End of Year Show Fundraising
As a class we decided to do a pub quiz and a craft fair as our fundraisers this year. I took on the role for creating posters to promote our fundraising activities, specifically the craft fair one. We had already came up with a theme for our end of year show, a sketchbook full of doodles, so I started with that as an inspiration for the theme of the poster. Benny had designed posters for the end of year show and for the pub quiz, so I colour-picked his posters so that all the posters that we had would look consistent.
I went with the the sketchbook and collage style for the poster, but I also included some more craft-themed elements for the poster as well such as a paintbrush, crayon and a string of beads. I then added all the relevant details and sent it to our class discord server and thankfully everyone liked it!
Next was putting up the posters. EJ and I asked Celeste from the Student Art shop if we were ok to put some posters up in the shop, as well as asking the front desk of the university to see if we could put poster up in the main foyer. Thankfully both gave us permission and we put multiple posters up throughout the university. I also sent the poster to Simas as he was in charge of social media, and he regularly posted the image of the poster on the animation instagram account to notify people about the craft fair. The posters turned out to be a success, as multiple people said that they checked out the fair because the poster had caught their attention!
End of Year Show Physical Display
In preparation for the end of year show, I had drawn up a couple rough sketches for potential poster designs. The first one I made showed a scared Frankie, with the ghost characters behind him. I tried to convey the ghosts’ personalities through their poses, such as Michelangelo flexing his muscles, Berlin applying her make-up and Madison looking sad as she tries to get Frankie’s attention. I liked how the characters looked, but I wasn’t too sure what to do for a background, and I didn’t know how to fill up the empty space in the bottom corner.
For my next rough sketch, I looked at how similar shows promote themselves with posters. I really liked this Ghost Files poster, as it showed the hosts, the haunted location and the ‘ghosts’ in the poster. I also really like the art style that was used in the poster, it had a very 80s look to it. I used this poster as an inspiration for this design. I had Frankie in the centre, his van and the L’Scorpio mansion at the bottom of the page, and the silhouettes of the ghosts at the top of the page.
Image belongs to Watcher Entertainment
When I showed the reference image and my version of the poster to my team, they really like it but they were concerned about trying to replicate the art style as it might take a long time to do.
I then came up with the idea of trying to recreate a conspiracy theory corkboard, we could model a 3D corkboard and then re-use drawings that EJ had made as cut-outs that are pinned to the board. This would allow us to show all the characters in the film and also fit in with the theme of our film, as Frankie is supposed to be a crazy paranormal enthusiast. It would also showcase the combination of 2D assets with 3D assets like our film, without taking too long to make either. I started by texturing a plane in Substance Painter. I used the cork texture they had, and then painted it to match the texture style used in our film. I then modelled pins and textured those as well.
I then started to put put everything together. I imported EJ’s art and put them onto planes and ‘pinned’ them to the board. Rhys sent me renders of Frankie, so I imported those and made them look like polaroid pictures that had been pinned to the board as well. I also created a lightbox in Maya and imported a camera, making sure that it matched the required dimensions of the poster.
Early progress for the poster
Next I got the logo EJ had designed, and created a background to go behind it so that the title looked like it had been ripped out of a newspaper. The only issue is that I wasn’t sure how to get the rest of the image to be transparent, as it would still appear as a rectangle plane when I applied it as a texture.
I found this tutorial which was really helpful, as it showed me how to create an alpha mask for the image.
The final stage was creating the threads of string that are tied to all the different pins on the board. To do this I drew out the shape I wanted and then aligned a cylinder to one end of the shape. I then selected one of the end faces and extruded it. I then increased the number of divisions to get the cylinder to smoothly follow the curves I had drawn. To finish the poster off, I added a sticker of Frankie’s logo to match the stickers we’d be giving out, as well as Frankie’s business card. Overall, I’m very happy with how the poster turned out!
Final Poster
Once the poster was printed, it was time to put together a physical display. EJ was in charge of putting together the artbook and getting prints of our art, so I got supplies for the items we would need for the display. I thought it would be a good idea to create a conspiracy theory corkboard like our poster, but this time using our character turnaround sheets on the board. I got the corkboard, pins and string to put it altogether. I also printed out EJ’s art of the ghosts when they were alive as I thought it could be a good idea to sign them as our characters, as it would look like Frankie had gathered their autographs as part of his investigation on the family.
We also wanted to recreate Frankie’s PC desk that’s seen in the end of the movie, so EJ brought a teddy bear and sticky notes to put on the monitor. I also bought a coffee mug and put one of our stickers on it, to make it look like Frankie has his own custom mug. If we had more time, we would’ve also liked to have tried to recreate some of Frankie’s ghost hunting equipment such as the REM pod that Madison touched in the film. Instead, I bought a torch so we could at least include one of Frankie’s pieces of equipment.
Finally, we pieced together out artbook. Instead of getting a book professionally made, we decided to just put our pages into a binder, as we thought it would fit the theme for our film. I spent time writing on the cover of the binder, to make it look like Frankie’s personal binder full of his investigation notes. We also have more basic versions of the artbook, with each version having unique pages for each member to put their CV and portfolio inside it. We also plan to print out Frankie’s business card, but swap out his details for our own and include portraits of ourselves dressed in ghost hunting gear.
Online Design and Personal Branding
I was planning to apply for graduate placements, so I had to update my online materials. To start off, I looked at the information for all the positions available and decided which ones I felt best suited me and tailored my promotional strategies to fit these needs. All the studios I was applying to required knowledge in 2D animation or knowledge in combining 2D with 3D, so I knew I had to include work that focused on 2D and some 3D pieces too.
I started off by updating my CV. I updated to show that I already have some experience working in a studio thanks to my placement year, and a lot of the jobs I was responsible for in my previous studio experience were perfect for the criteria that the studios this year were asking for. I also included my final year project in my CV as it was perfect for the kind of knowledge that studios were asking for, as I had combined 2D animation with 3D environments and characters. I also updated my list of software that I used, as I have since gained more experience in other software that I am now much more confident in, such as After Effects and Premiere Pro. Both of these were software that kept coming up in the placement criteria too, so I knew it was important to highlight these ones in particular.
Next was updating my show reel. I’ve worked on multiple animation projects that showcase new skills since I last made my show reel, so I had plenty of new content to put in. I took out the work I wasn’t too proud of, and replaced them with newer works. For my opening, I used a scene from my final year project to showcase lip syncing and for my final scene I used another clip to showcase lip syncing but this time in 3D. I also put in another personal project that I had worked on to showcase my abilities to create 2D assets and to create and rig a puppet-like character in After Effects.
Next, I put together an updated portfolio to showcase my most recent works. I made two pages to showcase my digital art and another to showcase traditional pencil art, as I was proud of these drawings and felt that they included a lot of detail.
I also updated my Art Station account to include some of my work that I did on my final year project. I plan to upload more when we have more finished shots!
My Art Station: https://jessicaswann3.artstation.com/
Finally, I did some research on each of the studios to get an idea of the type of work that they produce. I then took what I learned and applied the information to my cover letters for each of the studios, discussing what I liked about their projects and relating certain elements back to some of my own projects, to show that I already had some understanding of the kind of pipelines that they use for their own projects. I ended up allying to 6 of the placements that were available, so I hope to hear back from some of them soon!
For the future I plan to establish more of an online presence by uploading my work to social media. I particularly want to show my skills as a character designer and character artist. For now I want to focus on 2D, but I’m also interested in teaching myself more about 3D character modelling and rigging too! Now that my deadlines are over, I should be able to upload my work regularly and try to establish my own brand.