CV
What makes a good/clear CV? What makes it stand out?
Upon researching the CV further, I discovered many informative videos and articles about what makes a standout resumé.
A common point was that the ‘Education’ section should never be at the top. This is because oftentimes specific education is not important to our area of practice and employers – if they were to start with this – may immediately be uninterested. The details of where you got your degree or high school grades is most likely irrelevant to them in this moment. Instead, job experience should go first.
Job experience – even if minimal – can provide insight into how you may be able to actively fit into the company in a useful and productive way. For example, if I was to discuss my job as MIA Technician and my familiarity with Macs, PCs and the Adobe suite, this immediately would be intriguing for a design studio such as Crown Creative as they know I have been working with the same tools as them for two years (I will do this).
The Futura – a design channel I follow regularly – also had a lot of useful information about CVs. They said to make sure to put your most recent work/experience first as this gives an honest and live reflection of where you are right now in your career, and sets you up well for an interview. They also stressed the importance of consistency, both in terms of tone and graphic design. They discussed how it is important to hold back on writing too much information about Soft Skills as your Experience should cover a lot of these.
Another good point was that they believed – from a design perspective – that the CVs with a rating system for your software skills have little function as a design. This is because software like Maya, After Effects and similar simply can not reach the 10 in that rating scale. There is so many plug-ins and possibilities with these softwares that it is misleading and massively subjective to provide such a binary representation. A better solution may be to do sub-headings for the level of skill – therefore allowing it to be somewhat subjective. This could include ‘Strong’ (list softwares), ‘Familiar’ (list softwares), etc.
Design
See my Pinterest board here.
As you can see, I would like to take a minimal approach that respects the key principles of graphic design – just as The Futura’s video suggested, including rule of thirds, colour theory, hanging lines and relevant/complimentary text sizes. It is important I show that I can do this to the employer as they are obviously partly hiring me on design skills.
For the result, I ended up creating a three-tone palette of a mid blue, pale warm grey and a dark cool grey instead of black. I overlapped my name across the rule-of-thirds’ first section, resulting in a clean and hopefully modern look. The fonts, sizing and concept of my first and last name coming together matches that of my showreel (see below).
Cover e-mail
I first used Jeff Su’s video on cover email essentials to get me started on some key foundations as I was developing my own.
The cover email evokes emotion in the reader – something that a CV can not do. This is ultimately its goal – to make the employer remember your name.
“A good one won’t guarantee the job, but a bad will ensure you don’t get an interview”.
He suggested this structure:
- Hook the reader. This hook could be something about the company.
- Expand.
- Achievements. Tether this around the factors this role is looking for.
- Core skill, relevant experience. “Asset” is a good word.
He also stresses the importance of being purposeful. Each sentence should have a reason for being there.
The Guardian also had a great article on cover emails, where they suggest including a couple of points as to why you like the company/want to work there. I will apply this to my own letter. It also says to put your phone number in, but I have attached my CV which has all the necessary contact information, plus they have my email in the email itself. For a real cover email it may be a good idea to attach the contact information at the bottom/in the signature of the email.
I looked into several of the local creative studios when thinking about my cover email –
- Crown Creative (https://www.crowncreative.com/): A lot of Belfast’s exciting new cafes and restaurants have brand designs by Crown Creative, so I was really intrigued by the idea of working for them. It would be exciting to be at the heart of the city’s design future. Their style is very minimal, graphical and illustrative yet they do little-to-no motion/animation – perhaps this is something they could consider.
- SixteenSouth (https://sixteensouth.tv/): SixteenSouth is a children’s animation studio in Belfast. I really like their work on Odo the Owl, it is highly successful in its style. Work like this would be really fun to play with.
For the local creative company that I am going to tailor the cover letter to, I am going to go for the Junior Designer position at Smarts (https://smarts.agency/about/jobs/) – a design agency and studio in Holywood. I have done a lot of photography assisting over the past few months and many of these jobs had Smarts as the client, so I got to know a few from the team and what they do quite well. One thing Alec had mentioned was, if applicable, mentioning a point of contact within the company is a great way to establish a connection in the email. Smarts enables me to do this and experiment with this tactic for this assignment. Therefore, I feel like the company would be wise for me to practice my cover letter on. I am also able to use my connection with them to stress what I like about the company, and how working there would be an exciting thing for me. I am considering applying to Smarts for Placement as well, I spoke to them about it briefly. I was working specifically with the Art Directors, filmmakers and graphic designers.
I believe my 3D skills in Animation could add something to the company. I have been watching their socials and have seen that they are getting into real-time and animation, specifically with Metaverse influencers, which is very unique and forthcoming. Therefore, I think they would find interest in an Animation student.
The job description itself is pretty limited (see above), so I had to dig further into what ‘Junior Designer’ means. Workable says that a Junior Designer ‘[participates] in various design projects from concept to completion, producing drafts, prototypes and engaging design solutions.’ Applying this to Smarts and their work, I can imagine this means having a junior position on certain film shoots, animations or graphic design solutions. Therefore it is important that I state my skills in the appropriate software (Adobe, Maya, Unreal etc) as well as my approach to other creative processes I have been through.
Showreel design
Many people online have recommended that a junior showreel be between 30-60 seconds with a focus on the best work you have – and that this work should be reflective of what you would like to do more of in the future. Within this, you should start and end with the best of the best work, drawing the employer in and leaving them with a good impression so that they will remember you. I am going to start with my live action MIA film from A-Level, as I was really proud of the compositional and grading choices, and end with shots from my Unreal Engine project.
Because I missed Semester 1 of Animation (I swapped over from Graphic Design), I did not have the 2D Animation Group Project which I immediately knew would open somewhat of a gap in my showreel. However, over Summer, I worked hard on my concept design using the Semester 1 content, so I decided to include this instead. I spoke to Alec in my support session and he said a good choice would be to add motion to it. I did this by creating a parallax effect. I split my drawings (and later, some of my photography as well) into separate layers front to back and set up a 3D camera in After Effects. When you hit ‘C’, you can move the camera around and key it accordingly. This allowed me to get some really cool and unique movements that I believe made my showreel stand out. See results here.
For the edit itself, alongside other showreel examples, I looked at a lot of Apple adverts for inspiration in terms of tempo, tone and energy. I love the way Apple edit their ads; I believe it’s the cutting edge of short-form edit designs, and it felt right for a design industry showreel to take inspiration from the biggest design company in the world. This one really intrigued me with the use of ease-in/ease-out, fast-paced text. My one concern was how fast the text goes, but I knew I could solve this by keeping the text to a singular key word when possible, as well as displaying it in a large and clear font.
My song choice was an Apple ad song, namely ‘For the Moment’ by Lex Junior. I felt it was funky, fast and matched the array of work I was putting on display.
Digital Arts Magazine stressed the importance of keeping title cards simple and that you should display your name, contact info and website. So this is what I ended up doing. I added some quick title cards for each ‘category’ I was showcasing to bring a more profound sense of structure and narrative to my showreel. Initially I had longer titles such as ‘Concept Design’ and ‘Real-time in Unreal Engine 5’ but upon researching these ads and showing to my family/peers, I worked out that these were too fast. I instead opted for more key words, such as ‘Concept’ or ‘Real-time’. I found this worked much better and was actually readable.
See my showreel here.
Other areas to consider
There are many different places to look for animation jobs, local and further away:
- NIJobs (https://www.nijobs.com/) – this is a good website for companies that use it, but I can tell it is not that widespread as a lot of the active jobs at the moment do not appear here. Therefore, sometimes it is good to look at the company’s website (for example, DogEars and Smarts were advertising jobs that were not listed on NIJobs).
- Indeed (https://uk.indeed.com/) – very similar to NIJobs, more jobs come up and allows for greater UK.
- LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/) – more competitive, but I find most job information is here.
Interview
One piece of advice I will remember that we got this Semester was when Alec said that the interview should be two-sided, i.e. you should be judging them in the same way they are judging you. After all, uyou are likely going to spending your 9-5 at this place, with these people, and therefore it is important to gauge your own thoughts on the environment.
I spoke to my boss about interviews and she backed this up. She was saying how important it is to see how the environment the employers set up is. Is it cold? Tense? If so, question whether this is a good working environment for me. There is no reason why it should not feel welcoming, comfortable and calm – especially in this industry where people are going to be working under extreme creative pressure at times.
As for the interview itself, I looked into various articles for help.
Robert Walters Group had some good pointers about handling interview anxiety, namely, to embrace positive self-talk, and how important it is to trust yourself and not let any doubts shroud your persona in the moment. One thing I consistently noted from guest lectures (inc Matthew Hamill and Niall Doherty) was the recurring idea of imposter syndrome that you may feel around interviews, but how important it is to remember that it’s simply not true, because you are there at the interview. They have asked you, and they have seen work that is your own.
NB: Here is my portfolio! I plan to update it soon.
References
Cover Letter
YouTube.com. (June 2021). Write an Amazing Cover Letter: 3 Golden Rules (Template included). [online] Availabl0[ ine at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUhDP30IRKk.
Guardian Jobs. (n.d.). Writing the perfect email covering letter. [online] Available at: https://jobs.theguardian.com/article/writing-the-perfect-email-covering-letter.
CV
Futura, YouTube.com (2018). Resume Tips for Designers – HOW TO STAND OUT. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO6zV5C0COc [Accessed 22 Dec. 2022].
Apple text effect AE tutorial:
YouTube.com. (Nov 2022). Create Text Animations Like Apple – After Effects Tutorial. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRb4_kBUOr8 [Accessed 22 Dec. 2022].
Editing to the beat on Premiere
Editors Keys (2019). Edit To The Beat Adobe Premiere Pro CC | How-to Guide. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFvRuvcYsTY [Accessed 14 Dec. 2021].
Calming interview nerves
www.robertwaltersgroup.com. (n.d.). Top tips for dealing with pre-interview nerves. [online] Available at: https://www.robertwaltersgroup.com/news/expert-insight/careers-blog/how-to-calm-interview-nerves.html.
Showreel Tips
Digital Arts. (n.d.). 13 tips for creating the best animation showreel. [online] Available at: https://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/motion-graphics/13-tips-for-creating-best-animation-showreel/