Goal setting for the final semester...

 Part of the feedback I received from Kieran for my Semester 2 video was to create a clear road map for the remaining time on the course. Taking this into consideration and attempting to reverse engineer my goals by working backwards I started to look again at finding employment in the Animation industry and what steps to take to help achieve this goal. I came across a really good video by Jake Parker who splits the this task into 3 sections: 

1) Ability

2) Familiarity

3) Timing

Although the full video was very helpful, the first section on 'Ability' really gave me a good idea of what to aim for which led to me making some key decisions about how to structure the time I have left.

 As you can see above the first thing Jake recommends is that you get a very good grasp of the fundamentals of art (Kieran had also said something similar to me in my feedback) and also practice like mad till you've mastered your craft (so that your work can be on par with the work shown in 'Art of' books). Taking this advice on board I started Google searching the Fundamentals of Art so I could do a refresher and found the website below:

Concept Art Empire had written a blog dedicated to the fundamentals which gave me a good refresher and also suggested the following books for learning perspective, light/shade and colour theory which I bought. 

But it also suggested another website called 'Drawabox' which is an online course made up of 7 lessons walking you through the core principles of drawing starting with lines, ellipses and boxes and progressively getting more complex as you go. 

I have decided to try and make this a daily task (probably in the mornings) to work my way through the lessons on the Drawabox website as well as spend a little time improving the other areas too. I'm going to start by focusing on drawing skills, then consider light and shade before moving onto colour. As part of my daily routine, I'll dedicate the afternoons to my personal work and own IP. With regards to this...

Going back to Jake Parker's 'to do' list, he gave some brilliant advice about how to plan out your portfolio and what to include. All questions I'd been pondering. He suggests choosing an area of focus (Character Design for example) and including no more than 20-25 pages for one portfolio, comprised of 9 fully rendered pieces, 9 pages of concept exploration and 2-6 pages of other stuff that shows your range. 

This is fantastic however he also suggests spending between 6 months to a year building this portfolio... I have a solid 6 WEEKS!!! Not to worry, I'm going to do my best and will no doubt continue improving it after the MSc is finished but due to this I've decided to set myself a challenging but more realistic goal of:

• 2 more finished character designs (as well as my Robo Samurai) along with turnarounds, pose sheets and possibly expression sheets.
• 2 fully rendered pieces
• 6 - 9 pages of concept exploration
• 3 - 5 other work (props/vehicles/environments/plants)
• Animated Robo Samurai emote

As well as this I'm aiming to have a published website within 3 weeks which I'll update at the end of the course.

Next up, a couple of drawing exercises :)