For preparation for the end of year show I had to come up with a design for my poster.

Initially, I was going to draw the poster but decided against that as it would not fit the same style as my 3D project.

While planning, I had come up with a concept for my poster in a sketchbook. It consisted of the treeline of the forest as a background, with Violet’s sword placed into a stone. I wanted to keep the design relatively simple as too much detail would make it confusing for the viewers.

For the process of creating my poster, I used my environment assets to create a mockup scene in blender.This allowed me to simply change the aspect ratio of the camera to fit the size of the poster, making the process easier than using a more graphic design approach. This was then rendered in Cycles with a low key lighting setup to create the effect of nightime. This is shown below.

I decided to add my character into the background with the trees – in a way to portray the theme of inner battle against oneself which is present in my short film. This image was then sent into Photoshop to convert to the correct CMYK colour format and to add some more details such as text and some visual adjustments. The completed poster is shown below.

I was pleased with my result and I think it came out well compared to my plans.

The next stage of my process for this EOYS was to create my artbook. This was essentially the ‘creating of’ my short film – showing some of the completed stages of Pre-Production. To create this I decided to use Adobe Illustrator. This was a new program which I had no previous experience in and therefore it took me a while to get my head around the controls and navigation.

When my artbook was almost complete, the dreaded crash happened to me. Illustrator completely crashed and had erased all my data, including the autosave, meaning i had to go back from scratch.

The process of creating the artbook was relatively simple though, as it just mainly was the placing of images and text. I decided to use Artboards, a feature in illustrator to act as pages to eventually combine them to a PDF file. For the cover I just went for a simple use of my poster, and consequently used the poster with a Gaussian Blur as the background for my individual pages. The final result of this is shown below.

In the artbook I covered my storyboards, environment assets with a mockup environment, Violet’s character design and process and their sword model.

I also included a short synopsis at the start of the book as well as a short page about me, including a QR code which links to a Carrd website with my contacts, showreel and Artstation.

Finally, I also created a business card design to be printed with my contacts and the same QR code. The design of this was quite basic with just text and symbols and was created in Photoshop. There was a slight issue with the prints, as one of the bat image retained its background even after removing it. It was not an issue on the PC just the printed version.

When it came to the physical presentation of the display, I decided to play into the forest setting of my animation. I used dark green fabric as a tablecloth as well as some fake ivy leaves draped around the desk and monitor. On top of this I used a small wooden holder for the business cards. I am aware that this design may be a bit simple, but I believe its simplicity works, bringing a highlight to the showcase rather than overloading the desk with trinkets. The final set up is shown below.

I also completed a showreel for promotion of my animation. Due to personal reasons, my final animated short isn’t completed and I’ve had to get an extension. Because of this, my showreel only shows the assets I created for the project. On top of this I also included animations that I created last year for the games design course. I quite liked how these animations turned out  so i wanted to include them. The showreel is linked below.

To also help with promoting my content, I created a Carrd website which is accessed through a QR code with my contact details and links to portfolio and showreel. This is accessed below.

https://lucadonnelly.carrd.co/

When creating my CV, I made sure to research current job postings for a 3D Generalist available on sites such as Indeed, to make sure I can recognise they key skills employers are looking for as well as some buzzwords connected to them. The following are job descriptions and the skills they are looking for posted by Industrial Light and Magic and StudioB which I used as examples.

ILM:

StudioB:

The major common denominators I recognised between all the listed job postings I looked at was first and foremost Teamwork and Communication skills, as well as high knowledge of the 3D/VFX pipeline and skills such as modelling, texturing and shading.

Another common similarity for what the companies were looking for was experience in certain 3D programs. The most common mentioned were Maya, Houdini and Redshift. This fits into the current industry standard for programs being used and are ones I do not personally have experience using. I am a fast learner so I’m sure I would be able to pick them up quickly. Although, I am aware of the very steep prices required for the licenses for these programs and therefore it may be a good while before I can afford to learn these programs. The main ones I would be especially interested in would be Maya and Houdini as well as possibly Nuke, out of a more personal interest.

This is the main shortcoming I found when comparing my current skills to what employers are looking for within the animation industry and it is a hurdle I will have to eventually overcome. Luckily, some companies are still welcoming knowledge of Blender for their requirements.

Overall, I enjoyed having a chance to look into the current industry to help me get more familiar with what studios are currently looking for. This was very helpful to me and my professional development.

I am looking forward to the End Of Year Show and to showing off my work. I am aware that with my differing deadline situation compared to other students I will have to find a way to properly present my work on the computers. I am planning on working on my project a lot when leading up to the actual show, so I can update my showreel and displays accordingly.

I really enjoyed the promotional side, such as the posters and business cards. I especially liked creating the Carrd website and writing a bit about me in the artbook. The website should be a nice setup to promote myself online as well, as it can be updated and changed as time goes on. I plan to use this as a sort of ‘Hub’ for my work going forward in the future to help build recognition online.

I am still unsure of where I plan on going after this degree, I plan to take a year out working, travelling and doing commissions to hopefully get a better sense of where I belong and where want to fit into the industry.