My Contributions to Fundraising:

Because Fundraising is such a important part of the end of year show I wanted to make sure I could contribute in some way to the planning rather than just relying on other people or making monetary contributions, From the beginning everyone seemed happy with the idea of a pub quiz and craft fair (I made sure to attend these meetings and tried to volunteer where possible). As I hadn’t really contributed to the idea development I went and secured one of the minor prizes by asking the manager of Beleaf what he could donate as a sponsor and received 2 free smoothie vouchers. I also reached out to a friends to see if the studios they work for might be interested in going. The studios invited included YellowMoon (They didn’t show up), Enter Yes (2 employees showed up), Jam Media (Said they would attend but I did not see them there. I made sure I attended both events to show my support as well.

 

EOYS Display Pieces:

Stickers:

I made a series of designs that could be used as stickers as it is a cheap (or so I thought) and easy way to attract interest to our display. I made a series of test designs:  

The first one would be order as a test print as was not originally meant for the display but I did decide to add it to the final layout to allow some people to get them.

The third version was ordered in a larger amount as it best showed off both characters and was overall really cute.

Tarot Cards:

The tarot cards went through numerous design alterations with these only being a few, I knew I wanted to create them regardless of the potential challenges to create them as it really fit the theme and it would be a great keepsake. I decided the fully 3D design would not be the route to go however as it didn’t provide the result I wanted. I made the card using Photoshops water texture with a number of filters to give it a much more pleasing colour palette. I researched into Tarot cards and their design to influence my design such as all the cards using real card names and real numbers with the full card using reference of another fool card and the Star card doing the same as seen here:

Tom’s Design definitely looked like a cat but as it was heavily based off of a template it strayed off Tom’s actual design and lost its resemblance so I asked Conor to create a new sketch and ended up with a final product that much more resembled our Cat. I then designed a base template for the back cards to all follow, Compositing the 3D models into the cards created a finished product I was so proud of and wanted printed. Printing would turn out to not be an option as It was just too expensive with a single set (78 cards – 24 Sets) costing £45 on top of stickers and business cards etc. I didn’t want these to go to waste though and did order both Stickers and Magnets for the display.

  

Poster:

I originally created a Poster concept at the same time as Conor (We created almost Identical designs independently). As we had such similar ideas and I was already making the Tarot Cards at this time I let Conor take the concept to its final design.

I researched into fonts and found one that gave similar design to the God Of War Ragnarök art book font. This font gave a more clean Nordic almost a relic feel that I really liked, I was originally searching for something with more Greek undertones but this was a great alternative given the time frame.

 

3D Printed Coins

   

I made a separate 3D model of the coin we were using in scene 1 with the intent of 3D printing coins that people could take with then as trinkets, this was a fun challenge as I had never used the filament before and needed to take a couple of test prints to get the right consistency and flow without the print breaking etc.

 

3D Printed Skull

Having the option to print Deaths skull was great as I was able to have the perfect piece to put on the table and draw in peoples attention. This model required testing like the coins but provided less issues. For submission I only had a smaller version but as seen in the scale difference in the last picture for the EOYS I will have a realistic full sized version. The biggest challenger for the skull is connecting the floating pieces as I want to retain the design aspects but thankfully I was able to order Cake pop sticks which were completely clear and connect the skull that way.

Art Book:

I didn’t really know what I was doing for the Art Book so I created a really rough template and asked Henry for feedback on its layout then made a few adjustments, once getting a thumbs up I tried to bulk it up and match the design as much as what I originally created. I used many of the tools Photoshop had available to keep it concise but felt some extra written sections were worth keeping in. I asked Conor to source the images so he could be more involved with the development.

Business Card:

I made a mockup of how the card could look using rough images from google and a broken pose of my model. This was an idea of how to put the card together with the goal being to get a 3D render of this style of shot in Unreal keeping the design very simple and based on the project (I decided not to use this however as I wanted to make something a bit more interesting to look at and this meant I wasn’t able to think of many creative choices).

 

I made this Business card next Leaning very far into the design of the final project  and ended up really disliking it because of just how cluttered it felt, I had originally intended to try and create a version using only my own art work in hope that might help but decided to change to make a card I would use for future instead of bottle necking the design to only this project.

 

I went through many, many, many designs using the Death rig in the idea that showing his controllers would be a fun way of showing off my interest in perusing a specialism in Rigging and the posing showed I am not overly locked into a business mindset but a creative and fun one. While the cards ended up taking a lot longer than expected as this first pose was more interesting  the final two images were my chosen design as they had much stronger staging and drew line of sight to the most important places where as my name was visible in the first one the roles felt out of place and tacked on. I then grabbed the QR code of my Link Tree and added it rather than having any personal information immediately on the card itself. I also ordered the cards to be rounded because I keep lifting business cards and getting my thumb pricked on the edges

 

Promotional Strategies:

I took the time creating a Link Tree to better collate my links in one place so it could be placed on my business card but also had the flexibility to be updated without needing to remake the cards and QR code. I made sure all the major links were included that would make the ease of use and navigation fast for any potential employer looking at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updating my Online Presence and Application Material:

CV

to prepare for industry professionals seeing my work I wanted to make sure my CV was in its most up to date format. I went through updating sections to better reflect my current skill set and provide better insight. I replaced the Youtube link to a more updated version of my showreel (Although It will need updated again once I complete another version including “All Aboard’s” pieces.

I decided to replace the irrelevant work experience and opted to add in a months long work experience compositing to reflect my wider range of expertise. I changed the characters on my CV to keep a consistent theme between my CV and Business Card.  Having spent a long time trying to develop a cloak in marvelous I felt I should also add that to the section featuring my skills and software knowledge.

Online Portfolio

I added everything I contributed on to both Sketchfab and Artstation to better build out a online portfolio, I need to go and add their textures still though

Showreel

Now that I have additional work I decided I needed to update my Showreel. I had done this relatively recently enough so I was able to plan what sections I wanted to replace easily so I could focus on just showing my best work off, I decided to alter the pacing just a bit by also removing the end License code as it was unnecessary to be there in the first place. Here are the comparisons below:

 

 

Because My favourite shot from All Aboard also features a lot of character interaction I decided to make sure I included that in my new edit.

 

Display Layout:

Me and Conor made a mockup of the display and workshopped it a bit until we were happy with the feel and look

We determined the other side of the table would benefit from some spiritual iconography and gathered candles to fill in the design. We printed the artbook as a template to hold the place of the actual version we ordered, I also only printed 2 CV’s as this one doesn’t have the correct Showreel link and I was going to edit that before the EOYS.

 

Self Reflection:

Looking back I do feel as the brunt of the tasks were on me as I felt I was taking more of an initiative for completing tasks and coming up with Ideas, I never shot down any of Conor’s ideas but Conor didn’t present much either so towards the end of the Art book I took a step back and made sure he helped by gathering most of the images I didn’t already have and ordering the book itself. Overall I was really pleased with the design and look of final products as they were high enough quality to happily show off to peers lecturers.