2 – Talks from Guests in Industry, Further Research and Interview Preparation

We had some guest speakers, Zoe Woods and Aishling Mcelroy – 2018 graduates of UU as well as Greg Woodcock, who graduated from Swansea met uni in 2008, and made his own studio.

Zoe Woods went into the course hoping to work in the gaming industry, and bounced about from gaming to VFX and eventually did her placement in Enter Yes as an animation intern. Since graduating has worked at BBC Blackstaff, Jam Media, Blue Zoo and Framestore.  She has worked in, live action, fully CG kid’s shows and visual effects, and got to work on the new Wheel of Time show announced. She gave us description of the roles she worked in and what they entail, which was a great insight into the different job roles. It was nice to hear she didn’t have anything planned or lined up when she graduated, puts a little less pressure on us. She has been a runner,  data wrangler, 2d render lead, lighting and render artist all before finally becoming a layout artist.

She gave us an overview of being a layout artist, showing the differences in work between 3D animation, 2D and visual effects. She discussed the different studio sizes she’s worked in and the benefits or drawbacks of these different studios, and contrasting workflows she’s experienced, as well as reflecting on how the pandemic has changed the industry from her perspective.

 

Aisling McElroy also didn’t get a job straight away, working in a bar for a few months before getting a role in the games industry. Aisling worked at Sixteen South and Blackstaff Games, and has been with Italic pig now for the last 2 years. Paleo Pines, is one project she’s working on, being released very soon. Being a lead producer for the past month, producing 5 different projects, her main focus most of the time is making sure everyone is doing what they need to do when it comes to production, and supporting them. It was good to hear the differences between the game and animation industry, and how much more straightforward the animation pipeline is.

Greg Woodcock, who went to university with Alec, started his own studio Slapstick Studios . He’s worked on a lot of different stuff, console games, advertisements, mobile apps, casino games, including AAA games like Until Dawn and Call of Duty doing facial animation. He started with kind of a generalist role, modelling, rigging, texturing, animating but struggled to get a job at first since he wasn’t specialised in anything. He spoke about his first job, which he said was the most difficult to get, making a PS3 game with a start up company. He spent a few years working freelance for low pay, and eventually after he had more work and studios started to take him on. He highlighted the importance of knowing what you like, as one of his biggest issues was entering the industry with a lot of skills but no specialities. He also gave us some tips on CVs, not to over exaggerate or lie, as well as the importance of clearly showing the software we use.

I found the guest speakers really useful in finding out more about the industry, mostly the local guys. Zoe Woods highlighted current trends in the creative industries in response to the pandemic quite while, mentioning how one studio nearly tripled their employee count and experienced a lot of growth during the pandemic, when they realised employee’s could work remotely. She didn’t mention if this new trend of remote work and constant access of your computers (online) was a bad or good thing. It did benefit the studio greatly but also she noticed people would be logging in to work at 9pm etc. Even if they were just bored with nothing else to do locked at home, or really enjoyed the project they were working on, it can be unhealthy for workers and could definitely result in burnout which was one of her main concerns.

It was also interesting to hear and read about the amount of support the creative scene in Belfast receives with places like the pixel mill or the funding available from NI Screen.

Showreel Research

I liked how this showreel’s intro doesn’t just showcase their name, it also showcases their artistic skills. I feel like the music is a little much but I do like the heavy bass and beat, it really drives the editing and when muted the timing and everything flows well because of this. There is a lot going on in each clip though and they don’t mention what they are responsible for in them.

 

This title card also had an interesting way to showcase some animation skills, while also getting your name in. Compared to the previous example, I found myself actively reading the name this time compared to admiring the art in the first one. I feel as if the kinetic typography forced me to actively read it, which could be good to implement into my show reel. The text in the bottom left explaining the clips was also a good touch. I’m not sure about showing your software skills at the end, it seems like a good idea but it hasn’t been mentioned by any of the tutors.

 

I also wanted to check out a game animation reel, since I think working in games or animation would both be cool. I really liked this title card at the start, instantly showing off some animation skills. I did find this one a little long, but since its a bunch of short clips it was easy enough to watch, I did get a little bored during the longer clips though.

 

Interview Preparation/Further Research

We also spent some time preparing for mock interviews so we could get some practice for the future. This meant I had to choose a job role that I wanted to interview for. I don’t think I’m ready to actually specialise, I think I want to do something 3D so I went for a 3D modeller job, preferably character sculpting. I also thought 3D animation would be a suitable role but couldn’t find anything that mixed the both of them. I did like this role 3D Artist, but for the purpose of the interview I went more specific.

Before an interview you should research the job’s responsibilities and how this fits into the studio, as well as researching the studio itself. There are other suggestions like familiarising yourself with the location before the interview, and dressing professionally, but for this mock interview, I just looked at what’s expected of a 3D Modeller.

During the interview I mentioned my background and what made me qualified for the role, talking about shape language and the different characters I’ve modelled and how I approached them. I mentioned some things that showed I was aware of how I fit into the pipeline and overall it went really well. The feedback was all great and it was fun to get some practice in, I would definitely be a lot more nervous for the real thing though. I was told to maybe not to ask about the overtime situation next time.

 

 

 

 

 

I looked more into what people from in the industry had to say about being a 3D Artist. This channel FlippedNormals has so many great videos covering various topics, kind of as a casual conversation between two industry veterans, the only thing is they are very long and a lot is covered. They also covered getting your first job which was very useful for this module, they show and analyse their show reels that got them hired, talk about what they look for as recruiters and things to avoid. They mentioned keeping it simple and don’t try to be fancy quite often, especially when showcasing models. One bad example was an animated car which spent most of the time in shadows/low lighting followed by flashing lights – it was a very impressive render and art piece, but didn’t show off the animation or model well, which is what they were meant to be advertising for this job.

 

Since most the guest speakers have experience in the games industry, I checked out what options I had in Belfast. I have heard of the majority of these guys before, a lot of them are at the indie stalls at Q-con and all of them have members in the NI Game Dev Network discord channel.

I could definitely see my self working in games, despite what Greg said about his negative experiences with the games industry, since it was kind of a childhood dream at one point and the local scene has a lot of great stuff going on.

 

 

 

 

I used this animation job master to list find this opportunity at a local studio, similar to paleo pines its a super stylised wholesome art style dinosaur themed game. So now I have this job role in the games industry, and the animation role for Taunt studios to look at, although I am more biased towards Taunt at the minute as I’m more familiar with their work. The list of requirements and ‘nice to have’ is very useful though, could help me with developing my CV and cover letter.

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of CVs and cover letters, I checked out some graphic designer cover letters and CVs to finish out this week, thinking they would implement some cool designs. The cover letters were very bland and formal but I found some cool CVs, they were normally very lowkey and sleek which I liked. This ZEN example had a very nice logo and simple layout, so I guess sometimes less is more.

 

References: 

https://www.youtube.com/c/FlippedNormals

https://brainstation.io/

https://uk.indeed.com/

https://www.ambertailgames.com/

https://agora.community/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG2srhdMHCa4OofVCbcwRXg

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