Laurence Roper - Professional Practice - Self Promotion

Laurence Roper - Professional Practice - Self Promotion

For this module we were expected to produce a range of self-promotional materials and begin to explore more professional practices such as networking with animation studios.

My starting point for this was creating an online presence for my animations on Vimeo.
[ https://vimeo.com/laurieroper ] I uploaded 2 of my favoured animations and intend to build up a larger portfolio of work on the website over time. Vimeo appears to house the largest community of animators so hopefully this will be a good place to start sharing my work.

After this I began to work on my Business card, I tried to keep the imagery and writing to a minimum as I felt a sleek simplistic design would be more appealing than something overly complicated or overcrowded.  The image I chose to accommodate this idea and illustrate my interests and skills was a gesture drawing. This consolidates my focus on characters, draughtsmanship, and interest in hand drawn work.

I think this works quite well as a business card but would quite like to experiment with more designs in future, maybe I could add a painted background for, or scene from, an animation on the flip side of the card to give it more character and further sell my skillset. I would definitely like to maintain the minimal text though. I feel like overcrowded business cards detract from the more relevant information and make them less appealing.
I maintained a simple colour palette that I think works quite well as it highlights the written information but gives a nice resting area in the light blue aspects which makes it quite easy to look at.

With my business card finished I moved on to the C.V. I looked in to a lot of different creative C.V.’s and found that they’re often very different from a regular corporate C.V. they don’t have nearly as much information and mostly maintain only that which is relevant to the creative sector. I was relieved to see this as it meant I could experiment with it and create something fun and interesting instead of just writing out a list of monotonous information. After some deliberation I decided that I wanted to draw something that looked like a rough draft or doodled page. I think the simple sketchy aesthetic is interesting and gives an idea of process and planning.

For the qualifications I intended to include a level 2 Btec in Creative Media but had temporarily removed it to readjust the placement of some parts and never put it back in. I also titled the course as (BA) instead of BA (Hons) which I will amend in future.

I included minimal written work in my C.V. as I recall being told that many studios won’t have time to read through your C.V. instead I focused on producing simple image-based notes and information that can easily depict the information I need to express. Overall I think this is quite successful.

When it came to networking with animation studios I sent emails to various UK based studios and artistic agencies enquiring about whether they had internship schemes, if studio visits were possible, and if they had any tips on improving employability in various factors such as where best to upload work. This became increasingly frustrating as none of the studios, or agencies, I contacted responded in any manner, not even to dismiss my enquiries or redirect my message. This makes me reason that before I’m actively looking for a job in animation my enquiries aren’t welcome in this fast-paced and competitive market. Instead of directly messaging studios in future I believe it might be more successful to try and find individuals working professionally who may have their animations on websites like Vimeo and contact them with these kinds of enquiries as they may be more willing to assist with this type of question. Additionally in future they may remember me or become useful acquaintances in a way that a studio administrator that might read a direct email would not.

Additionally in future I believe it would be beneficial to begin further researching the topic of contests and festivals as taking place in these would be very beneficial to get work shown and widen my reach as an animator. A resource I’m particularly interested in as a student is ‘The Rookies’ a website that hosts contests for university students in artistic fields. I think this could be particularly useful site to sign up to and compete in while I still have the opportunity.
I would like to head in to the personal project for our next module with this in mind and perhaps create an animation I could enter in to one of these competitions.