502 #1 Copyright

Copyright is very complex, and much of my work is on various social media sites.

I have two Instagram accounts, one is my personal where I post both art and pictures of myself, and the other is a professional one that I only post my favourite artwork to. All posts on Instagram are dated, so they should be fine. My professional Instagram is a business account, so there are promotion options for it, but I haven't used them in the past.

I technically have two YouTube channels as well, although one is under my university email and I keep private. My other channel is public and I've been running for a few years now. I tend to mainly upload parts for multi-animator projects which use copyrighted music, but I solely use them for practice. Everything on there is dated as well.

I also keep a portfolio of work on Google Drive, which has upload dates in the file.

502 Employability Week #2

 No One Likes Filling in Forms:

• Application forms are specific to the what the company is looking for, so don't skim them!
• Sell yourself, but you don't need to list everything, stick to relevant skills/achievements
• Keep it consistent
• Read it carefully and tailor it to what company you're applying for
• Ask for feedback so you can always improve it

Growing a Network:

• Go to events at least once a month to meet folk
• Present yourself properly
• Eye contact (use your nose bridge trick to avoid uncomfy feeling), smile, be friendly
• MAKE A SOCIAL INTERACTION PLAN - observe how formal the event is
• Keep to open questions - keep them talking! 
• Talk to people (get some 1-2-1 advice on that)
• Most people's professional emails are [FirstInitial][LastName]@company.co.uk

502 Employability Week #1

 Confidence and Values

• Low confidence can be good -> work harder to improve, don't over promote (so can impress easier)
• Focus on personal values:
• reliability, open-mindedness, honesty, calm, education
• Don't sacrifice personal values for a company - express it in work
• Look specifically for companies/organisation that share the values
• There's a comfort zone, a stretch zone, and a panic zone. Avoid the panic, but don't be afraid of the stretch

Personal Branding

• Employers will google you, so keep a good personal brand identity online
• Keep it consistent to what you want to be associated with
• Strong brand with strong portfolio can be useful
• Profile picture should be professional, either a picture or a self-portrait
• Keep personal introductions concise
• Your work will get lost with macro-hashtags
• More hashtags!

CV

• 1-2 pages is typical
• If you're bored reading it, so is an employer
• Avoid block text
• Why you'll help the company
• Don't be too artsy, if you're gonna do it, do it right

503 #13 Evaluation

 This project was very ambitious, especially since two of the three team members had little to no experience in the realm of 3D. Thomas ended up carrying most of the 3D work, especially in pre and post production.

In particular, I had to create, rig, and animate a 3D model (and animate another 3D model). I had some very light experience on 3D modelling experience, so I knew some basics of modelling in Maya that could cover creating a robotic character, since robots are more rigid and angular. Towards the beginning of the project, when we were planning everything out, I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to learn the basics of rigging a model if the character was a robot, since there would be no need to consider muscle, fat, or skin affected by movement. I was very wrong. Creating the base rig wasn’t difficult, but painting weights was very difficult. I kept finding errors and bugs and spent hours attempting to fix them, to no avail. In the end, I needed to get Matt’s help to fix it. He was able to get the rig working.

I gave a copy of the model to Thomas so he could get the UVs and textures done while I got a copy of his working model to start animating my scenes. We previously split up the 3D animation between myself and Thomas, Thomas taking the first half since it was less action heavy and he had much more work with the UVs and texturing, and I took the second half. While I was working with Thomas’ Peace-Keeper model, I noticed the spine of the rig was broken and unusable.

I continued work while the model was being fixed, and then resumed the Peace-Keeper’s animation.

The animation was quite enjoyable to do and it is something I’d like to continue learning how to do and improve upon.

I did find my favourite shot was created by accident. Without even realising, when the Peace-Keeper hops to face Rusty at the end of the shot, his legs aren't in optimal positions to carry his weight, but getting them to the optimal places from the previous position stretched the joints in a way I wasn't happy with. In an experimental attempt, I had the Peace-Keeper hop again to get his legs in the best position for carrying his weight and preparing for a fight.

After keying these positions, I worked back through them to time them correctly and I found the end hop looked great. His weight was clear in the height of the jump and the follow through of the landing, while also showing he had the strength and energy to be a deadly opponent in a fight.

Overall, although this project was very ambitious, I really enjoyed working on it and I found being able to fully work with 3D gave me a much better idea of where I’d want to go further with it.

503 #12 Making the Art Book #2

 Thomas created character sheets to show off the models including the UV sheets and I took screenshots of the character rigs. I wrote a few paragraphs on Rusty's page to briefly describe the process of modelling and rigging him.

I asked Tom to describe what he did and what he thought about making the model for and rigging the Peace-Keeper. I wrote out his reply and took a few screenshots of the Peace-Keeper's rig for his page as well.

The next section was on the script and the storyboard. I wrote the original script, so it was very easy to get a few screenshots of it and write a few notes. Pippa created the storyboard, so I had to download her boards off the Drive folder and piece them together for the book.

I asked Pippa over the team Discord whether she had any pre-production art of the backgrounds, but she only had the sketches from the storyboard and the sets themselves. In light of this, I took a few panels from the board to show the earliest concepts of the backgrounds while noting down some of the inspirations for the visual worldbuilding. I also included renders of the sets themselves to show a final stage production.

The credit page is simple text giving the team member's names and their work on the project. We all agreed to add a special thanks to Matt for his assistance