When it comes to thinking about what makes a good CV, I thought that I had a good understanding, but I really did not, after the research that I have done to get a clearer grasp of the topic at hand, I can now say that I didn’t have the foggiest idea, although I had made different CVs in the past, now I can see how bad they were and realise that they were the reason why I didn’t get hired Previously. Whilst reading through an article about how to better your CV (Top Universities), point number four really grabbed my attention, it said “Highlight changes and growth”, this is really pushing what you have previously learned in your different past jobs, more so than just listing things that you think are skills gained from your previous positions, it goes in depth, showing how you helped a certain company and the outcome of you doing so, I believe that this would really draw in any recruiter/employer.

Point number six states “show industry insight” I gravitated towards this one in particular because this would not just be good for the CV, this would also be amazing for the cover email, showing a deep and intriguing knowledge of the industry would please a recruiter/employer as they don’t have to read another boring email, they get to read maybe your take on a controversial opinion within the industry, I believe that this would make them want to talk to you and see what else you think about the industry, if you can find something that the company does, it would be good to go deep within the industry’s media presence and find problems within so that you can elaborate on them and give your thoughts, problems that the average job seeker may not know about. I believe through my research that this would be highly looked upon.

Continuing with these points, the last one states that you should use ‘power words’ such as “adaptable, innovative, implemented and achieved” when talking about your prior work experience, these words will make you CV look strong and well put together, showing that you have delivered excellent work and learned from your earlier jobs, allowing you to climb the ladder in different industries. This leads me on to a different point of interest, according to ‘TheCVStore’ website “In 2017, around 70% of all UK recruiters use some form of ATS, with more than 90% believing they enhance the recruitment process by automatically whittling down potentially hundreds of applications, to a smaller and more manageable selection.” ATS stands for Applicant Tracking Systems, it is a document scanning algorithm used by businesses to weed out CV’s that are not up to par, and only keep the top CV’s, usually based on keywords used within the document, after which an actual human will look at the remainder of the CV’s that have been uploaded and start to whittle down the algorithm’s selection, I don’t agree with this article’s methodology of dealing with this, however I do believe that finding the right keywords and incorporating that information within your CV is key to surpassing the algorithm’s choices, therefore giving you a far greater chance of securing an interview.

I have previously written cover letters, but never a cover email. It seems to be relatively the same process, since there is not much information about cover emails online, I decided to look at cover letters as I believe that they are the same thing, just in different formats. The main website that I looked at for information was Indeed, this let me know that the information was genuine and credible. The opening that I am basing my cover letter on is a motion graphics animator for Whitenoise, they have previously done work for Ulster University and seem to have employed quite a few animation graduates from Ulster which I believe will give me the greatest chance of getting an Interview and hopefully securing the role.

Whilst researching what it takes to make a good showreel, I already knew that I was going to base mine around my 3D modelling work, so I focused on ones that portrayed 3D designs as I believe that they have a different presentation style than showreels that present 2D animation. I’d say that the trickiest part of developing my showreel was getting clean 3D renders of my assets that were timed well, especially because you don’t know if it’s going to turn out how you hoped until the render is finished, this was particularly difficult as I was rendering all of my 3D assets out in the cycles render engine, although I put the render speed to Realtime, this still took quite a while to get right. I watched multiple videos detailing what makes a good showreel, including one called 25 tips to create an animation demo reel, even though I am going for more of a 3D modelling showreel, this video was still extremely helpful in terms of what I should show on my showreel, such as the software’s that I used and also a mixture of different techniques, that is why I chose to include groom, substance painter textures and some textures that I baked out from shader editor nodes made from within blender itself. As the renders took so long, I did not get to add some things that I really wanted to, One thing that I wish I could have done if I had more time, would be including renders of the viewport model (not textured) along with renders of the wireframe, this seems to give a showreel a far more professional and refined look, I will definitely be adding this to my showreel In the coming days, I just wish that I could have had it in for this assignment.

Looking for animator roles within the job market can sometimes be tricky as a lot of the jobs that I was getting pushed seemed good from the get-go, but reading more into it, I would usually notice that it was for a leading role that would not have been applicable to me, I regularly peruse apps such as indeed, linked-in and NIjobs as this lets me filter between local jobs and jobs that can be done remotely so that I would not have to travel, there is also a great app that I use called UpWork, it is a freelance app for nearly anything to do with 3D, from modelling to full blown animation work, people even look for CAD work done on there for more mechanical designs, you get a certain amount of points every month and you can use said points to put your profile up for a job that you choose, If you have a good portfolio and a good track record, then you will most likely secure the job, the only downside is that there are a lot of low paying jobs on there that should pay a lot more for the amount of work as the person hiring the freelancer gets to set the price, however you can rebuttal their price with a proposition for a new figure.

 Bibliography:

https://www.topuniversities.com/blog/7-simple-effective-ways-make-your-cv-stand-out

https://www.thecvstore.net/blog/cv-ats-white-font/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynVANlM9ZXQ&t=1004s (25 Tips to create an animation demo reel)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fwq_BJVfuo&t=894s (How to create a good portfolio for a 3D modelling job)

https://uk.indeed.com/career-advice/cvs-cover-letters/email-cover-letter-example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g73jcSBtJCk (Click send on the perfect email – Indeed)

Working on this module has been the most eye-opening challenge yet. It has given me so much more knowledge that I would not have been able to learn If animation and games design did not crossover, from learning the imports and exports into Unreal Engine 5, To learning how to properly model and texture an asset for a game, I feel that my role within the group gave me the greatest experience as I worked on both environment and character. 

Before the module had started, I had put myself down to work on the environment, I thought this would have been the best suited to me as I really enjoy hard surface modelling but that’s not what I stuck to throughout the full module as you will see. When we began this module, the lecturers told our groups to split into smaller pairs of two people and to produce ideas for a game that you would like to make, Me and Deaglan became close very quick, and I feel like we knew that we would have some similar ideas. Deaglan and I had come up with some particularly promising ideas and then backtracked, realizing that they sounded remarkably similar to previously made entertainment, for example, we thought of making a game in a clothing store in which mannequins chased you around the store, but then Deaglan realized that that same scenario has happened on Doctor Who, we did not want to have our idea too similar to already made entertainment. We did this a couple of times, but it never became an issue because we could bounce ideas back and forth very quickly. Eventually, we produced the unique idea of having a demi-demon run a rundown almost macabre restaurant. Then the groups got called back together and every pair told their ideas to the lecturers, the lecturers then chose the best idea, me and Deaglan’s got chosen, we began work on it. At the start it was quite easy as me and Deaglan had hashed out a lot of the base game already, letting us get straight to work, we did have a big meeting at the so that we could refine the overall idea, this was more for the game designers side of things, but it was good that the animators could have an input, our input was also needed at times as we could say if certain things were possible to do or not, the whole group got along well, it was important to have a good bond between the animators and the game designers, this would make the whole process so much easier. 

During one of the meetings that we had, Jack had drawn up a sketch of what he thought the building layout should be, I told him that I could take it home and get it drawn up digitally and he agreed, so that’s what I done. 

We then thought that we should keep making different iterations of the map layout and I said that I’d do it just so that I could keep it in this same style, I just wanted to help with the building blocks of the design, so then I came up with this design going off of the main one and trying to create something more stylised and refined. 

Jack then texted me asking if he could do the map blueprints as he was a level designer, up until that time I didn’t realise that we had a level designer, and I didn’t mean to steal his role from him, there was just a big misunderstanding, I then apologised to Jack and got on with different work whilst also offering jack any help if he wanted it. We looked at different references and picked a couple that we thought would fit our scene nicely, based on those references I decided to go and start making some 3D assets, I started with something small, just a candle holder with an almost gothic style, as this was before we had made the style guide. 

These where the two iterations that I had done, I then shared it with the group to see their opinions and they liked the one with the more bevelled look. I did prefer the sharper look, but the majority wanted the rounded one so that was the one that we went with. I then decided that I was going to make a medieval wall sconce as I wanted to stick with the medieval gothic style, I originally made it with a high poly count just to get a grasp on the look that I wanted to go for, the finished asset ultimately was not used but I did like the outcome of it. 

This, then, was around the time that we created the art style guide; after doing so, it gave us a greater capability of creating objects more refined to a certain style. The art style guide was an immense help in asset creation as up until that point everything seemed to be up in the air. Prior to the creation of the art style guide we knew that we were going with a graphic novel style, but the refinement of our style was key in the way that we would move forward. I then went ahead and created an oven, a dishwasher and a phone, I made the oven first and at the time I was thinking of making every object in the kitchen monstrous, but when I really thought about it, it would have made the kitchen look too busy, especially for a place that the player has no reason to go. After these, I went ahead and made the table and chair combo, in my head I already had an idea for the chair design but didn’t know what I wanted to do with the table, I wanted to keep the chair corners sharp, almost going for a German expressionist feel, elongated and pointed, after making this I knew how I could tie the table in with it, I made the table more bevelled but gave it the same ornamentation underneath so that it would look like an actual set. I made most of the big assets in the kitchen, including all the tables and the machines including the dishwasher, the oven, the fridge, the freezer and the plug outlet that lines the room, I tried to keep it looking like the references by making the outlets plastic with no open wiring, I made the machines metallic whilst keeping the fridge and freezer more of a glossy white. It came together nicely and gave the kitchen a nice aesthetic. 

It was around then that Zoe needed help with the characters, so I took on the bulk of the demon character, thankfully Zoe already had a base mesh made so this made it easier on me to go ahead and complete the rest of it, I started with the detailing of the demon, this process was finished quickly and was enjoyable as the base mesh that Zoe had done was relatively easy to work with, then I was on to the texturing which I thought that I would have struggled with because on previous assignments, I wasn’t that fluent with substance painter but this time I feel that it went well. My first attempt at the texturing didn’t go to planned as I created a somewhat realistic rendering of the demon, I showed the team and they wanted some of the details pulled back a bit which was fair, so that’s what I did and to be fair the second rendition matched the art style a lot closer than the previous example. 

I made the animation process more difficult on myself as my knowledge of weight painting was pretty much null, it was made more difficult as the apron was a separate mesh that was conflicting with the main body mesh resulting in a lot of clipping, but after tweaking the weight painting for a while, I finally got it working the way that I wanted it to. The demon only needed one animation and that was of him swinging his arms whilst walking to attack the restaurant goers. I then moved on to the waiter as Zoe had needed someone to work on the headphones model and the animation for it, the model itself was a simple model and texture as it was a small asset that would be hard to see in the game, the one problem we did run in to was how we were going to implement the headset on to the actual character and we came up with an idea of giving the headset its own bone and having it connect to the hand for the first part of the animation and then for it to clip to the head so that it looked like the character was wearing the headset but unfortunately this issue never got resolved as the games designers were quite busy working on other things around the game. 

After that was when Niamh made the task sheet so that we could get the end list of tasks done out and choose who was doing what, this was particularly useful as now we had a final list and the endpoint was in sight. I picked up quite a lot of things on the list that I knew I would be comfortable doing that may have been harder for others to do, this worked great as I could get the rest of tasks done in a truly abbreviated period, I made a new set of front doors for the restaurant, a new door for the kitchen and two different signs foe above each of the doors, a new fence model as the previous one was a plane with a texture, I made a new rules page for the game this also was not implemented on time, I had made a new asset for the floor and gave it a texture to tie in the whole kitchen as previous kitchen floor was the same as the outside ground.  

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this assignment especially because it let us work with the games design team, it was different from any other assignment we have had, and I believe that I have gained a great deal of knowledge whilst working with them so much so that I am planning on working with a few of them in the near future on different projects. This assignment has taught me a lot about the game workflow and how to work in a professional manner with individuals that I had not known before the start of the assignment. 

When doing research for the art guide, I already knew which way that I wanted to take the graphic novel style, I wanted to push the dark grunge aesthetic and have a sort of disturbing feel to the overall environment, so i started to delve in to more dark and haunting games to find the prop and lighting that I thought would be good such as Bioshock 2 and Bloodborne.

The Bioshock franchise has always made visually stunning games without having to use realism, I believe this is because of the way in which they utilize the light caustics and ultimately blend the natural and unnatural lighting, and creating a juxtaposition in the two different colour schemes, I believe this could look visually appealing and lending to the genre of the game if implemented properly. In a blueprint that jack made, it mentions two “haunted windows” at the front of the restaurant, this could be a good opportunity to use a stained glass design and really hammer home a colour scheme, and sticking with the Bioshock unnatural lighting, it could be that dull orange, I think overall that this could make for a really nice ‘spooky’ atmosphere.

I believe that the props and environment could be influenced from Bloodborne all whilst keeping the simplicity of overcooked 2, It gives off a really harsh Gothic feel whilst also lending itself to the demonic vibe of the game, This should create a nice setting that matches the characters within the game itself. The grungy textures of these types of props would also greatly influence the overall style of our game.

The hotline Miami games are fantastic at showing comedic illusion, they can build a game that looks almost child-like with the colour schemes and the overall design and then make the player run around killing people in it,the style versus the game play is completely juxtaposed but I believe that is what makes this game great. I believe that we could possibly establish this in our game although it does run the risk of being too different, therefore causing a negative reaction from the player.

Differentiating from my previous example, we have overcooked 2,a game in which the style completely matches the gameplay creating a visually fun experience, I believe that even though our game is going to be on the darker side, we could still try the simplistic style of this games props, creating the effect previously mentioned on hotline miami 2.

I have also Modelled and animated a few props based on the overcooked 2 simplicity to see what we can work with, however at the minute I just have base colours on them, in the near future they will be textured to look more like the props in Bloodborne.

There are also some static props that i have modelled although they are just rough concepts at the minute, but the lantern captures the feel of bloodborne that I want, but it is far to dense in polygons, so I will remake it with a lot less polys.

I also blueprinted out the first 2 map variations just to get a feel of layout and area size compared to props, this was good as it gave us a rough guide for size and shaping.

1st draft.

2nd Draft

These blueprints really helped me to gauge what type of props we will need and what shape they should be, this was not the final iteration of the blueprints however as jack has took over doing that, but I believe this was still a good guide for environment design.

Howl’s Moving Castle

1. Through the immersive realism of studio Ghibli, I believe that the style portrayed in Howl’s moving castle would be geared more towards young children – young adult.

2. The film in which I’m talking about was originally a British novel by Diana Jones, but If we are talking art style, we could look at Hayao Miyazaki’s other films, they all seem to have a crossover animation style with subtle changes each time, for example, my neighbour Totoro would pull back in terms of the realism as i believe it is more geared towards children then the others.

3. When looking at Howl’s Moving Castle, you seem to get a satisfying feeling from it, almost like you are put at ease, I believe this is because of the dream-like art style. It allows the viewer to feel comfortable whilst watching the film.

4. I believe that the art has a significant impact on the overall storytelling, as I stated previously, The piece allows the viewer to feel comfortable, therefore enhancing the viewers grasp on the storyline and characters.

5. I believe that this piece has quite a strong art direction, it knew where it wanted to go and achieved this very well, comparing this film to Hayao’s other works, you can see how much his art has developed over the years, for instance most of his films made in the 80’s and 90’s seem to try to do the pastel look, but look quite washed out in comparison, I believe Howl’s moving castle was the first time he reached his desired art style.

6. Graphic novel art style, Gouache Colour Scheme, neoclassicism and magic realism inspired artwork, semi-realistic, Eclectic Architecture. I believe that these would best fit the overall art style and help artists to stay within this art style. Originally i thought that the work was done with pastels, as the colour scheme looked this way, but