I’m really thankful to Sophie for her insight into the industry. She was kind enough to bring up budgets and day rates with us. She also talked us through having a personal as well as a commercial style to be a more successful freelancer until our personal work can pay for everything.Â
It was really good to look at her pitch examples and find out how to market our ideas and make them approachable and exciting.
She also took some time to speak to me and my aspirations. I managed to show her my Production Schedule and express my interest in Production Management. Having learnt that I previously did sculpture and was now specialising in 2D animation, she recommended I look at applying to BlinkInk Studios as they work in many different styles.
Funnily enough, apparently last year she spoke to a student in the same seat last year who is now working in Production. Fingers crossed!Â
The Making Days with Sophie Koko Gate were really inspiring. I was previously not a fan of animating in Photoshop, however, it’s the main program she works in and I was willing to give it another shot.
She gave us a lot of useful hints and tips, as well as Auto Actions which made making New Frames and Filling Lineart much more streamlined.
I do enjoy Photoshop in general as an art program and I really like how easy it is to alter and add new brushes. The biggest difference to me is the fact Photoshop doesn’t ‘cut-off’/’crop’ drawings when moved outside the canvas, as well as its transform and liquify tools compared to TV Paint.
Sophie was kind enough to share the steps for setting up our Photoshop workspace.
Here are the shots I completed during the two days. Again, I found it really helpful to be able to transform the lines in the way I was used to from illustration work.
It was nice to attend the online networking event and speak to the alumni to see where they are today. I definitely followed their social media accounts and I look forward to meeting them in person in the future.
Here are some of the notes and advice:
As a freelancer, the work-life balance is on you.
Prepare for job seeking now, don’t leave until the last minute. Reaching out to the studios now is OK.
Keep track of your process (rendering, drafts, colours).
Short courses are good for networking &expanding your knowledge and skills.
When writing a cover letter or an email to a studio, talk about what work of theirs you like and why you want to develop with them.
To show off your skills as an artist and storyteller there is no need to make a 5-minute film. You’re better off making a short trailer. Or animating the first 30 seconds of it. It will be less daunting and you’ll be more likely to finish a project.
In the UK most of the available work is preschool and commercial.
When doing prop/BG/character design, look for current design vibes and trends on current shows.
Ask your mentor to set you up for an internship.
Post your progress (on socials or a blog).
Don’t be precious with your work.
Regarding some other questions, I would like to ask:
What things do you wish you did more of while you were still at uni?
As a freelancer, how do you go about pricing?
Where do you go looking for work?
Do you follow individual studios?
As a freelancer, do you seek out potential clients to send cold emails to or do you hope you’re found by clients through your work?
Do you find it difficult to do personal work after you’ve spent a whole day/week/month being creative for work?
Ko’s talk made us more confident to become independent animators as she guided us through her process. She included details such as where to look for funding and collaborators for our projects.
She also showed us how she organises her route sheet to ensure we stay on top of our work. When she’s planning for her LAVS she not only writes the action but also the emotion behind it – something that I will be keeping in mind going forward. Because a frustrated person will walk differently from a tired person. And the subtext can be added to any action and make everyone’s work easier.
Sue Tong came back this year to speak to us again. This time her talk was focused more on the actual process of making the layout and the best practices regarding this.
Prior to her visit, I was considering painting my backgrounds in gouache as I feel much more confident choosing my colours through paint than digitally. However, she advised against it due to the fact that if I were to revise the shot and needed a bigger background, it would be difficult to add on. We agreed that it would probably be beneficial to me to paint my colour script in gouache but to paint the final backgrounds digitally.
Looking into Osbert Parker’s work was extremely interesting and encouraging. I had heard of him before when I worked for LIAF as he co-curated the ‘Disrupting the Narrative’ programme. His work focuses on collage and stop-motion, though he always expands on his style.
Following the lecture, we were encouraged to experiment with mixed media and media we weren’t as comfortable using. I focused on making a plasticine sculpture of the cat and recreating a final shot from my storyboard – when the girl meets the cat. The final image was digitally altered to achieve the night-time look and glowing effects. The overall review at the end of the class was positive and what I was aiming for – of an eerie and maybe a little creepy image.
Yesterday I attended a webinar organised by Careers & Employability at UAL, presented by Patricia van den Akker from The Design Trust.
The presentation was mostly about selling to trade shows, which h might not be as relevant to animation artists – however, having looked at THE LINE Animation Studio, there’s often more than one application to animation. And what’s there to stop us from making our own merch inspired by our own animations? Perhaps someone who likes a t-shirt will find our animation work? I think it’s definitely something I could take advantage of – and with my background in mould making and casting, I can see myself mixing those skills together.
Also, Patricia did talk a lot about marketing yourself – and I think that applies to all creatives whether you’re selling a service or a product 🙂
THE LINE works on a lot of advertising but what I know them for are their music-driven game-themed promotional/official videos – their main client is Riot Games with Valorant and League of Legends. Their work is heavily influenced by Japanese animation, and they often work on wide canvases.
Also, the way THE LINE uses a coloured lineart to the shadows that’s a more saturated line (I talk about it in the ‘Star Walking’ window) reminds me of Mika Pikazo’s art: https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/1039353/artworks who is definitely an artist whose work I’d like to dive deeper in.
To prepare myself for the graduation film, I watched Howard Wimshurst’s short video and took notes. While I knew most of these tips, it was good to get them reiterated. I also highlighted what I found to be especially useful:
Watching his video definitely made me much more excited to get started on the animation. Next up, I will be looking into case studies of studios I’d be interested in working at – I will be looking at the styles they use in their animations, and perhaps how to adjust my film to make it relevant to them.
I had a fantastic time working alongside Mandy and helping her out – I have done research, created posts, and even had a chance to try making an ident.
I spent the first few days researching the relevant hashtags and groups for the relevant target markets, as well as collecting the artits’ details. This definitely made me realise how much easier it is to make promotional posts if all the information is already prepared. It also made me realise how much time it takes to collect people’s socials to tag them accurately – please send your socials along with your films. It will make everyone’s life easier. As well as this, I got much more confident using Google Sheets.
And then I had a chance to get creative with making the Instagram posts. Mandy was such a great teacher, too – I haven’t worked with Adobe InDesign before, but Mandy took the time to talk me through the program’s features. She already made templates for me, and it was up to me to update them with new information – however, I had free choice in what stills I chose from the films and was allowed to find the best spots for logos etc. Having this experience definitely made me realise how useful InDesign is for anything like promotional posts or flyers. Having a template to follow and pre-making the posts makes the whole process much more streamlined, and something I would implement on professional pages.
Some of the images I got to put together from Mandy’s templates:
As you might have noticed, I tried to give each post some sort of a colour theme.
As well as this, I had a chance to try animating the LIAF logo. It was a simple zoom-out and sketch effect of the logo. I won’t be posting it at the moment, as I would need to double-check with the team. However, I had a lot of fun with it and experimenting in Adobe After Effects. I got to research additional techniques – like how to make hand-drawn text from an Illustrator File. And I also learned how to package the file so that it could be sent across and re-opened and re-edited – which, previously to this I haven’t really looked into and didn’t think was an option.
I also managed to go the Best of the Fest to see all the winning animations, too. I think ‘Catisfaction’ by Andre Marques Almeida definitely caught me off-guard. It was definitely one of the most bizarre stories and visuals I’ve seen – and despite having seen stills from the film previously, I totally did not expect what I was about to watch. My other two favourites were definitely the ‘Zoon’ Â (Dir. Jonatan Schwenk) which definitely deserved its award for the best original score, but the visuals were also gorgeous along with an unusual storyline; as well as Luce and the Rock (Dir. Britt Raes) which impressed me with its use of 3 primary colours in its design.
I must say, London International Animation Festival is definitely one I will be looking forward to next year!
