For this module, I was involved in fundraising for the end of year show. My role included writing pub quiz questions, and keeping communication with the team through Discord. I assisted in a number of essential areas, keeping track of the pub quiz and helping finalise everything.
On the day of the quiz, I printed the questions/answers for the markers as well as documented images I had prepared for my round of ordering the movies from earliest to most recently released.
My end goal is still a 3D Animator after graduation, but following my 3D Generalist placement last year at Buck Eejit Games, I’ve learned to be less picky with my role as I have other skills to offer that don’t necessarily involve being a 3D Animator. I’ve gained additional skills like learning how to create shape keys in blender which helped me with my major project, so this had a direct correlation with improving my animation skillset, as well as generally improving my resourcefulness and problem solving capabilities.
Before placement, I planned on working for an animation company upon graduating, but now, a games company seems more appealing. However, my aversion to freelance hasn’t changed. Some people can handle freelance work and thrive under such an environment, but I know my limitations, and freelance would be too stressful for me to even consider it a viable career path.
When applying for industry jobs, I learned you don’t have to be the best skill-wise, but as long as you seem to be pleasant to work with and have a willingness to learn new skills and improve existing ones, you may be the preferred candidate over an expert lacking these collaborative skills. Similarly, Henry reiterated that having confidence in your own abilities is important, even if you don’t fit some of the desired criteria (such as having at least 2 years industry experience), you can still get the job if your work is what the company is looking for. But to reach the interview stage, you need a good CV and showreel/art blog (and if required, the cover letter/email) as this is the company’s first impression of you and your work.
Knowing the importance of having a good CV, I endeavoured to improve mine. I am still generally happy with my CV’s layout, but its content needed some adjustments. As I now have industry experience given my placement year at Buck Eejit Games, this is the most crucial addition, replacing information that feels outdated or less important in showing off my skills. This being final year, I can also add how I made a group animated short film and my responsibilities. In general, additional software experience extends to blender, Unity, Character Creator 4, iClone 8 and XSens MVN, hence adding these logos to reflect that I have experience using them.
Additional changes to my CV include changing the colour scheme for the end of year show, so as to be more cohesive with the CVs of the other people in my major project group (Acacia Radcliffe and Megan McColm). The three of us found a colour scheme that looks good with our poster and the rest of our display, and we decided to mainly stick with shades of red, orange and blue as these are the colours of the characters and button. I made my CV mostly reflect Hopper with the orange and brown, along with a red border on the side to reflect the button.
My CV for the display is shown below:
When applying to companies as a graduate, I will tailor the CV to emphasise the areas and skillset most relevant for each company.
Things required for the end of year show include a poster, artbooks/design decks for our projects to give extra information about the project and the processes behind it, our showreels, and the items we include for the physical displays themselves. Business cards are optional, but I included them as they give the industry people a method of contacting me should they be interested.
The poster is very important in showing an idea of what the short film is about, and towards the start of this module, Henry instructed everyone to create a few rough poster designs to use to narrow down our final design, even combining elements from several designs. My group created a section on the Miro to gather references of other movie posters, and for stop motion specifically, we found a few notable things we could implement:
We plan to implement a lot of these in our poster designs, and looked at lots of different movie posters for general inspiration:
Planned genres for our short film:
I also came up with a few taglines we could use:
We also had to come up with a motive for our short film, and ours is to not let anyone stop you from accomplishing your goals, as Hopper is a thief trying to escape from Claude the security guard.
With these elements in mind, I created these very rough poster designs:
My ideas behind them:
Megan created these ones:
Acacia created these ones:
Due to prioritising the major project work (and helping with the pub quiz in my case), we didn’t start finalising the poster design until later in the semester. I took a few of our rough poster designs, placed the characters in the relevant positions in the scenes and added lighting to create these renders:
For posters 2 and 3, I added the following placeholder Google images to give a better idea of how the backgrounds should look before someone draws them in a similar style:
Posters 2 and 3 with the placeholder images:
I messaged Mike explaining my thought process for the lighting:
After looking at every poster render, we decided on the second one with help from Mike and Henry, but Megan proposed a different angle to give better silhouettes:
We also agreed that Megan’s concept art of that design was the best version, so we decided to change the poster from 3D to 2D.
With the final design chosen, I adjusted the angles of the characters and button to better reflect Megan’s concept art to help Megan with the shadows:
Our final poster:
Megan’s 2D poster was the best execution, and I’m happy with our decision to switch to a 2D poster.
For my showreel, although I am still proud of a lot of the work featured in it, there are a few areas I replaced with more updated work. As different Azri rig walk cycles appear a few times, I swapped them with the Hopper and Claude walk and run cycles for more variety, especially since these walk/run cycles are designed to look stop motion. Although I’m planning to eventually include areas of the short film, I won’t for now. I’d possibly like to enter the short film into film festivals, so don’t want to include anything from the short film in the showreel until I get the permission as I don’t want to risk breaking rules.
My updated showreel:
I wanted to incorporate one of the short film characters in my business card, and I thought it would be a fun idea to have Hopper holding a box containing my email address as if she’s trying to steal it, reflecting her role in the short film. I also reused the background at the start of my showreel for my business card for more cohesion between them, and specifically chose Hopper for my business card because I used her colours in my CV.
My business card:
Since I wasn’t looking to make an extravagant card, I’m very happy with the simple design as it doesn’t look cluttered. However, when printed, I noticed the shadows for the fingers were too subtle, making it harder to tell what was being shown. In the future I would rectify this by reducing the lighting to make the glove darker.
We looked at previous years artbook examples on blackboard as a guide. We concluded we should have sections dedicated to storyboards, concept art, character/asset models, test renders, final renders and final poster. The artbook is still in progress, but it will be done in time for the end of year show. In the meantime, I made this potential background for our artbook pages:
The portal, characters and button are reflected by swirls (portal) of orange (Hopper), blue (Claude) and pink (button), with laser beams reflecting their presence in the short film, and all elements come together to make a background I’m proud of.
We figured our display should have the theme of a crime scene at Claude’s desk in the aftermath of the short film to reflect his sudden disappearance. We came up with a list of items including yellow tape, (fake) security cameras and Claude’s items (hat and (fake) flashlight), and having our CVs in manilla folders to fit the crime scene theme.
Display:
Overall, I’m very happy with how our display came out. As the display is supposed to act as Claude’s desk, the desk’s cluttered look from the CVs, business cards, trays containing stickers, Dimension Box, artbook and other miscellaneous items (some belonging to him) fits with this idea. The pieces on either side of the artbook are a good way to draw attention to our artbook, with the Dimension Box behind it highlighting the Box’s importance in the short film. The yellow tape and CVs in manilla folders are an excellent way to highlight the desk has become a crime scene. We’re thinking of adjusting some elements for the end of year show such as Claude’s vest being on a chair and replacing any placeholders such as the artbook and people’s CVs and business cards with the final versions.
To promote my work, I have a showreel on Vimeo and my models on Sketchfab. They can be accessed through my CV and Linkedin. I know Linkedin is a good way to make connections with people in the industry and enhance my job prospects.
Showreel:
Sketchfab:
https://sketchfab.com/chloebowman/models
Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chloe-bowman-4042291b8/
I also have plans for the group to submit our short film, “Dimension Hopper”, to local film festivals to gain exposure, but this needs to be discussed with the rest of the group first.