Thursday 6 August 2015

The pursuit to becoming a Visual Development Artist

So I have recently finished my degree at University in animation and visual effects and its time to get a job! I had been struggling for a while on deciding what it actually was I wanted to pursue as a career within the animation industry. There are so many aspects of animation that interest me and so many areas that I have had a go at and wish to do more of but it seems with this industry its hard to get a job if you like doing everything and don't really narrow yourself down to a specific area. I recently attended the Annecy animation festival in Frace for the second time which is an amazing festival and for those who haven't heard of it or been yourselves I highly recommend it. http://www.annecy.org/home.  Anyway this was an amazing eye opener for me again and made me realise that every company is different in many ways making it more difficult for me to understand the big question, How do I get a job in animation? 

The more I think about it and the more I find out it seems like there is no set way of getting a job, obviously being good at what you do and networking is a big part of that but most of the people I spoke to at the festival and stories i have heard from guest lecturers all have a different story to tell in how they broke there way into the industry. 

For about the last year I have been following the amazing artist Chris Oatly and his online site that offer's a great deal of knowledge and advice for students http://chrisoatley.com/. Over the last few months really thinking what it was I wanted to do was stressing me out, as I felt like there was so much pressure on getting a job in the industry straight out of university. But a great piece of advice from Mr Oatly really set things straight in my head and that advice was.... simply what is it that you are really passionate about? I'm really interested in loads of things within animation and visual effects and am inspired by everything but what was it that im really passionate about? and for me that is coming up with designs of characters that audiences fall in love with, designing environments that the audience gets completely lost in, creating moods and telling stories that engage people. 

So Becoming a Visual Development Artist is by far the job that I am passionate about. I know I haven't picked an easy one to break into but the most important thing to me is doing a job that I love for the rest of my life.

For the past year I was the writer/director/art director/character + environment artist/lead texture artist and other bits for the short film Headless which is in its final stages of completion so I haven't really had the time to specialise in the visual development side of things, bringing me to where I am now. Finished university wanting to become a visual development artist and not feeling like my work is strong enough so I have decided to take thing back to the basics and get better at drawing firstly brushing up on my human anatomy skills. I have set myself the task to make sure I draw at least once a day every day for as long as it takes until I produce work that will help me to achieve my goal as a visual development artist. 


so here are the first two sketches and hopefully over time I will improve more and more. 







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