Career Path (Contingency Plan)

Fortunately as an artist I have many different option open to me. Preferably I would like to become a professional concept artist. If it proves to be difficult I do not mind starting out as a runner and working up the ladder from there.

From there I hope to gain enough experience to become a concept artist or even a storyboard artist. Eventually further into my career I hope to become a Art Director or Production Designer.

From there I hope to become a Director and direct my own feature films, this will be the pinnacle of my career, to make movies.

If somewhere along the line my progression is obstructed by a recession for example I may have to adopt a temporary contingency plan, which will be to either move in to the graphics business, photography or design 3D environments for architectural visualisation projects.

Continued Learning in the Workplace

Once I get into the workplace and hopefully in my preferred career I will make sure that I must continue my learning processes. I intend to do this by maintaining my employability and flexibility by familiarizing myself with new software and evolving with the industry by keeping up to date with methods and techniques.

I can do this by either organizing the occasional meeting with fellow colleagues, following online tutorials, going to the library, reading specialized books, and perhaps attending specific courses at college/university.

Work & Payment

I have recently been paid by Ubisoft, which means that all outstanding invoices have now been paid. I am very pleased. It seems that all that pestering paid off. I have been warned that I will have to get used to unpaid jobs such as this, and the only way to get your money is by keeping in contact with your employers and not letting things slide.

I have also recently acquired a new job. It is a paid job and requires that I produce various concept illustrations and designs for a new film that is early in its development. This is great because not only will this lead to a possible job once I leave college, but I will be getting my foot in the door so to speak and I will be acquiring new contacts. Payment at this stage is a bonus however I am excited to be starting a job on a film and Im being paid for it.

Films During a Recession

I have heard recently that the film industry usually thrives regarding business particularly during a recession as people tend to watch more films and seek entertainment through watching films at the cinema. However the 3D films are so expensive at the moment that I have heard that people would rather save their money and watch a film in 2D rather than in 3D. It has been suggested that generally people would probably prefer watching a film in 2D or do not see any really definitive difference in watching a film in 2D or 3D.

Character Modeling

I have been learning to model a character in 3d using maya. So far I have been used to creating inorganic hard surface models ie buildings and vehicles etc. Character modeling is slightly more complex because I am now dealing with organic shapes which are harder to manipulate in maya. Also I have to pay attention to its topology, making sure that all the polygons have four sides each. This is essential because eventually this character has to be rigged and ultimately animated so the character model itself has to be correctly modeled for everything to work smoothly. I have never attempted character modeling and this is entirely new to me. I have had to work from scratch using online tutorials and advice from fellow students. There have been times where I have gotten stuck but I have managed to overcome these obstacles through perseverance and trial and error. Overall I am pleased with the results.

The hands and the head were probably the most complicated features to model, but now that I have don't them I think I know the techniques and principles well enough to repeat the process and model more characters in the future.