🌠 Fundraising & Designing for EOY Showcase 🌠
My initial idea was that I wanted to incorporate everyone in the class into the theme this year for the EOY Showcase. I felt really strongly about this idea, as I wanted something to help pull our class together as it felt like we still didn’t actually know eachother that well post covid and placement year.
I also wanted to do something very different to the previous years, which I noticed were all very cyber/computer, and sci-fi themed, so tried to think what the opposite of that would be, while still being relevant to art or animation. I ended up with a sketchbook/scrapbook sort of look.
Working from that, I thought over how exactly to incorporate all my classmates and my first thought was maybe doing “doodles” of something to do with everyones project would be sweet. The intention was for them to look rough and scribbly, but it actually took a really long time to make sure they all looked good! When I sent them through discord to my class to gauge interest everyone really liked the idea a lot, so we decided to stick with it! Below is my first proof of concept, and the beginnings of the doodles representing everyone’s projects.
To make the design as applicable as possible for as many things as we could, I turned it into a repeating tileable pattern, so it wouldn’t matter if it needed to be smaller or bigger!
Me and Simas worked together to create the logo, as I was really stuck with what exactly I wanted to do with it, but he helped with the design of the font, and I slapped the paper texture behind it!
This is how it looks together! I didn’t have it quite centered right but I was so happy with how it came out.
Once the branding was done, I helped design other elements for the EOY showcase. I was on the team working on organizing the Pub Quiz, and I designed the poster to advertise it as well as the design for the quiz itself that we used on the night! For the poster, I wanted it to have a lot of little animation nods scattered throughout it, I thought the doodle of Monty scampering off was really fun.
I ended up hand drawing all of the ripped paper I used for the title backdrops on procreate using textured brushes and clever erasing, and made variants of the patterns for every slide.
On the night of the Pub Quiz, I was behind the one behind the scenes controlling the quiz up on the screens and handling the music with help from Joseph, Simas and Jennifer. I also helped Thomas with marking which was stressful! I didn’t get any photos of the night itself unfortunately, but I had a fantastic time!
Following the craft fair and the end of all the fundraising, I put together a form to track everyones contributions toward the EOY Showcase, and then took all that info and put it into an excel sheet so we could help split up the money raised between us to cover poster costs.
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🌠 Business Cards & Branding 🌠
This was my first iteration of a business card, I was really set on a vertical card, but ultimately I wasn’t super happy with this design. I wanted to totally rebrand myself with a new icon/sona to put on all my social media and identify myself with. I went for a mix between space and oceanic/fish themes, because I love space and the ocean!
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🌠 Showreel 🌠
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🌠 CV, Personal Website & LinkedIn 🌠
This is my old CV, after a talk about it with Henry I realised that the layout was a total mess. The skill section was far too big, and the wavy bars were too vague. Furthermore, I really should’ve been prioritising my experience and awards at the top instead of crushing them in down at the bottom. I had the totally wrong idea of what I was supposed to highlight.
After my classes throughout the start of semester 2, I realised how exactly I should’ve been organising each section. I kept similar colours but I remade my CV with a cleaner and more professional design, while still incorporating my own personal imbellishments such as the stars and fish, which also tie in with my new branding!
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🌠 Poster, Art Book & Display for EOY 🌠
I had three ideas for my poster off the bat. One was based on the book that my main character carries, it’s an extremely important story item and I thought it’d showcase the actual title of the short very well. I wanted it to be surrounded by roses, which are my main characters motif. The second was a large group shot, incorporating every character in the story into it, as the characters were created by myself and my friends together, the entire cast is really important to me! The final one also had most of the cast there, albiet in a smaller number, while also showcasing the town that my character finds himself arriving at in my animation. I think this was the weakest of the three designs personally.
After running it past my friends and classmates to get some feedback, I went with the middle poster design. The layout was inspired by posters for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. This show is already a huge inspiration for this story and characters already, so it felt like a great fit, as the posters for that show also showcase a great way of incorporating many characters onto one illustration in an interesting way.
Below is a timelapse of the creation of the poster!
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🌠 RENDR, QCon and Personal Projects 🌠
This year I was accepted as an artist to sell at the artist alley this year at QCon 2024! It’s my first time tabling at an event like this, but I’ve always wanted to do it for the past few years. I didn’t think my work was at a good enough standard to sell it, but I’ve been feeling much more confident in my own abilities as of recent and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m planning to start small and I hope to work up to more next year if I’m able to apply again. I’m creating posters, badges and charms this year along with a few handmade bits and pieces!
Truthfully, juggling preparation along with my studies has been really stressful as I’m very slow at art unfortunately. Though, I plan to focus solely on my QCon preparations once my submissions are over. Below I’ve included some of my WIPs, plans, and existing merch that I’m planning to sell this year! I’m hoping tabling at events like this will help get my name out to people interested in my work, which could open me up to new opportunities in future. Fingers crossed!
I also began to create sketches of a new streaming layout/theme. I used to livestream games and art a few years back and I’ve been missing it very much! Following RENDR festival, I realised it’d be really great to branch out into many different areas such as gaming and media, and I believe streaming would be a great way to create a brand and identity for myself in these areas, as well as being a ton of fun and something I really enjoy. I planned to create a virtual avatar to stream with, I’ve done it before but I want to get a lot more ambitious with my next one of my little fish robot! I hope to get back to this soon, but plans of streaming have had a pin put in it for the mean time while I focus on my film and QCon preparation. 
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🌠 Display & Showcase 🌠
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✨ Evaluation ✨