Monday Dec. 15th – In the morning we presented our works for Isobel, Maliha, and the rest of the course. Like I mentioned last week, I felt my piece was very unfinished, but I only had time to work on it so sporadically that I ran out of steam so quickly. Especially, considering all the other work I’ve had recently, plus the winter time giving me frequent and more intense depressive episodes.
After that, I finally got around to checking out the material I got from New Earth, I got set up on the discord and read the pilot script. I’m under NDA so I won’t say much, but I’m very excited to begin work on it.
I have quite a few things to continue working on over the next few weeks.
Finish the Titmouse mentorship application
Collate and share SIPs feedback and plan next meeting
Record audition for ‘MALE RADIO VOICE’
Begin the video invitation design for my mom
Tuesday Dec. 16th – ?
Wednesday Dec. 17th – I was at work.
Thursday Dec. 18th – I was at work.
Friday Dec. 19th – I spent the day working on the video invite I told my mom I would make for my parent’s 25th anniversary party.
I read an email from Maliha and I had a few questions about IP ownership within the Purr Point project, so we had a quick chat to clarify that.
Saturday Dec. 20th – I had my first production meeting with New Earth, but it was during my work holiday party which made it difficult for me to engage.
Sunday Dec. 21st – ?
I’m going to be completely honest, I did not realize I hadn’t completed this reflection before I left to visit my family for the holiday, so anything that I hadn’t written down has left my memory. These days have ‘?’ next to them because I cannot remember.
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.
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.
Monday Dec. 1st – In the morning I had my Premiere Pro exam. It was definitely the least confident I felt during one of these but I still passed with 94%. Out of the three exams I did, Premier is the software I use the least so I definitely took more time to figure certain things out. I also asked the guys in the Digital Zone if I could take the Adobe Animate exam in January as a self-study and they were very on board. (I think I make their pass rates look good heehee). I really hope these certifications will help me find some work as I feel like I have an edge when it comes to industry standard software compared to my peers. After the exam a few of us went out to get ramen and then I came home to work on Isobel’s brief before the meeting. I, once again, hadn’t really done much work on it, but I had a sketch done for the prop and some colors flatted in.
I’ve also booked a room in the library for tomorrow to present my studio idea to those interested.
Tuesday Dec. 2nd – Today I hosted the first meeting for Sawtooth Studios! It was a briefing session for anyone interested to hear my idea and ask any questions they had. We had 8 people show up from 4 courses and everyone seemed very into the idea. Sophia, Amy and I will be meeting on Friday to put together the pitch for Tuesday. Below are the things we covered in the meeting.
Friday Dec. 5th – In the morning I had to go to the Chelsea college to help my roommate who was running a workshop for her third year project. Once she was set up I had my tutorial with Maliha. We went over the tasks from last tutorial but I really hadn’t completed much. I then shared my updated CV with her and we discussed how I would go about adding creative projects to the CV in its own section. I will have to find time in the coming weeks to work on this.
Later in the day, I hosted a call with Amy, Alex T. and Sophia about Sawtooth. We went through the slides and wrote in what we were going to pitch as well as discussed and prepared answers for more logistical questions we may encounter in the pitch. It took two hours but it was quite productive. We will be meeting again on Tuesday to rehearse the presentation as the actual pitch got moved to Wednesday.
Saturday Dec. 6th – On Saturday I had to go out to do holiday shopping as it was my only day off, so I didn’t get a chance to do much work.
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.
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.
Monday Nov. 10th – In the morning we had the first session of our ACP After Effects course. In honesty I thought this would be a professional level exam, however we covered the barebones basics of After Effects. I think the tutor wasn’t aware that the majority of us were Animation students and I myself, have already extensively used AE. When he began to explain frame rates, or said that we ‘probably didn’t know what the 12 principles of animation were’, I was a bit taken aback. However I do acknowledghe that these exams tend to be hyperspecific and they look for exact ways of doing things, so I will be studying the Gmetrix lessons he provided for us. Essentially, we covered how to open an AE document, make a composition, animate properties, add effects and pre-composing. I’d rather not go into detail because sitting through it was already mind-numbing. nI do want to point out that I do know that not everyone there was an animator or has used AE, but I was just under the impression that this was a professional exam for some reason. It can’t hurt to have the certificate anyway though.
In the Evening I then had a 1-2-1 tutorial with Isobel. Before the meeting I quickly sketched out some alternate roughs as the first one wasn’t working proportinately. The left vanishing point was too close to the canvas and it was warping the whole image when I tried to add in more details on the left and I widened it up. I’ve settled on the bottom composition pictured below.
She gave me some general advice to fill out some of the space and draw the eye toewards the desk area as seen in my notes below.
Immediately afterwards, my roommates and I went to go see ‘Be More Chill’ in concert. It was incredible and so funny and my 13 year old self would have had been so jealous.
Tuesday Nov. 11th – I attended a course rep session in the morning. The other DPS rep wasn’t there when we had to discuss the feed back we got but we didn’t have much to say anyway. Below is an image of the debrief I sent the rest of the cohort.
Afterwards I went to digital space at LCC to finish off the video for the ECR project. Because my process is very effects heavy it took a while to finish the edits because playback was quite slow. When it came to rendering I started at the digital space, but it took too long (3 hours) so I had to stop it and restart at home. My GPU is worse than those at uni so I had to leave it rendering overnight, but it finished fine and I was able to send it off in the morning.
Wednesday Nov. 12th – In the morning we had a short meeting about our SIPs where we got to pitch them to Maliha and the rest of the group. I talked about my studio idea and it seemed quite well recieved. I would like to come up with a short mission statement and send it out to the DPS group and see if any one would like to produce their projects under the Sawtooth name. This would give me an opportunity to gather members as well as begin a portfolio of work.
In the afternoon I worked on studying for the After Effects exam on GMetrix.
Thursday Nov. 13th – During the day I worked through more of the GMetrix After Effects course. I didn’t manage to finish the last domain but I felt confident enough that I could pass on Friday. Later, in the evening my roommates and I went down to Brixton to see my brother’s show, with the animation I did projected. He performed very well and I was proud. My mom even came over from Switzerland and got to see him playing on stage with my work there as well. Lot’s of people in the crowd as well as from his label complimented both of us on the work and performance. While I’d love to work in TV animation, I also enjoy doing visuals for music and would enjoy this type of work as well.
Friday Nov. 14th – In the morning I took the After Effects test. It was a little harder than I expected but I still passed with a 94%. It seems like the majority of the class did not pass so I think my extensive experience in AE definitely put me at an advantage. I spent the rest of the day with my mom and had dinner with my cousins.
Monday Sep. 29 – Today was our first day back at LCC and we got a total information overload. Admittedly, I didn’t do a great job at keeping up with DPS updates over the summer, as I find Teams chats incredibly hard to navigate, but the briefing we got about our first few weeks back definitely helped clear somethings up for me. We went over the requirements for the diploma and I took some notes on the things I would like to participate in/complete over the year. I took the time to sign up for the Lego workshop on Thursday and noted down the Live-Briefs I was interested in (Isobel Stenhouse, Purr Purr prod, Blink Industries). I am most excited however, to officially do a Self-Initiated Project surrounding an idea I had for a co-op production studio. I also found out a lot of my volunteering at convention’s can qualify as work for DPS so I would like to have a conversation with Maliha about it. I’m wondering if my current job also counts as I am surrounded by comic books all day and technically working in tandem with the publishing industry.
My list of things to get done this week: – Update spreadsheet of contacts – Schedule designated time for each aspect of DPS (applications, SIP, freelance, work) – Look into GCS
Tuesday Sep. 30 – Today we had a session with Roxanne Peters around Intellectual Property, and in the afternoon I got a little taster of the Global Campus Studio.
The IP session was quite surface level but we covered the basics of copyright and Roxanne was able to very succinctly answer all of our questions and assuage any concerns we had around IP law. We disscussed some of our own experiences with copyright and IP and looked into several types of IP including trademarks, moral rights, fair use etc. We also discussed current industry cases related to IP such as genAI. I am someone who is vehemently against genAI both on the grounds of ecological impact, as well as in regards to creative theft. We discussed this quite in depth, however we all seemed to be in pretty solid agreement with each other. We finished off the session with a fictional case study that can be seen on the padlet (pw: creativerights). Again, most of the people in the room seemed in strong agreement that given the situation, in any position of the hierarchy, we would make sure our concerns were heard. The issues highlighted in the prompt triggered both ethical and legal concerns and us (the studio) would be the ones to deal with the backlash. It reminded me of a previous job I left, due to similar issues, and I know personally, my morals always come first. However, we did discuss that we can acknowledge that not everyone necessarily has the privilege to leave work in the same way.
“I’m too punk-rock to let anyone get screwed over like this.” – me, 2025
Because I want to start a studio founded on my personal anarcho-communist values, hopefully aimed at both a local and global market, I need to learn about business practice, and the intricacies of individual creator’s rights both within the UK, but also pertaining to other jurisdictions. I’m very glad we got to meet Roxanne because this is a point of contact for me that will be very important to my Self-Initiated Project.
In the afternoon we joined a session of the Global Campus Studio. Admittedly this did not go well for a lot of us. I hadn’t signed up for it initially, however Maliha encouraged us all to attend just to see what it was all about. A group of us joined the call and were immediately lost. It seemed that 1) it had been structured for every student to be on their own device, which we were not, and 2) many of the other schools apparently had already had sessions for this, so the organizers did not explain anything to us. I was honestly under the impression that it would be a briefing session with Izzy, but we just got right into it and I had no idea what this thing was even about. After quite a bit of faffing I found the initial call-out email detailing what GCS was (admittedly I was not on top of my emails this summer due to my job) and I joined a fellow DPS student who was signed up, to participate in the activity. We had to work with other internationally based students to come up with a fictional marketing profile. This however was not totally clear to us UAL students because we were generally just quite confused about everything. Our breakout group did not to a very good job of communicating with each other, and I felt the profile we came up with was incredibly bare-bones and poorly crafted, not representing any tangible consumer experiences. I would have liked to speak up more and take the lead, but I felt I didn’t have the information I needed about the program, the activity, or any of the people I was working with. Ultimately, GCS felt very disorganized to me, though I can accept partial blame for not keeping up with the provided info, and reminded my intensely of a business class I took in high-school that I really didn’t enjoy. While I am aware that marketing and product R&D is important even in the animation industry, I’d like to focus my DPS year much more on animation and hands-on creative development.
Wednesday Oct. 1st – We started the morning with an I Like Networking session with Isabel Sachs. She was very enthusiastic, but I felt the session just reiterated things we had learned from previous networking sessions. My biggest takeaway was probably to reframe all of my bios/profiles to state what I can do for others rather than, ‘Hey, I’m looking for work please hire me.’ While I tend to feel I don’t have enough experience or skill to be desireable, I think I can reframe a lot of my online presence around serving others in industry. Another thing it helped me realize is the importance of a call to action in any posts or messages while networking. I want people to do something when they see me, whether it’s hire me, look at my profile, follow me back etc. Finally, I decided I really need to get on top of creating a contact spreadsheet and tracking who I’ve spoken to, so I feel less awkward about messaging people out of the blue after months of no contact.
At home I decided to work on my application for the LEGO internship in Denmark. I’m not entirely sure it’s feasible for me to leave London for 5 months but I feel that if I got this opportunity I would have to take it. I wrote my cover letter which was a bit difficult as they had a maximum of 300 words, and I tend to write around 400, so I really had to condense. I also began drawing and collaging the poster they asked for.
I’ve never had to do something like this for an application but I had a lot of fun putting it together.
Thursday Oct. 2nd – In the morning we had a session with Eddy Altman from Creative Conscience. He gave a really impactful presentation showcasing lots of projects. We did an activity listing passions and complaints and used it to ideate ideas for our Self-Initiated Projects. I had already been thinking about an idea for a co-op style production studio, founded on anarcho-communist values, and I feel that it aligns very well with many of the sustainability goals. Eddy was very vulnerable with us and it made me think of my little brother and the cancer scare we had with him. I thought about how I’m also not optimistic about my future, it’s bleak, and there is absolutely a new normal we will al have to get used to, we are definitely past the tipping point, both politically and enviropnmentally. However, despite everything I will do everything in my power to make things as good as they can be, for myself and everyone in my life. Especially after struggling so much for my entire late childhood and adolescence. That’s why I want to start my studio. To put good things out into the world, while making good things happen for the teams I work with. My biggest takeaway was to reach out to the communities I want to serve, and build on what’s being done already. I don’t have to change the entire world from scratch.
In the afternoon we began with a session with Sat Sehmbey and Davinia Clarke from Creative Shift. I wasn’t really sure what it was about but they introduced it to us as an extracurricular support program for students from underrepresented communities. I’m not sure that any of the partner companies interest me, and I’m not quite sure how Creative Shift relates to the DPS, other than just extra live briefs. However, I appreciate there being a place to go for help as a queer, disabled, immigrant student. I may look into it a little more to perhaps find a mentor that I can talk to with similar expreriences. Maliha said they will send us the briefs as soon as they get them so I will evaluate them once we know what they are.
Finally, we ended the day doing a Lego Serious Play workshop. There were only four of us so we got side-tracked quite a bit, and were forced to leave the room early, but the session facilitated a lot of discussions between us surrouding work, play and all the problems with UAL’s administration. When we left the room we ran into some coursemates who weren’t on DPS and set up an improptu Lego session in the middle of the LCC gallery. I’m not really sure if the whole idea of Lego Serious Play works for me, as I’m definitely more the type of person to collect specific Lego sets and build them according to instructions and then display them. But, having a more casual environment to facilitate discussions where it feels like there’s less pressure, is definitely something I enjoyed. I am a fidgeter and I love having something in my hands as I talk and learn.
Friday Oct. 3rd – We did a networking workshop with Alexiane Cazenave from CreativeFabric. What I hadn’t realized was it was actually the same workshop we had last year. We did activities focusing on projecting confidence with your voice and body as well as some improvized scenarios to practice approaching networking in person. I find all acting workshops super fun. I really like getting up and moving around, and the theater kid in me still likes to play a part in front of classmates, so I enjoyed myself. I also found that I remembers a lot of the techniques from the first workshop, and I was much more coinfident practicing them the second time around.
When I got home, I had an hour and a half to finish my Lego application poster, whittle down my cover letter, and make a PDF portfolio (as mine is a website), before I had to leave for Refused’s last ever London show!! I locked in and finished everything with 15 minutes to spare and the had an absolute ball at Brixton Academy.
Saturday/Sunday Oct. 4th/5th – I spent Saturday sleeping because I went to a club after the gig on Friday and got home at sunrise. No class, job, or DPS is going to alter my #1 ethic value of life; having a good dang time. On Sunday I was at work all day and then went to my local pub quiz with my roommates as we do every week.
