For this part of the final week, I will be talking about the final changes that I have done to the CV and Cover Letter before sending them away a final time.
Research into the role of a 2D Animator
Before I get into the CV, I decided to change what I am going to be applying for. Instead of it being a character designer, it will be about being a 2D Animator. The reason for this is that I found animation to be a lot more fun to do than creating concept designs. With that said, I did some research in what does a 2D animator mean but also what roles can you have. Here are links to the information that I used for this research:
2D Animator Job Description, Salary, Skills & Software | CG Spectrum
2D Animator – Computer Careers
What is a 2D Animator? – 90 Seconds
The 5 Types of Animation – A Beginner’s Guide – Bloop Animation
So what is a 2D animator? Is an artist that draws different poses on a two dimensional surface like a piece of paper and then flickers between them really fast to create the illusion of movement and life in a drawing. However, in this role there are smaller sub roles in the industry and it depends on what exactly you do. On one hand, there is the way of hand drawn animation which requires roles like Key Animator which is responsible on creating the main frames of an animation alongside the inbetweener helping join these actions together. On the other hand, there are those who use Toon Boom or After Effects who are responsible with animating the rig of a 2D model on screen created by by the artist who drew the character parts and the rigger who rigged all of those parts together to form a character. An animator will also act as the foundation of the visual side of the project, as they help concept designers and the animatic have an idea as to how the information will be presented on the screen on both the rig animation side and hand drawn side. After the animation is done, it is give to an editor to take care of how the animation will look in the end with visual effects. In the middle of that, for the hand drawn animators, it will be given to the inking and colouring team to finalize the animation before being passed on to the video editor.
For me, I will be focusing manly on hand drawn animation as I enjoy how smooth it looks in motion in comparison to rig animation. So, lets get into the changes that I made in the CV and Cover letter.
Cover Letter
For the cover letter, I had to extend it by adding some information about myself, how I found the company and the job role, and show some knowledge on my role as an animator. The reason for this is to one, stand out from the other cover letters and two, to show that I have knowledge when it comes to the industry and to show that I have knowledge of the company. Once it was done, I exported it as a PDF.
CV
For the CV, the only thing that I did was add links which will direct the person viewing this to my best animated projects that I have created so it would be easier for the employer to access and added small information about my role regarding each of the projects that I have worked on. With that done, I send it away as the final thing.
Overall
I feel like this really looks a lot more better in general and I have confidence in my CV, Cover Letter and Showreel. I really enjoyed the feedback that I got throughout this unit. It has helped me learn how to do better research when it comes to the subject of applying to a job.