had lots of trouble speaking to people, but since coming to uni I’ve gotten so much better, and as it turns out, I really enjoy taking on leadership roles.

Friday Jan. 23rd – We had out big team meeting for Purr Point/Brick Lane. I was a little nervous about running the meeting, but ultimately I felt it went well. We covered every item we needed to and I feel like everyone walked out much clearer on what they needed to do by the 6th of February. Joshua, showed off the prototype to everyone and we clarified what we needed from the dev team too, as they had not yet provided us with a task breakdown. Then the art team showed off thier progress on the murals which have been coming along nicely. Fianlly, Maliha gave us a quick rundown of what the upcoming DPS briefs would be and it look like the rest of this year is going to continue to be ultra busy. After the meeting Maliha gave us some advice, to keep things running efficiently and smoothly, but I feel like the meeting went well. We finished on-time and had a pretty decent turnout. Leila and I then spent some time drafing an email, summarizing the meeting and reitorating everyone’s tasks. I’ve provided a screenshot below.

Saturday/Sunday Jan. 24th/25th – I was working at MegaCon. I did wristbanding in the mornings and in the afternoon I was assisting at meet and greets for a few Minecraft youtubers. Later I got to explore the con and we attended the cosplay masquerade and well as a deep dive into artist alley. ComicCon always inspires me so much we all the art and costumes I see and I feel quite rejubinated after taking the weekend to do something fun. Exhausting, but fun.

Week 2 (6th Oct)

Monday/Tuesday Oct. 6th/7th – On Monday and Tuesday I had work so I didn’t do any DPS activities. I had emailed Maliha earlier to see if my part-time job shifts counted towards DPS, because it is withing the comic publishing and retail industry, but alas it seems only events we do would count.

Wednesday Oct. 8th – I attended the third After Effects session with Francesco De Manincor. I have 3 years of experience in After Effects so I found the session to be quite basic, we didn’t cover anything I didn’t already know. He was very meticulous and explained every step of the process thoroughly, which ius something I really appreciate when I am learning new things, but for me, in this particular subject, it meant it dragged on a LOT. However, in the second hour we explored the puppet effect which I haven’t used a lot. When animating/rigging characters, I still prefer ToonBoom Harmony, but I think using puppets in AE for more experimental stuff could be very funky.

Thursday/Friday Oct. 9th/10th – I went to InMotion at the Barbican and spoke to so many people and gained a lot of contacts. Unfortunately there was quite a big divide at the event which made it hard to effectively networf for jobs. I spoke to many people but everyone was either a seasoned professional from studios that were not looking to train anyone entry level, or other students/freelancers looking for work. My biggest take away was that there are no studios with the resources to train anyone new currently.

On the Friday I attended the Golden Wolf talk. The first thing I noted was that all three speakers were white men in their late 30s. I had a surface level familiarity with the company, but I mostly admired Golden Wolf for their very modern, mixed media and graphic design. Unfortunately the talk left me quite disillusioned witht the company itself, especially on an ethical level from an artists perspective. Firstly their Doodles enterprise was apparently an NFT project at first which I didn’t know. It was not clear if they still work in crypto-based areas, which is a huge issue for my personal values due to the lack of transparency and accountability of the blockchain and the environmental ramifications of many cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the speakers made quite a few jokes making light of serious issues, for example a collaboration they did with McDonalds producing custom cups, which they joked about filling up the ocean. It was in very poor taste. I generally have issues with animation in advertizing as it goes against my personal anti-capitalist values, but I am able to respect companies who are discerning with the brands they collaborate with. Golden Wolf however, did not seem to care about this sort of thing in any capacity and ahve worked with a lot of brands I boycott. Generally, I will keep them in my back pocket for reference as they produce very high quality visuals, but I cannot align myself with the company culture.

I then saw The Line’s panel which was incredible, we got insights into the making of the Hades II trailer, the Martin Garrix – Hero music video, and the great British Bake off trailer. Everytime I see process work from The Line I am always left in such awe. They do so many collabs that I love (MARVEL) and their work is always of such high quality. I will forever be upset that Marvel took the ‘Party at the X-Mansion’ concept away from us though. Afterwards I attended JuanPe’s live demo, hoping to get to talk to him, as they weren’t doing a meet n’ greet. The demo was really just an ad for the new Wacom tablet that is wayyyy out of my price range but later I was able to ask him a few questions about what studios look for while building teams. Unfortunately, the line don’t seem to be looking to hire any trainees/entry level positions soon, but he said that efficiency and voice in personal work were the two main things he looked for in applicants. I was hoping to talk a littl emore privately, in order to get him to remember me, but many of my classmates were with us, standing behind me pretty quietly. I didn’t want to dominate all his time, not letting others speak but I felt a bit like we were cornering him and I feel like I’m often treated as a spokesperson for the cohort. Sometimes I have to be a little selfish when it comes to finding work. But once I land the job, I’ll invite all my friends to work with me.

Then, we all went to a sing-along screening of K-Pop Demon Hunters. This was honestly just for fun and we all had a blast. However, at the end Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans (the directors) came out for a little Q&A, I had to leave early however to make it to the next panel which was Pen Ward and Patrick McHale’s talk. This was quite laid back and I really got the impression that both of them were a bit unaware of the current struggles facing entry level animators. I admire both of them immensely and the talk did help me to reframe a lot of my behaviors. The main advice being ‘do what you want to do, and do it well, and the work you actually want to do will come.’ However, I felt that after being so successful and having the connections they did going to CalArts, they didn’t really understand the urgency a lot of us were facing regarding finding work.

The next day I tried to get a portfolio review from either Pen or Patrick, but really I was willing to take anyone with a 2D background. However, it turned out even showing up half an hour early and joining friends who were ahead of me in the line was not enough to secure a slot (after waiting for 2 hours T^T). We then went to see Cartoon Saloon’s talk where they screened their new short film Ériu. It was absolutely gorgeous, and they talked about the process of working on it. As someone who is half-Irish, but disconnected from my roots as a third culture kid, I have a huge interest in learning about my country through their studio and I would love to someday work with them. I did leaver early however, to be able to line up for the drop-in sessions hosted by Kwok and Pete Addington (I believe it was) from The Line. I spoke to a UAL graduate working on the New Earth series, and asked about helping with production (which I have since messaged her about, waiting on a response) and well as to a self taught animator from Scotland. We all exchanged contacts. I then got to talk to Kwok and show him my showreel. I could tell he wasn’t moved by any of it and he gave me the advice to cut anything that I wasn’t 110% convinced by. His advice to my age old question about finding entry level positions was the classic ‘just keep working’. Kwok then left for a break but I continued to talk to Pete(?) who is head of 3D at the line. I asked him about finding early work and he essentially gave me the same advice. I told him about struggling to balance school, work, care duties and socializing, as well as doing extra portfolio work, and he said it will definitely take more time, but to keep working and trust that if I really want to do something I will. He also suggested narrowing in even more on a single focus and getting really good at one skill, to stand out in a particular area. I struggle with this because I’m interesed in 3 big areas of Animation but I think I really need to focus efforts in character movement. The Scottish animator I spoke to, Richard Stevens, complemented my lipsync and acting in my showreel, so I’d like to try do more of that.

While waiting for my last planned panel of the day I caught up with Megan who’d been working at Disney, while we were in line for the K-Pop Demon Hunters meet n greet. She told me tht they had laid off a huge amount of people and her workload became huge, and a lot more difficult as they had to coordinate a lot more with the LA offices. She said she had become a lot more acutely aware of truly how bad huge animation companies are and that if she can avoid ever going back to Disney, she would. Finally, we attended the K-Pop Demon Hunters talk with was very fun. They spoke at length about the focus they had on representing not only Korean culture accurately, but also on letting female characters be silly and ‘ugly’. This resonated with me a lot, especially after Pixar had been saying that they wanted to step away from stories that were ‘too specific’ (after Turning Red). It is more important now than ever to tell stories from unseen perspectives especially when you have a global platform, and I hope and believe that the success of KPDH will pave the way for more personal, but relatable stories (c’mon major movie with a trans person).

Overall, I will admit, the weekend left me feeling a bit defeated. So many of the folks I spoke to were animation graduates who still hadn’t found any industry work, or studio heads that were not willing to fork out any resources to train new recruits. But I did enjoy seeing all the great work happening and I won’t give up on trying to improve, because there is literally nothing else I can imagine myself doing.

(I will try to add photos from the event when my file sharing is working)