Category: Professional Practice
Professional Practice – CV, Cover letter and Show Reel research and reflection.
Professional Practice – Cover Letter and research.
When composing my cover letter, I decided to base it on a role that I managed to find through NIScreen:
Quality Assurance Coordinator.
I have been a long time follower of Bellular Games’ youtube videos, in which one of the founders talks about one of my favourite games, World of Warcraft. The studio is currently working on their first game, ‘The Pale Beyond’, which I have also been following the development of.
Before I wrote my cover letter, I took note of the core and desirable skills that the advertisement is looking for:
Essential Criteria:
- Good attention to detail
- Comfortable working within a team environment
- Good written/verbal communication
- Interest in video game development
Desirable Criteria:
- Experience of using Unity Game Engine (or similar)
I wanted to ensure that I demonstrated that I posses all of these skills through my CV:
Dear Hiring Manager,
I hope this email finds you well. I am writing regarding the advertised internship role “Quality Assurance Coordinator”, which I discovered through the NI Screen website.
I am currently a second-year animation student, with a particular interest in the gaming industry; I spend much of my spare time playing video games. I have been a huge fan of Bellular Studios’ YouTube channel – ‘Bellular Gaming’ – over the years, as I have great interest in the game World of Warcraft. Furthermore, I have been keeping up to date with the development of Bellular Studios’ upcoming game ‘The Pale Beyond’.
I am equipped with skills in both 2D and 3D software and am well acquainted with Unreal Engine 5. I spent the first semester of my second year working, with my team, to set up an environment within Unreal Engine; I created several of the scene’s major assets, established the scene’s lighting and filmed a cinematic within it. In addition to this, I have previously worked within a Quality Assurance role, during which I was required to demonstrate accuracy and great attention to detail.
Please find attached my CV, Portfolio and Showreel.
Thank you for taking the time to read my email, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Kind Regards,
Caity Kerr
I believe through outlining my interest in Bellular Games’ youtube channel, and my interest in World of Warcraft, I am demonstrating some research and knowledge of the studio and aligning my values with the company. By listing my knowledge of their upcoming game, ‘The Pale Beyond’, I am showing interest in video game development whilst further demonstrating knowledge of the Studio’s productions.
Talking about my assignment in Unreal Engine in first semester of second year, highlighting my group work in this, I am showing my proficiency in the desired criteria as well as my ability to work as part of a team. By citing my previous job in a similar role of Quality Assurance, I am showing my experience and a good level of attention to detail.
I believe the communication in my cover email reflects my good written and verbal communication skills.
Professional Practice Week 6 – Research and Reflection, CV.
I wanted to do some research into CV templates and how different kinds of artists went about organising their CV information. The graphic design artists have a very methodical way of presenting their information, making their CV’s look a lot like newspaper articles or advert spreads. This was a bit too OTT for me, I think that they are a little too text heavy, and I find them quite difficult to follow. However, I did like the use of font and format with these; It made me think a lot about how I am going to layout my CV.
I much prefer illustration approaches to CV’s, in which most include some sort of little drawing with their information. I think that including a little bit of your own art adds a lot of personality and gives an indicator of art style very easily. This is something that I plan on including in my own CV.
I then looked at some potential colour palettes. CV’s that included the colour yellow would often catch my attention, and therefore the colour palettes with bright yellows included are the ones I am aiming for. The look I am going for with my personal work and social media includes a lot of green, and when I initially made up my CV I stuck to this. However, I am looking for ways that I can bring in accents of yellow, which I have colour picked from my own avatar on the top left hand side – I believe the best way for me to achieve this is through the symbols I have created and possibly through the lines that centre my title texts.
I need to ensure that the text is better aligned under my education section and I need to add a symbol above ‘experience’ to balance out my CV, which at the minute wastes a lot of space at the top.
After receiving some feedback from Alec last week, I edited and experimented with other colour combinations:
I felt that the coloured icons weren’t represented in terms of colour enough throughout the document, and therefore didn’t look right. I tried making the entire CV yellow, however this still didn’t feel right either. I listed further things I wanted to make changes to in the above PNG.
After some experimentation with colours, and some analysis of content, this is my finalised CV:
Professional Practice Homework – Week 2, Showreels
This week we were asked to look at showreels that we thought were well designed with a good title card:
This showreel feels very fluid and well designed to me, showing both process and finished work, as well as the title card at the start being very clear and easy to see.
I really enjoyed the feel of this showreel too, very fluid with great examples of style as well as showing both finished and unfinished pieces of work. The title card isn’t very clear, without a full name or obvious points of contact, which I think lets it down a little.
I also took a look at the showreel of one of the animators I follow on instagram, Havtza:
I think that this showreel is a little too long, and there is no title card – it comes at the end – but this is assuming that people are going to get to the end of such a long show reel. In saying that, I love the way that this artist animates. I think their work is super fluid and very fun, and this showreel shows their abilities in both 2D character and 2D VFX animation.
I downloaded this track for my show reel, as I liked the vibes it gave. I also wanted something sort of magical/mysterious to go with me work, as I feel like most of my work is quite magical and fantasy based.
I made the following two animations as intro and outro frames, with clear links to my contact email and my portfolio:
I have ensured that all of my branding is fairly consistent throughout my industry facing materials: My CV, showreel and Caard.
After some revisions on the advice of Alec, this is my finished show reel:
I intend to replace the first scene of my showreel with my body mechanics animation when it is done.
I also created my own portfolio.
Finalised showreel updated with body mechanic animation:
Professional Practice – Week 1 homework
Task 1:
- Portfolio of work made in Maya or 3DX Max showing ability in character animations for realistic human characters.
- Show understanding of main principles of animation, both from an artistic and technical perspective.
- Rigging and modelling are also very useful
- Should understand pipeline for animation creation and implementation into a game specifically.
- Strong interest in animation for games specifically.
- Portfolios catered to general CG animation will be ignored.
Task 2:
Jing Liang Linked In – Jr Concept Artist
- Degree in Computer Animation Arts, Masters in Digital Effects
- Summer Internship in lovelove films, made storyboards and 3D hard surface models.
- Illustrator for Twinkl Education Publishing
- Jr Concept Artist NDreams
Showreel
- Showing sets and scenes in 3D and how they were put together at each stage.
- Shows both stylised and realistic works
- I believe also showing VFX project
Graduate Showreel
Roles: Director, Vis. Dev. Artist, Lead Texture Artist, Look Dev., Lead Renderer, 2D Animation, Compositor, Animating
Career Journey
Seems to be at the beginning of her career journey, did well in school and collaborated for final project. Also took a summer internship.
Seems to be interested in concepting and the beginning creative areas of establishing art styles etc. for a project, which is something that I would like to be involved in.