Purr Point Productions

Week 19 (2nd Feb.)

Monday Feb. 2nd – I began the day by having our Brick Lane meetings. Leila and I hopped on the production call and realized the social media team handn’t actually been invited. However, we didn’t have much to say to the art team other than a check-in, so we just asked the social team how it was going during the art meeting. Leila and I quickly discussed what we would talk about with each team and then we continued with the regular meetings. Games design didn’t show up to their meeting. Joshua was ill, but we didn’t hear from Owen. Josh also said he hadn’t heard from Owen. Leila and I wrote an email asking for the task breakdown, as we still haven’t recieved it, we also checked in with Owen to see what was up. Hopefully, we get a reply before Friday.

We wanted to spend the meeting compiling an asset list with the devs so we would be ready to assign tasks to the art team once we come back from the Blink Industries brief. However, since Josh and Owen weren’t there, Leila and I came up with as many assets as we could think of and asked the others to fill out the sheet when they could.

The next meeting was with the art team. A few people were out due to the LOOP conference at LCC. Those who did though, seemed to be on track to present on Friday and felt confident in their knowledge of what was expected. We also reitorated the social media team’s request for artist intros.

Adriana still hadn’t shown up or responded to our follow ups, so we have asked Maliha what to do about reassigning her tasks. We also asked Maliha about getting an email address for the project so the social team could begin their campaign.

Afterwards, I had to deal with some issues with New Earth but that was dealt with quickly. In the afternoon I went to the LOOP conference and attended two of the talks. The first was with Comfort Arthur, who spoke about her journey as an animator. While she gave some insight to the professional pipeline, as well as reassurance that your development as a professional won’t be linear. I didn’t feel I gained much new information. The second talk I attended was from Seth St. Pierre, an artist from Dreamworks. This was a lot more relevant to the path I’d like to take, though I did find his mindset around work to be very American. Primarily, in the sense that all he talked about was working and grinding, and there was no mention of personal satisfaction or goals outside of a career. He showed a lot of great things he worked on, including some fanart for Voltron, which sent me back. In the Q&A I asked him about his opinions on whether starting with a production job was truly shooting yourself in the foot if you want to be in the art department the way everyone says it is. He agreed and told me that people ofthen get pigeon-holed into production and they find it hard to move back into art, however, he offered some advice. If I start in production, I can look for an artist mentor to then work with and apply to art jobs at differenrt companies. I think this could be viable for me if I don’t have the desired art skills right away, because the UK does’t have a lot of they kind of TV or film work I’m interested in artistically, so it would be a good place to save some money before I can invest in getting myself to the level that a Canadian or American studio would want.

Overall, my take away from LOOP was that in the current climate, authenticity and individual creativity will be sought after. I think Sawtooth will be a great thing for us if we can get it on track and I just have to be ready to grind a lot on the side when I graduate. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I love film and I love TV and I will do anything it takes as long as I get to keep working in these spaces.

Tuesday Feb. 3rd – First thing today, I finished off my mural for the Brick Lane project. The first layer contains images of significant historical and modern women from the UK. I chose a variety of careers and creeds to represent the diversity of London and Brick Lane itself. I also made sure to research trans women specifically, because to me gender equality is not only about educating and empowering cis women but all sexual minorities that are affected by the patriarchy. I put a threshold effect on the portraits to mimic stencil graffiti and pasteups. Then over top I put in 5 representations of everyday women and girls. I wanted to mimic the abstract coloring of Zebra Pozer, an artist I found when we initially explored Brick Lane. I wanted them to be very colorful and stand out over the backround as another acknowledgement to diversity, but also to show how we are constantly building and progressing as a result of all the work that has been done before us.

Later, I finished and sent off my current WIPs for the ACTSA documentary for review. All I really had to do for the illustrations that Kristina did was set them up as 3D objects and use a camera to parallax. I love After Effects so I’m always happy to do work in that program. For the text scenes I had to design and animate it myself, but Te’lyah (the Director) wanted some thing simple but bold, so I didn’t have huge issues. For the farmland textures, I had to do a lot of adjusting between Photoshop and After Effects, as I had done the illustration as well. The layer masks in Photoshop did not copy over to After Effects so I had to redo them all and reorient all the layers to reflect what I had done in Photoshop. Finally, I rendered out the 7 clips and sent them over to the Teams chat for ACTSA.

Finally, as I was looking through LinkedIn for inspiration for other applications I had to make, I ended up scrolling through the GOBELINS website. I discovered they do a summer program in character animation and while I’m not sure if it will be affordable, I figured I had to at least apply. I just had to fill out a form, submit a CV, portfolio, and cover letter. I spent the rest of the day working on this application and sent it off.

Wednesday Feb. 4th – On Wednesday, I had a day of applications. Tutor Izzy had sent us an opportunity to work with Jante Films on a short based off the graphic novel Notes on a Case of Melancholia, Or: A Little Death by Nicholas Gurewitch. I sent over my CV and showreel, as well as a little description of my experience in animation and different programs as requested. Later, I did my application for Anibar festival in Kosovo. I struggled a bit with this letter of motivation, because I wasn’t sure what to say other than, classmates who went last year recommended it, and I would really like to explore Kosovo as I’ve never been. I did some research into the festival and the theme and built my application around that.

In the evening, I had my 1:1 with the guys from Creative Shift and The KUSP. I introduced Sawtooth and our idea, and they gave some great starting points for legal and business research. I did go into the meeting with our manifesto and creative practice solidified, but I was really looking for advice on the logistical business side. Below is the tasks they gave me.

Thursday Feb. 5th – I was at work. In the evening I did my production work for New Earth. I also got my match for the industry mentor program, and I will admit I was a bit disappointed, considering who some of my classmates got. The LinkedIn page they provided was empty with no connections or work experience. I couldn’t find anything about them online other than an old behance page from presumably their university years, and a CV stating that they had only recently graduated. It was also formatted quite poorly which didn’t fill me with hope. I scoured for a bit and found an empty YouTube channel with an instagram account linked, that had been recently updated, however all the drawings on it were very mediocre and the account only had 400 followers. While social media numbers are not necessarily indicative of success in industry, they wrote in ‘Content Creator’ as their job title. If you are going to claim something is your job, I expect some percentage of your income to come from that endeavor. 400 followers on instagram does not earn you money. I decided I would still meet with them, perhaps they are under NDA or simply don’t use online portfolios (?? how??), but if the vibes don’t improve I will be requesting a replacement. I sent them a message asking to see a showreel or portfolio, but they ignored the request, saying they could show me things when we meet. The meetings would also be online as they live in Kent. It’s is not a dealbreaker, but unfortunate as I would prefer in person. Luckily, I am not alone as another classmate also got this mentor and was also quite disappointed. I’m quite jealous of my classmates who have BAFTA winning animators and Framestore artists, but this is quite typical for my luck (lol T^T).

Friday Feb. 6th – We started the morning with our Brick Lane team meeting. A few people showed up, but we still hadn’t heard from others, aside from one artist fully dropping out. We did get to present the murals that were complete and they were quite nice. There was however quite a start disparity in skill and polish between the team. I would really like do some sort of management training or something, to learn how to give criticism in a hierarchical setting, especially when certain people are not meeting expectations. Because this project is happening in an educational setting, everyone must be allowed to participate, but there are simply some people who are not up to standard and I would not have hired if this was a job. I think my main concern regarding this, is that some of these people may end up on my FMP team in 3rd year, and due to bad experiences in 1st year, I am very worried about the quality of our outcome if the team’s skills don’t align.

In the afternoon we quickly were shown how to work the AC in LTA for the student liason job, however the theater was in use so we didn’t get to learn how to set up the A/V systems.

In the evening, I put together the last of the ACTSA animations. These scenes required a bit more animating than the previous parallax scenes but it went quite smoothly and production were satisfied. When the film is completed I will upload it on this blog.

Saturday Feb. 7th – Courtesy of going to the club last night, the roomies and I spent Saturday watching TV and recovering from mild hangovers. This is relevant because I want to prove my personal mantra of having fun.

Sunday Feb. 8th – I was at work.

Week 18 (26th Jan.)

Monday Jan. 26th – In the morning Leila and I had a check in with the Art team about the Brick Lane project, tentatively named ‘Ronzo’s BrixTape’. We just wanted to update the progress tracker, and speak to the 3D team about what they felt they could do for Friday the 6th. Shockingly, we only had 1 person not attend, and we hadn’t heard from her in a while, so we sent an email to check in. Everyone else was more or less on track, with onbly a few people who may be a cause for concern. They have two weeks however, and everyone seemed confident that they would have something to hand over. Then the 3D team agreed to the tasks we had laid out for them in our email from last week so it seems that everyone is back on track to be ready for the break. I also put together some very quick sketches of what the gameplay would look like, as some people still seemed a bit unclear about the camera changes.

Tuesday Jan. 27th – In the morning we had a quick session on our assessment brief for DPS. While 4000 words feels quite daunting, Maliha assured me that with the detail contained in this blog, I shouldn’t have an issue meeting the word count.

In the evening we had our “training session” for our industry mentorships. It was mostly just a presentation on what to expect from the program as well as expecations for us. I am nervous as I have had poor mentoring experiences in the past, but I’m really excited to meet someone who can really help me in my career as a narrative animator.

Wednesday Jan. 28th – I spent the morning putting together my contact sheet before my tutorial with Maliha. I really had less contacts than I thought, and a significant chunk of them had actually left the studios they were at and are currently seeking new employment, which does not bode well for me. Anyhow, the tutorial with Maliha went well; I showed her all the things I had updated and we got to talking about possibly getting some of my contacts from The Line to come down to do a talk at LCC where I could act as the student liason. I’m hoping this can get me closer to any of them to the point I could ask for a mentorship.

In the evening I had my first session with Creative Shift and The Kusp, and we got to share our ideas. It got me quite excited for the help I can get for Sawtooth. Quite a few DPS people were there so it was very nice to have friendly faces.

Thursday Jan. 29th – I was at work.

Friday Jan. 30th – We had our SIPs pitch with Eddy from Creative Conscience. While I think we presented well, I’m fairly certain we didn’t present the kind of thing they were looking to fund. Or at the very least we didn’t frame it correctly. In honesty, I sort of forgot this pitch was for a specific brief to get a small fund and we didn’t really prepare the presentation in a way that made it clear what we would be producing. Eddy did like the idea however, and gave us great advice we can carry forward.

I hope to make some real headway in the upcoming weeks for our studio and get working on projects very soon! I also worked on the ACTSA animations.

Saturday Jan. 31st – I was at work.

Sunday Feb. 1st – I had a blood donation in the morning before work. While I was there I got to talk to the manager of the center to ask if they would be willing to collaborate with Sawtooth on a campaign to do a blood drive. He seemed enthusiastic and gave me his email to contact him with our idea. Over the next week we’ll be doing more logistical development on Sawtooth as well as development for the blood drive.

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 16 (12th Jan.)

Over the winter break I took a lot of time off to sort of rest and recoup. I stayed on top of basic admin tasks as well as beginning my inductions to the New Earth team but generallt didn’t do much else. I sorely needed a break. Then when I returned to London, I immediately caught the horrible flu going around and I had to postpone my return to work by another week.

Monday Jan. 12th – I was still quite ill on Monday, so I slept though most of the day.

Tuesday Jan. 13th – I was still recovering on Tuesday, but in the evening we had a call with the ACTSA group to review what was needed for the animation. They provided us with a clearer list of references and beats for the film. We discussed the timeline and while we don’t have a set deadline, we have a tentative three weeks to work on this.

Wednesday Jan. 14th – Today, Leila, Maliha and I had a call to discuss our roles as producers on the Purr Point/Brick Lane project. We began work on a timeline spreadsheet, as well as discussed when we would have meetings with every department, we agreed that we needed to speak with each department to establish a more detailed Gantt style timeline, but we would have a document that is ready by next Friday to share with the whole team during our first monthly team meeting. Later on in the day I finally got around to getting on top of my tutorial points set by Maliha. I updated my CV and reformatted it to fit more of my roles, and I also re-did my showreel and replaced it on my portfolio site. I still however need to get back in the swing of applying to jobs, as well as get my contact sheet together since I don’t have that done yet. I also really need to get back on top of Sawtooth prep and talk to Amy, Sophia, and Alex T. about our SIPs pitch to creative conscience.

Thursday Jan. 15th – I was at work.

Friday Jan. 16th – I spent today thumbnailing and timing out some boards for the ACTSA animations as well as put together a moodboard.

boards

I also got production training for New Earth which was exciting, but also took a while. Next week my tasks for that should begin so I am looking forward to be working on it too.

Saturday Jan. 17th – I was at work.

Sunday Jan. 18th – I was at work. Then at 8PM I had a meeting with the New Earth production gang.

Week 11 (8th Dec.)

Monday Dec. 8th – I spent the entire day working on Isobel’s brief in order to be able to show her anything at all in our 1-2-1 tutorial. Because I hadn’t made much more significant progress she just reitorated previous points made and I noted them down to work on.

Tuesday Dec. 9th – In the morning I met with Amy and Sophia online to go through our pitch for SIPs.

Then I began updating my CV with my creative work experience, I’m still not entirely sure how to format it and how much description to include. I’m thinking about switching the job title and the company name lines but that might make the formatting in the ‘Other Experience’ section confusing.

Wednesday Dec. 10th – In the morning we had a Purr Point meeting to discuss the research we have done on our sustainability goal and the mural designs. Honestly I didn’t actually have anything prepared, so I threw some stuff together while we were waiting to begin.

https://uk.pinterest.com/cosmicCactoos/purr-point/

Because ‘Gender Equality’ focuses on girls and women, the main subjects will be women depicted in positions of power/professional fields they are under-represented in. However, I picked this particular prompt because I wanted to add representation for more than just binary women, but include trans and non-binary people too. Anyone not reperesented equally under patriarchy. While presenting I realized the optics of someonel like me who is very masc presenting, doing a piece for gender equality might seem a bit weird, however I am AFAB and non-binary and my lived experiences make this topic very important to me.

Afterwards, we presented our pitch for SIPS we got a ton of great feedback, and we have a lot of details to iron out. I will be putting together a document outlining our next steps and a second meeting agenda. We also gained 4 new members from the pitch!

Thursday Dec. 11th – I was at work.

Friday Dec. 12th – Today was the day of the Ice Nine Kills gig and popup shop so I spent most of the day out. Between the popup and the show however I worked a little bit on the brief from Isobel.

Saturday Dec. 13th – I was at work.

Sunday Dec. 14th – I stayed up until 3AM trying to get as far as possible with the piece for Isobel’s brief. I didn’t quite finish and a lot of the details are missing, but I would like to come back to it at some point. However, I do need a break from it because the stress has been sending me into orbit. Below is what I was able to complete. I don’t think visdev is my calling, however I really enjoyed designing and drawing the layout and it’s something I’d love to continue doing. I’d really like to practice rendering more through style studies, but I’m not sure when I’ll have time for it. Maybe I should take a painting class.

Week 9 (24th Nov.)

Monday Nov. 24th – Monday was a full on ACP day. In the morning we had our first premier Pro session with Oscar. I loved his energy and even through I again, have many years of experience in Premier, he made the class quite engaging, it was like being with my ADHD friends. He also let us know that aside from the three courses that Maliha signed us up for, with the GMetrix codes we have, we are allowed to take any of the other exams as well. Over the next few weeks I am going to study for the Adobe Animate exam, and potentially do Illustrator and InDesign, depending on what time I have. I figure that since I can do them for free I might as well do as many as I can since I’m already familiar with most Adobe programs. After the class I went to the library to do a bit of work on Isobel’s brief. The session did not end up getting moved so I would have to miss it, but I still need to get more work done on this brief, as I’ve been spending all my free time studying.

In the afternoon, I took my Photoshop exam. It was even easier than After Effects and I finished 20 minutes early with a score of 97%. I really wish there was a way to review our exams however, as I am curious to know what mistakes I did make. After that a few of us went up to the animation floor to get some more work done, but the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate. I got bored of waiting to be let back in so I just went home.

Tuesday Nov. 25th – This was my first day off in the last few weeks, meaning I didn’t have any classes or meetings, and I didn’t have a shift at work either. I had planned to get a lot done but because the extent of my plan was ‘get a lot done’ and no more specific than that, I did not in fact get a lot done. First, I recorded and submitted my auditions for the Hail Mary final project for both ARIS and Ramsey. I love voice acting so much but haven’t found any success so far in auditions I have previously done. But I’ll always take an opportunity to throw my hat in the ring because it’s fun. For the rest of the day when I wasn’t paralyzed by the thought of getting something done, I worked on Isobel’s brief. I feel, I really need to commit a little more time to it than I have been because for the last two weeks I really haven’t made much progress. I’m putting a lot of effort into the layout and perfecting the perspective, but haven’t even looked at how I’m going to color or render the scene. Then I switched to GMetrix to study for Premier Pro. At this point I’m quite confident in how my exams have been going, but the GMetrix courses have been great in helping me focus on exactly what I need to have fresh for the exam, thus I will continue completing the courses.

Tomorrow, after the excursion to Brick Lane, I’m going to once again sit down and look at my calendar for the weeks leading up to the end of Isobel’s brief and make a more detailed plan of what I will be doing. I’ve also decided to give up my shift this Friday, as I don’t think it will be a good idea for me to work 4 days of the week with an exam coming up.

Wednesday Nov. 26th – This morning a few of us from the Purr Point brief met up in brick lane to take pictures and reference. It was a little disorganozed as a few people showed up late and it was a bit chillier out than most people wanted it to be but I feel like we got a good feel for the place. We discussed how we would like to elect an Art Director, despite Maliha initially shooting this down, as we feel there need to be executive decisions made so we can stay on track style-wise. Leila and I will be meeting with Maliha to create a production schedule, so we will bring this up with her then. Another thing we need to consider is that we need to liase with the programming and modeling teams to find out exactly what they need and when, in terms of assets and visual concepts. I’ve never worked on a game before so I don’t know exactly what the pipeline looks like, but I want to make sure no one hits a stagnation because they don’t have the materials they need from someone else.

Brick Lane Reference – linked is the folder containing images form the trip.

Thursday Nov. 27th – I was at work.

Friday Nov. 28th – I spent the majority of the day trying to organize a meeting for my SIP and liasing with everyone interested to find a time for us all to meet. While waiting for replies I also applied to be a mentee under the UAL industry mentor program. I had to write 750 words about why I wanted t be in the program and what I could get out of it. I think it would be amazing to have someone who is actively working in 2D animation to learn from as the industry is looking quite bleak right now. I could definitely use the connections they’d be able to provide as well. Then I spent the rest of the time studying for the Premiere Pro exam.

Saturday/Sunday Nov. 29th/30th – I was at work. Upon coming home I spent a few hours studying GMetrix.

Week 8 (17th Nov.)

Monday Nov. 17th – Because I as well as my roommate were at work all weekend, Monday was going to be a chore heavy day. However I also hadn’t done anything for the Isobel brief. I had planned to work through some chores and then work on the environment piece, but that plane quickly devolved into chaos. Firstly, because our neighbors hate us, they once again were blasting music right below our windows. At 2:30AM my roommate who had class the next morning went down to yell at them, while our other roommate (who had work) and I (who had to clean the whole house, do dishes, do laundry, and do DPS work), yelled at them from our windows. They quickly drove off after that and we finally got to sleep. Unfortunately, this meant I woke up at noon, and light was already fading in the sky. I set my laundry on, and sat had some breakfast while sorting emails.
The rest of this post didn’t save so I will summarize:
Emails took me a lot longer than expected. I tried to make an Instagram post about the freelance project I made, but the video was too big to post and I kept having to adjust it. It wouldn’t post from my computer so I tried on my phone but it doesn’t have enough storage to save the video, so I tried to free up storage by updating. Something went wrong while updating and it corrupted my phone, bricking it. I spent the rest of the day trying to get my phone to work again and this took me right up until midway through the session with Isobel. I didn’t have anything to show, but she said that we could email her with any progress, as well as to ask for any specific tutorials. I was thinking it would be useful to get advice on detailing for filling out a scene, as well as painting and rendering.

Tuesday Nov. 18th – Today we had a session for the ACP Photoshop exam. I’ve been using Ps for over a decade so we didn’t cover anything I didn’t know. I was a bit frustrated because for some reason we decided to move the exam from Friday to Monday, meaning the Isobel session will have to be moved. Tuesday is the only day next week I have off, but it seems like I’ll have to join the character session then… Overall, I’ve been a bit irritated today. I think the combination of being ill, seasonal depression kicking in, and my general intense busy-ness have put me really on edge.

Wednesday Nov. 19th – I was at work.

Thursday Nov. 20th – At 12 we had a meeting about the Purr Point project. We primarily discussed the roles we would take in the production and I also pitched the idea of going out to Brick Lane to collect reference photos and sketches.

I also sent out a few job applications. I’ve decided to fully omit any demographic information they ask for as an experiment to see if this gets me any responses. I also took my pronouns off my CV. I used to fill out all the diversity information, since I am queer, disabled, and an immigrant, I thought this would give me a chance to be a diversity hire since the market is already so over-saturated with people of the same skill level as me. However, since I haven’t been getting any responses, and the government continues to propagate fascist rhetoric, I fear being honest about these things has decreased my chances, at least on paper. Hopefully, this way I’ll at least get some interviews, as I am told that my cover letters and CV are already well done.

In the eveing I worked on Isobel’s brief a little more, just detailing the perspective on the shelves and other regular forms in the scene. I also begam building a logo for my studio in Illustrator.

Friday Nov. 21st – In the morning we had another Photoshop class with Esmeralda. We covered selection and masking as well as retouching tools like spot healing tool and patch tool. These are features I don’t use very often so it was good to get a refresher. We also went over adjustment layers which was back into expert territory for me. After the class I went to the library to put together a little call out for collaborators on my SIPs. Almost instantly I got one reply from Sophia Davies, and I hope to get a few more before the pitch in December.

After sending that out I logged onto GMetrix and kept studying for the Photoshop exam on Monday.

Saturday Nov. 22nd – I was at work.

Sunday Nov. 23rd – I was at work.

Week 6 (3rd Nov.)

Monday Nov. 3rd – Last week had been incredibly insane for me and I was honestly still trying to recover today. I’ve been feeling really burnt out with work, uni and conventions. I’m hoping that once I get this freelance project done I’ll be able to re-establish a pace that works better for me. I also got a rejection from the Lego internship which was unfortunate. I haven’t been applying to much recently, just because I haven’t had any time, but I’ve been rejected from everything I was waiting on now, other than a few unpaid indie projects, so I really need to get back on top of that. Anyway, today I worked on Isobel brief until we found out it was moved to Wedensday. As soon as I saw this message I switched to my freelance project for ECR. I scanned in more of the assets I had made and then spent some time playing in After Effects. I had planned to take more screenshots and pictures, but the process gets away from my sometimes, especially when I am working on so many projects at once.

Tuesday Nov. 4th – Today we had a meeting for Purr Point Productions where we went through some of the initial game ideas. The majority of us are animators / visdev artists so we didn’t have the necessary experience to know what genre game would be feasible to produce. We ended up playing with the ideas of an endless runner style game or some sort of collector or territory capture, in the vein of Temple Run and Subway surfers or Splatoon or Jet Set Radio. The idea for a platformer came up as well as we have a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog fans on the team. The devs said this might be more difficult to get right because the physics need to be super polished, but ultimately I think it’d be best for the two devs to have the final say in the game mechanics. As for style, we all seemed very set on a Y2K aesthetic with lowpoly models, saturated colors and flat textures. For the next meeting I want to put together some moodboards for environments, characters, graphics and props. I also want to talk to Maliha about possibly taking on a production role on the project, as it is something I’d like to learn about and I feel like I have strengths in leadership and organization.

Later, I went to a screening of Guillermo Del Toro’s new Frabkenstein film at Soho House. Netflix invited 15 UAL students to watch the movie and it was really quite good. I am a big fan of the original book and the film made some changes I didn’t like much, but it was definitely by far the best film adapation of the novel. I especially liked the costumes and the color grading, as well as the re-characterization of Elizabeth. She was much more interesting and it definitely made her appeal more for modern audiences without erasing her original characterization. I did not enjoy the re-imagining of Victor and Henry’s relationship because they had a completely different dynamic to the book, and I think it detracted from the necessary juxtaposition between Victor’s isolation in his obsession with playing god, and the rest of humanity. I did like the new story when the creature goes out alone and meets the old blind man who is ultimately killed. It was definitely updated for a modern audience, but for me it was one of the most impactful plotpoints. While I think the creature saving the girl from the river is a pivotal moment in the book, Del Toro’s execution of the creature’s development was spot-on for the character. I also liked that the movie replaced the somewhat rapey and vaguely sexist motivation for the creature to have a wife, with a simple desire for companionship, “We can be monsters together.” Overall, it was a great watch and I am always enamoured by Del Toro’s artistic skill.

Finally, when I came home I began to add some of those references to the Miro board and created a little section for visdev.

Wednesday Nov. 5th – In the morning we had a session with Zoe Tynan-Campbell on ‘Charting Your Vaues’. Personal Values are something that is at the forefront, and completely intrinsic not only to my practice but to the way I conduct my entire life. After contextualizing the session a bit, we began with an activity listing our personal values.

I found this quite easy because of my dedication to authenticity and activism. I spent a lot of my time discussing and analyzing my personal ethics. I subconsciously bolded the word that felt most important to me, and came up with my own 3 Fs. They helped me boil my moral mantra down to ‘Being able to do the things we want to do, with the people we want to do them with.’ What I want out of my life, and subsequently my career is to do things I enjoy, and provide joy to those around me. Politically, I am a self-declared anarcho-communist, but I refuse to hold myself to any code defined by someone else, anarchist theory just alignes strongly with my navigation of the world.

After that we did an activity where in five minutes we we’re to draw ourselves as some sort of archetype reflective of how we see ourselves within our creative practice.

Initially I thought of myself as a rock, a sturdy base to uplift my team members with a solid foundation of skills, but this felt too passive. I am someone who trys to encourage others, but myself as well. I considered the title ‘genie’ but I didn’t like the mysticism of just granting wishes. I feel my skills lie in the consistent effort I make to allow myself and other to achieve our goals. So, I went with the enabler. That word has a bit of a negative connotation, but I see it as ‘one who allows a person to make the things they want happen.’ The last thing I want is to be a restrictive force upon myself or others, thus I put my best efforts into doing the things that need to be done to make things happen. Now that I think about it, maybe ‘The Catalyst’ is a cooler name for it.

Finally, in groups, we charted skills we thought we possessed, both soft and hard. The activity made me realize that I believe that every single person posesses every single skill that can be fathomed. Or at least the potential for it. Even when thinking of my weaknesses, there are situations in my life where I still demonstracted proficiency in said skills. For example, time-management is an area I feel particularly weak in. However, my group helped me realize that whether I feel I am managing my time poorly or not, I have rarely missed a deadline. My time-management process might not be the most efficient or comprehensible, but somehow, my time does get managed. I believe this can be true for any skill. Furthermore, this emphasized the importance of collaboration and community. If a certain skill comes easier to your friend than it does to you… work with your friend!

Zoe also mentioned introspecting on your NEEDS. Rather than focusing solely on what you can bring to your practice or to a company, thinking about what you want to gain from it/them. We didn’t have time to chart these out, but it made me realize that for my SIPS project (Sawtooth) I want to make sure I remember to put emphasis on worker’s needs (it is a socialist endeavor afterall). I wrote down “Focus on worker’s NEEDS in order to serve client needs.” If the needs of everyone working are not met, then how can a client expect us to serve their needs. This is also a refection of one of the core failures of capitalism.

She finished of with suggesting a 3x3x3 reflective task. I believe I covered the first two 3s in my reflections above (3 things that resonated with me oin the session, 3 things/values central to my practice). The third however, was 3 small actions I can take immenently for my practice. I think the first thing I can do is chart a list of my personal needs as described in the last paragraph. Secondly, I’d like to create a research plan to really kickstart this Pitch project. Basically finding out what I need to find out, and what kind of team I need to build. In all honesty, the last thing I feel I need to do is finish the freelance project I’m working on. In order to shift my focus to the other things I need to get done, I need to get this project off my back. I’m not being paid very much for it, and it is just a supplementary piece for a music event, it is not the main focus, and I need to let myself stop at ‘good enough’ rather than stewing in the pressure of producing something perfect.

In the evening we had our session with Isobel.

Thursday Nov. 6th – I was at work.

Friday/Saturday Nov. 7th/8th – I am going to be completely honest, I cannot remember what I did these days as I obviously did not write about them here until now. I almost certainly spent most of the day doing chores and working on

Sunday Nov. 9th – I was at work.

Week 4 (20th Oct.)

Monday Oct. 20th – In the morning we had a meeting with Sam Beagrie from Purr Point Productions to introduce one of our potential live briefs. This one gives us eight months to develop a game prototype that we can hopefully get funded by the end. We would be collabing with Games Arts and Design students, as well as us on Animation. I think the project sounds exciting and the potential to include cutscenes or a trailer in order to get some more animation for my showreel is what draws me to the project. I’ve been developing a game idea for my studio (Sawtooth, SIPS), as well as using it for the Isobel Stenhouse brief. I very briefly pitched it, but I think the scope might be too ambitious for the timeframe we have. I will however definitely participate in the brief and I’m excited to get started.

In the evening we met with Isobel for the environment pathway brief to discuss initial ideas for our concept pieces. I’ve had some notes as this game idea is something I’ve been toying with for a while.

I explained the concept a bit and Isobel seemed to think it was a good starting point. She wants us to really nail compositional fundamentals to be able to show mastery over basic skills needed for concept design. So, an interior with lots of specific decor and synthetic light sources feels like the right way to go for me.

Tuesday Oct. 21st – I was at work.

Wednesday Oct. 22nd – I spent the day working on more cosplay items for ComicCon.

Thursday Oct. 23rd – I was at work.

Friday Oct. 24th – I was at Comic Con. My roommate and I went in casual cosplays of Dave and Roxy from Homestuck. I also became a patron of the arts by spending entirely too much money at Artist Alley. I do love doing that however, because I know my cash is going straight into the pocket of another artist and I get lots of cool things to hang up in my room. After the con I went to see Black Sabbath: The Ballet with my mom.

Saturday Oct. 25th – I went to Comic Con again and did a cosplay of Commander Karkat from Homestuck. I also went to a Homestuck cosplay meetup where, for the first time, I met so many other Homestuck fans. We took lots of photos and played games. I am now on the Homestuck Cosplayers UK Discord and I hope to be able to meet up with all these lovely people again!

Sunday Oct. 26th – Sunday was a bit of a lazy day. I had tons of chores to do in the house and I also had to pick up my roommate from the train station. I intended to complete some work for the environment design brief, but I didn’t achieve as much as I wanted to.

Now that comic con is over however, I think I’ll have a lot more time to dedicate to DPS work