Plan of Action

What is your action plan for the year?

What area(s) of practice(s) do you intend to develop?

Animation

Illustration

Storytelling

Character  and concept design

Presentation skills

What technology, equipment and software are you likely to use as a practitioner?

As a practitioner, who’s to say?  New technologies are popping up all the time so for now, it’s difficult to predict what exactly I will be using.

I hope to make use of analogue as much as digital in my future career, so my equipment in that realm will comprise of drawing tools (pencils, pens, crayons, markers, brushes, ink, stamps, paint, etc,), a light box, and maybe some bits of my brain.

I hope to have a laptop by the end of this year.  My summer plans for making money fell through when those tricksy panic attacks got a good deal worse, so I am still relying on the opening hours of the Mac suites in our college for access to the ol’ ordinateurs, which is less than desirable.  As a practitioner, I can imagine it would be most useful to be in possession of a Macbook (especially while I am studying here – since moving between Macs and PCs can fry the brains).  As an extension of these digital dreams, drawing tablets tend to float in my mind’s futurescape: I think it would also be useful to learn to utilise them to at least a competent degree in the coming months.

With regards to software, I intend to get to grips with the basic functions of Adobe programmes like Illustrator, Flash and AfterEffects, as well as 3D-directional software such as Maya.  I am still fairly in the dark in this digiscape, but I am expecting to learn more firstly by talking to those knowledgable folks that surround me every day in college, and then to further this acquisition of smarts through books, and tutorials on sites such as Creative Cow or Design Instruct (as recommended by our tutors) though this new-fangled world wide web.

Identify gaps in your knowledge?

Most digital animation software.

Building and moving characters/objects on a virtual canvas.

Discovering exactly what vectors are, and how they might be used.

HOW DO ANIMATORS DO IT NOWADAYS ANYWAY?  What specific software experience do I need to have in order to appear attractive to future employers?

What projects are you doing to support this learning?

This I am not sure of yet.  I would hazard a guess at several little animation projects.  There is the False Alarm Media ident, which I think would be valuable to return to, as.it.is.not.great.  If I get a good handle on slicker animation-making technologies, this could be a great way to apply those skills and make a more professional ident that the film company can flaunt proudly.  Just as long as the finished product does not appear as a ripoff of Scott Free‘s gorgeous animated logo:

 

For now, I think I will aim to make a GIF in the next week.  Matt Hodson gave us a few fun webpages to look at for a wide range of the things people have created in the fairly simple format:
http://www.gifparanoia.org/

and

http://www.mr-bingo.org.uk/

So, that will be something to have a look at.

 

How do broader developments in technology affect the future of visual communications?

We will all need to be intuitive, fast learners.  Technology will only advance further, it is our job to stay abreast of these developments, and still maintain the integrity of our message.