Task 1-
Animation is a wide and broad industry, with a lot of jobs that need to be completed by people with various skills, some of those jobs are better suited to other people and some people who struggle within one job sector could find they do better in another sector.
The amount of jobs that are available within the animation industry itself is staggering, allowing people from all walks of life and qualifications to possibly find some work, for example, just in the industry alone a person could work as a:
Storyboard artist, Key animator, in-between animator, sound designer, soundtrack composer, character designer, motion capture actor, reference actor.
But one job that I want to focus on, and one that I myself take a great fascination in, one that I hope to do in the future, is a voice actor. Voice actors are actors who..well act with their voice, easy? No, it’s not, voice acting in itself requires talent and subtly to pull off, it also requires a lot of direction, and input from character designers. Voice actors are required to analyze the scene that they are going to do, often without the final animations, so they need good direction for how the scene is going to play out.
If pulled off right the audience won’t even think about the fact they’re watching an animated character but instead will be so sucked into the world that they simply believe that is just the character speaking. Some great examples are shows like Cowboy Bebop, Robot Chicken, and Mark Hamill’s performance as the Joker from the Batman Animated series
If however, done incorrectly the character and the voice can feel disjointed and ruin the illusion that you’re watching a character on screen, and just makes you visualize the VA acting in a booth. Bad Voice acting was quite prevalent in the early 2000s, especially when it came to video games like the House of the Dead games, which had notoriously bad voice acting.
Task 2-
Starting off with an internship in the animation industry can be a great way to climb the ladder and can help someone achieve their dream job, but starting off as a junior role can help someone get their bearings.
Some of the jobs included are:
But one that I myself have had some experience with, is Graphic designer. Graphic designers can include a wide variety of potential jobs one would need to do in their job, from designing logos to be used in the animation, even designing concept art for certain characters. A graphic designer focuses mostly on logos and designs that populate the world, which can include buildings and other miscellaneous designs.
Some of the essential requirements for this job include:
There are many parts of this job I could perform well in, with UX design, anything to do with Photoshop and other adobe products, as well as the attention to detail and communication skills, however, there are certain aspects I’m unsure of, or simply do not have the skillset for, for example, Figma or zeplin.
Task 3-
The artist that I ended up choosing is: CoreyLaddo
He’s a Source Filmmaker animator who has been animating for 6 years, getting his start by making small short videos in Grand Theft Autos movie maker engine, and by using Adobe Premiere to composite other videos on top of one another.
Later he moved onto making videos using source filmmaker, a Free animation tool that can be downloaded with a game launcher known as steam. Which allowed him to use famous video game character to re-create videos using said characters, with each video causing his animation skills to improve, even going as far as to be asked by the game maker “Royal Rudius Entertainment” to help with some of the cutscenes in their game “hunt Down the Freeman” an offer he refused..and for good measure, the game turning out to be a failure in the eyes of many.
Whilst Corey hasn’t had much commercial work outside of this offer he has gained a large following on social media and is currently earning money from both Youtube and Patreon, he regularly produces content for both youtube and Twitter on both a weekly and monthly basis, showing how much he’s improved, with being able to pump out animations quicker.
Corey recently created his own personal showreel: https://youtu.be/5GsEEH_Lq_A which is a mix of, original animation for the introduction and a showreel of his best works.
Corey has used his time to create a lot of varied animations, his work has become very recognizable in the world of SFM animations, mainly due to his work on the remake of “Once in a lifetime” by the talking heads which sits at 1.2million views on youtube, with his most popular being a remake of a popular home pet video.
Corey has used what others find funny and unique on the internet to his advantage, pumping out content people want to see, and content that people will find funny, this is something he has continued to do over the past 2 years, and he keeps improving himself and his content with each upload.
The only real critique I have of his showreel is that he doesn’t show much in the way of how he made the animations, one thing I want to see In an animation like that is proper evidence that they worked on it, I feel as though it can make a showreel stronger as it shows how someone works.