Betty...character design concept sketches

Betty was our 2nd year character based project. Everyone in the year was working on character back stories,  then we were voting the best ones. Also in this task we were concentrating on acting, staging, follow through and overlapping action. Fabric was a key element of character design. 

Character back story and idea came from me. Betty is around 50 years old, single woman, owner of a pub  likes her drink. Her hobby is striptease and internet (mixed together).

 Here you can find concept sketches.

Design and market Week 19 Organising London trip

We are officially going to London. On Friday we sat down together and planed all our transport details. Me and Daniel are travelling by bus, Sarah and Charlie are flying. On Monday 13thFebruary I decided to try and contact more companies and this time asked about having a tour not an interview. The response was absolutely amazing! It seems that companies are more willing to organise a tour rather that agree to an interview.  To the previous list of companies we added another 3. So in the end I was responsible for contacting 4 companies: The Mill, Smoke and Mirrors, Cinesite and Dneg. I felt proud about it since English is not my first language and it was a huge challenge for me. 

Design and market Week 18 interview

On Friday the 10th we interviewed Pat Imrie 3D digital artist and instructor. He specialises in Modelling, Texturing and Digital Sculpture .He also teaches 3D Production Practice using Maya and other industry standard software. He worked for Digital Tutors creating training material for one of the largest online sources for digital training, and Sylvain Chomet's Oscar-nominated animated feature 'Le Illusionist, (The Illusionist, 2010) and the BAFTA nominated/winning series KNTV 2 & 3. His client list includes Digital Tutors, STV, Channel 4 and BBC Scotland.

After speaking to Professor Mike Press I thought it will be good idea to look at pattern of employment and new trends in the industry. I thought it will be a quite interesting for us to contrast a full production company and a freelancer. 

For more information about Pat please visit:

Design and market Week 18 Team Meeting

On 9 February 2012 our team got together. We discussed questions, strategy for London trip and delegated tasks.

Final question list 

 
Employment:

 

• How do you recruit your talent
• What is the usual entry road into the company
• Do you do everything in house, do you have freelancers/outside brother company
• Special things that make candidates stand out/recruiters look for?
• Do you have a high turnover of staff?
• Do you run any competitions/initiatives for young people?
• Do you have any universities that you get a lot of staff from?
• What advice would you wish to be given when you were starting in the industry?
• How does the pay work? Is it a salary or are you paid per job?
• Because you’re all in the same area, do you find staff move between companies?
• Does this create competition?
• How do you employ? contract/hour/project/freelancers

 Personal Questions

• how did get involved in the company
• do you enjoy your job and what’s your favourite part of the job ?
• What is your typical day? What are the hours like? Do you take work home
• Why have you changed your employment profile/path?
• Are you allowed to do something outside company/ do u have time for Freelance or personal projects
• Do u have time for social life

Client related/advertise/

• How do you market yourself /advertise
• Who are your clients?
• How do you develop relationship with the clients
• Do clients tend to come back? How do you sustain your relationship with them
• Do you knock people back, Do you have so much work that you have to reject customers
• Do you take small commissions or do you just work on big projects

Company itself

• How the structure of the company looks like
• How company was created/What is the history of the company
• What is the official company status (stock shares etc.)
• Are there any values that you particularity believe in
• What makes you different from competitors, what is your USP
• What are your plans for the future, plans for growth ?
• what are the aims of the company
• How many people do you employ
• Are different areas of the company encouraged to mingle
• Do you collaborate with other companies
• How do you network in industry
• What is your approach to the training, How do you respond to new technologies
• Do you train your staff
• What is % of females in the company? Is it family friendly?

VFX

•   Can you say that in VFX industry you can talk about niche? If yes, do u have one
• Can you run individual VFX business
• What sort of amount of money you need to invest to start up VFX company
• Do you have any deals with the software companies?

Additional :

• Is it nice to see your work/company work on the telly?!
• Is there a dress code?
• Do u have a lot of parties
• Do u do charity work
• How often do you hear cursing from behind the computer screens
• what is the pay like
• what was the biggest company “fuckup”

Roles

Sarah: consent forms, emailing tutors
Daniel: introduction leading the interview
Charlie: presentation, maps 
Jo: equipment

All of us decided to research professional profiles of our interviewees and gather as much information as possible. Linked in seems to be a fantastic tool for it.

Design and Market . Week 18.. 6 February 2012

On 6 February me and my friend Laura McNaughton visited Professor Mike Press and had an interesting conversation about the Design and Market Module. After few lectures quite a lot of animation students realised that maybe the module is not really targeted towards them. We had few concerns that we discuued with Mike Press. He suggested few things:

• Assessment 2 think of it more like a strategy instead of business plan, plan for next 12 moths after graduation, what is the strategy to set up  the brand, come up with an idea for ourselves, what is the identity, strengths, how to present yourself, promoting your personal brand
• finding founding for films
• things to think of:
• how to collaborate and sustain working relationships
• overcoming difficulties with remote location/where you are based
• how to develop  flexible model  of work
• how to find people that you can relay on
• how do you network in industry
• understand pattern of employment, freelance/collectives
• how companies employ
• what skills/knowledge  they expect from graduates
• use of business language e.g. niche, segment, market
• how do you develop relationship with the client

•  tips for the interview
• letter to  yourself : what advise would you give yourself , what advice would you wish to be given
• avoid the pitch , be familiar with  their work
• what skills/knowledge  they exept from graduates
• did your patter of employment change
• how did you develop  your pratice
• trends in industry: skills, employment
• aproach for trainning , how do you respond to new technologies, do you train

• use of animation in diffrent areas e.g. distant learning, web design
• it is not about one model it is about what fits to you

After talking to Professor Mike Press I had idea about interviewing a freelancer and looking at VFX industry in a bit broader context than just one company. I asked Pat Imrie, a 3D artist and guest lecturer at DJCAD if he could be our interviewee. He said yes and the interwiev was set up for 10th February.

Here is Pat's website: http://www.patimrie.com/

Design and market:Week 17 Getting in Touch

While writing emails to my chosen companies I thought it would be more appropriate to have personal referrals. I spoke to lectures, professors and fellow students in order to make first contact.

I also used the opportunity to speak with the Mill lecture team while they were visiting DJCAD. They gave me contact details to one of the recruiters, who we interviewed when we visited London.

However I didn’t have all the contacts I was looking for so I phoned and emailed companies directly.

Here you can find an example of the letters: 

Design and Market . Week 18. Questions

On 3rd February 2012 myself and Sarah, were brainstorming ideas for the questions  Below you can see what I came up with, some of them are research question, some are interview one:

• How company was created/What is the history of the company 
• how did get involved in the company to person interviewed
• how do you get your clients
• How do you market yourself /advertise
• Who are you clients
• What makes you different form competitors
• How the structure of the company looks like
• What are your plans for the future, plans for the growth
• Do you do everything in house, do you have freelancers/outside brother company
• How do recruiter your talent
• Can you say that in VFX industry you can talk about niche? If yes, do u have one
• Can you run individual VFX business
• What sort of amount of money you need to invest to start up VFX company
• Do you have any deals with the software companies
• What is the usual entry road into the company
• What is your profit
• what are the aims of the company
• Are there any values that you particularity believe in
• How many people do you employ 
• What is the official company status (stock shares etc.)

Also I had a close look at VES - The Visual Effects Society. In my opinion it is a good starting point for the research.