Animation Relaxation 

Week 10:  Industry talk with Priya Mistry 

https://www.priyamistry.co.uk/portfolio/

priyamistry.design@gmail.com

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Pryia is a part time lecture at the university mainly teaching first years the fundamentals of drawing and colour theory. I met Priya earlier than most people in my class as she conducted my work review this semester and she seemed very nice and listened to my concerns and gave me feedback and suggestions for progression and what to specialise in this was very helpful moving into the animated short project.  I had the chance to chat for a while and learn about her own views and opinions on the work and her background and how she came from animation course in wales to be come a matte painter then now currently a free lance illustrator. I also discussed in length how the university environment is supposed to be more self directed and both her and myself felt like people in the class still need their hands held and shown or taught how to do things and they don't know how to learn or doing things for themselves as they are stuck in the school mentality that everything will be handed to them. We discussed where i should go and what to specialise in and to try and take a step back instead of working myself to hard to prevent myself from burning out and how i should progress and move forward for the next project and my work in general.  In the review she showed me some of her work and give me a link to her website to look at the professional way that i should try to replicate it for both my blog and portfolio for showcasing my efforts and work in the projects. In the lecture she showed of her employment history and her background of where she came from and showed off her website and projects along with her employment history, she showed off some of her early work and some of her most recent work that convey very different styles and colour some while working in companies and rest as freelance illustrations she was currently working on.

Pryia is an illustrator, 2D animator and character artist who has worked for several companies over the years including :

Google
BBC
WIRED
The Guardian
Relish Broadband
Yahoo
Prospect Magazine
Monocle Magazine
Bauer Media
Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital
Balance Magazine

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I really liked here work on Relish as it is simple but yet impactful along with the use of complementary  colour and clarity in its design.

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Pryia did not have an easy time after graduating due to the recession causing her to struggle to find work in the beginning  and had great difficulty finding employment within the first year after graduating year. This changed when she moved to Belfast from the University of Wales, where she studied animation. She got a job at Flickerpix after moving here that was only supposed to last up to  6 weeks but she ended up staying for 6 months making friends and networking in the company and moving around the companies. Pryia then began talking about some of her other more recent work ventures and her recent work as a freelance artist. She then went on to discuss the importance and necessity of a good and memorable CV that stands out to employers otherwise it will be trashed or discarded. Along with a very well designed and worded Cover letter. They cannot be to long as they should be straight forward and should give a brief introduction or insight of you as a person and what your skills and qualities are. Along with your education and  all your experience or employment history should be visible and if you want then include any hobbies and interests. She also went on to further discuss about the use  of Show reels and portfolios for finding employment and using it as one of the most effective ways of applying and being hired for jobs along with the use of a well organised and interesting portfolio showcasing your best work. To show the showreel in a professional manner use Vimeo, do not use Youtube as it is tacky and less to be looked at by employers. Use Artstation to showcase only your best work in the form of a portfolio.

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The Do's and Don'ts of cover Letters and CV's:

Cover letter 

Do :

Add emails and website links to your portfolio and showreel and contact info so people can get in touch and reach you via various methods email is the most professional instead of using social media.

On your websites and social media be mature and don't post any inappropriate, controversial or offensives material etc this will affect your image and a company won't want to hire you also don't post a load of drunk photos of your self this will make employers think you don't take things seriously.

Make it flow well and  have a driving navigate that carry's the story from start to finish start and end on something strong. Make everything easy to read and clearly labelled with credits and collaboration on any group work listing your contributions make it simple straight forward and easy to read so use a clear font and big writing etc.

Make links to email and hyperlinks to websites stand out using hyperlinks and a bright contrasting colour so they can be read and stand out more, make them big and clearly visible with a certain format eg. centred font.

Don'ts :

Do not have to much detail it is not a CV and if there is an employer won't read it and will instead throw it in the trash as they haven't the time to read it all and through it so it will be chucked streamline it to the essentials.

Be friendly and not arrogant keep your ego in check especially when talking to clients and potential employers do not slabber or bitch about people or behind there back find alternative ways to vent as you may never know who is listening and this may ruin your job opportunity.

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CV's

Do's :

Keep information streamlined simple and straight forward making it easy to follow and navigate.

Add in soft and hard skills for the job. 

Add in technical skills  and the software you are fluent in.

Don'ts :

Overload or cram the CV with information keep it short and sweet and relevant to the job at hand specialise it for the role you are applying for and only apply for a single position not several in the same company as they won't take you seriously you are applying for.

Add in any relevant work experience or references you may have this shows your employment history and any other qualification you may have acquired that may be desirable to an employer or show you in a certain light where they will look favourably on you.

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Portfolio :

For the portfolio you need to be ruthless in what you show and you need to have excellent organisational skills showcasing only your best work. It is best to update this several times over a year and make sure it is up to date and showcases the latest work at the top being your latest work or career stuff.  Create a website to house all your stuff and edit it and make ongoing refinements as you progress or have a page on a website specifically for the portfolio separate from everything else. When adding in group work it is best to specify your role and add captions or a sentence underneath a post on what you contributed to team as well as giving credits to your other team members this shows you are nice and truthful and not cheating by claiming ownership of stuff you didn't do.

There should be a mixture of quality and skills in your work from experimentation to final high quality renders from client work to personal projects and lastly university projects. I should be mainly focused on your personal work but if you don't have much work then use all you have at your disposal including the group work. This is what will determine if you will get hired or not as they will look at your work to see if you would be capable of fulfilling the job role.

Show you can work in different forms and styles and even merge the two like creating realism in your work or have a cartoonistic aesthetic or both.

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Showreel:

The showreel should be any where from 30 seconds to 1 minute 30 seconds max depending on amount of work and quality including credits and into and should have music or a background song to help the pacing and flow timing the transitions of sequences to a beat make sure it is a good and catchy tune as you will soon hate listening to it as you will need to edit your showreel multiple times a year and also it will be watched and listened to about a thousand times. You should try to have it under a minute if possible any longer and they won't watch it as they are very busy and don't have the time also they won't watch it from start to finish they will skim through it using the time line watching from different point as they have to save time and if it is boring then you will be cut start and end strong with your best work. Add in footnotes on what at the bottom of the work and list what you did if it is group work or leave it blank if it is your own personal work. Tailor it around your specialism, however it is best to avoid a reel if you are an illustrator or concept artist, just stick to portfolios and still images and turntables have fallen out of fashion as they have been saturated and overused in show reels so try to do something different and unique  to catch employers attention. 

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Personal Project:

Explore something new and unique broaden your mind and skills test yourself and your limits. We should work on our personal projects anytime we are free evenings and weekends setting time aside to work on them and to have free time for other things so you don't sicken yourself with work but try to keep ourselves focused and refining our skills and developing new ones and broaden your knowledge. Use them to explore different aspects you have not used before and try to branch off and try new software or incorporate new methods you haven't used before.

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Reflection :

I found what Pryia had to say was interesting and made me start to think about my own specialism in depth and consider my options and try to narrow it done to what i was good at and what i liked and enjoyed doing so it lead to the outcome that i was going to be a 3d generalist working as a 3d artist and compositor. I still didn't know what i wanted to do for my personal project for now but decide it would be something that would incorporate all the different workflows of the pipeline so i can learn them the software and techniques for future use so i will have an insight into each area of the field. I plan in the future to have some very good ideas lined up to work on and create as personal projects and will be working on them simultaneously in the future hopping from one project to the next so i don't get bored however this may take longer to produce results as i will constantly be changing and developing the

Most of all have fun and enjoy what you are doing and don't restrict yourself with boundaries and limitations etc. you are free to do whatever you wish. I needed to hear this as i was finding it incredible hard to settle on an idea along with my specialism and kept jumping from one to the other being very indecisive and the other assignments made me stress out about it more.

The truth is the personal projects are what set you apart from other people and so that you don't always rely on group projects in fact this is how you make a name for yourself and get recognised like Pryia did in Wired Magazine by working as an individual as showcasing yourself as such instead of a team member sell your self as a leader and as a talented individual . This has helped me to let go of stress and has caused me to have a flood of ideas i wish to work on but i still have to find to the time to do so.  I am to focused on uni work at the moment and end up doing other peoples work when i should be doing my own. I need to learn from this although it is very difficult to change. I need to be different and unique from my peers and i can only do this in showcasing my own personal work.