This year I applied to the Belfast enterprise program. I have been attending weekly sessions with mentors about starting an online business. One of the things I would like to run on the side is an art shop, so I have been having meetings with people who have successful Etsy shops for advice. The program gave me financial advice, and taught me how to deal with clients and how to dictate a contract. They also made me a business plan for the next to years to calculate my finances and costs.

Business Cards

I attended the Animation Dingle festival in County Kerry at the end of March. It is a big networking opportunity for animators across the country. There is events such as pitch and a pint where you go across tables and pitch yourself to these studios, tell them why they should give you a job. I set out to refine some business cards of my own for this event, I looked at what I had already done, I made the background lighter so the text would stand out, as my tutor advised in the feedback that this could be a problem, the text needs to be legible. I put a white outline on the cards. I printed them at home to see if they work, with the illustrations in the background and they did, so then I ordered a batch from a local print shop. I received good feedback from my cards at the festival, people liked looking at them, and looking into the different illustrations. I believe this is good and will be memorable, whoever I give the cards to will be more keen to keep them and my contact details.

Design Deck

I have two books, one is The art of Away with the Fairies with information and images from my film the other is a portfolio of other illustrations that I wanted to include. I purchased a notebook and pasted printed images into it. I cut out some artwork from my sketchbooks and pasted them in too. I made a collage for the front cover and put a still of Tommy and Biddy in front of in, then for the back cover I have the same collage but Tommy and Biddy have their backs turned.A reader will be able to tell the story of the film by looking at the pages on the right, which have a series of still shots from the film and storyboards. On the left I included extra illustrations of concept art and inspiration.

CV

Upon feedback from my old CV I gave it another pass. I decided to make myself a new one in Adobe Illustrator. I gave it a nice pink background and stylised the text . I included the same cartoon image of myself that I have in my business cards, my tutors told me that would be a good idea. I was also advised from feedback that my CV was too text heavy and that experience should be above education, so I cut out some of the text and re adjusted it.

Poster

I researched further into poster design and watched some tutorials

My tutor advised me not to have the text so close to the border and to also resreach further into the style of text I would like to use. I looked at celtic iconography from Newgrange, the tri spiral and triangles and incorporated them into my title.

I drew Tommy looking scared, and put the tree in the background, and behind it Tommy’s cottage. I decided I didn’t want to include Biddy in the poster as it would spoil the story, so I included the bird which sits on the fence, who is alluded to be Biddy. I put a tint on everything in the poster except the title, Tommy and the bird so they would be the focus, as they are the focus in the story.

Showreel – I updated my showreel to include scenes from my film –

Portfolio

I made an Art Station account and I am building my portfolio on it. I will have sections centered to different parts of the production pipeline, so if I wish to apply to a background design role, I can link my background design work.

https://www.artstation.com/mullydoodles

End of year show display

Here is some pictures from my display, I am quite happy with how it turned out! Instead of painting my board I nail gunned wrapping paper onto it, which turned out just a nice. I wanted to do something extra then as well, so I ambitiously painted one of the backgrounds of my film onto it. I made a sculpture of the tree and mug to include. I hung my A2 poster on the board. The board then looked busy so I decided to not stick anything else onto it except for a QR code at the bottom. I’m not sure looking back if I should done a painting on the board, I felt like doing it as I wanted to do something to make me stand out as everyone was doing something extra, I feel it may be limited as people can’t see my artwork easily hung up on it, so I will need them to look at my design deck. I don’t believe it is a big problem and I am still very happy with how it turned out!