So, what's new?
I'm writing this as part of a website refresh, I wanted a little more structure and direction to how I present my work, so I've split my work into the 3 disciplines I enjoy the most and want to get hired for.
For a long time I've felt like a pro at 2D design and animation. The fact you can have fun making cool designs and quite quickly animate them with smooth keyframing has always appealed to me, but more recently I've really been focusing on frame-by-frame animation with my wacom (mainly cool fluid effects, but that transfers to so many other applications), and getting my character animation even more on-point. This has been my main area of learning, and there's an absolute goldmine of new techniques that I've been enjoying digging in to. It's my aim over the coming months to get hired by studios that I admire, where I can get some more high-profile, high budget 2D work that I can be proud of.
In a previous post, I talked about my short-term goal of getting better at 3D work, which I have improved considerably at. Although I stopped short of getting so far into it that I can be considered a specialist, I have got the generalist C4D skill set nailed down and have worked on some great projects since then by being able to offer an "anything but 3D character rigging/modelling/animation" service, although I have had fun dabbling with simple characters on personal projects too. I've bought a nice new rig that I can use OTOY's Octane with - I think even if you can't use it on all projects, it helps a hell of a lot when trying to improve texturing, lighting and rendering skills that carry over into the standard C4D render engine.
Unfortunately most of the work I have done in this area is for an agency that has very strict rules about what I can show of the work I do for them (none of it). I'm not going to hold this against them, as they are all great people, it just means a lot of the awesome 3D stuff I've done over the past couple of years can't see the light of day with my name on it. It doesn't bother me too much, it was super fun working on them, I got a lot more efficient at working with C4D and I charge a bit more for these jobs to make up for the lack of exposure, so everybody is happy really.
The final discipline I want to show to the world is my work on Films. This is quite a vague title for projects I have worked on that cover a lot of disciplines. The ones I have showcased on my website I had varying roles on, most of them I worked on the graphic overlays, titles and compositing, but also the edit. A good edit with the right music can be very inspiring, energetic and emotive. It can be the ideal solution for a client that needs a quick turnaround on a smaller budget.
What now? I've got a couple of personal projects close to release. These focus on 2D, character and have also allowed me to showcase my Art Direction. Like I said, this is with a view to getting jobs with some of the studios that I admire. I'll continue to work on small projects that I can focus of good design, illustration and animation. I see a longer term trajectory of my career taking me into Art Direction in the next 5 years, so realising this goal is what I'll put most of my down-time energy into.
