A reflection on the past year.

Once again, it's that time of year. Student's stressing and panicking the last few days before final hand in, people continuously buzzing in and out of the library and studios in hopes of making last minute adjustments to the work they've had all year to do. They're all the same, but this time I don't fall into the same category as everyone else. The difference? The difference is that, come September these panicked students will be forgetting the stress of their may/june hand ins and will be happily making their way back to university feeling refreshed after the break of the summer. Ready to get stuck in and embark on a new academic year.

Myself however, will be thrown straight into the depths of the job hunting world. Not to say that I'm not ready to go out there and get myself stuck into a new and exciting job however, it might not be one I spent the last few years specialising in a subject for. This project has taught me something about myself, not only do I not work well to deadlines, I don't work well to my OWN deadlines (something I still need to work on). I was my own director, storyboard artist, concept artist, background artist and animator for my film. I didn't employ the help of others, I didn't want 1st years or 2nd years helping me to do the inbetweens and colouring (although it would have helped greatly if I weren't so adamant I could do everything myself), I knew that if I couldn't work to my own deadline, I would just drag the others down. However, I completed my film in the end albeit it being in the wrong format... I still made sure I had everything done 5 days before the actual deadline so that I had those days to play it back to myself, get feedback from tutors and friends.

I've stated before that I solely love 2D animation, my love grew for it even more after watching Lizzi Akana's 2D animated short ‘Marvelous Keen Loony Bin’ that I'm sure I've mentioned numerous times now. She inspired me to find and pursue the field of work that would fully satisfy my talents, I'm a creative person so it would be a shame to put such creativity to waste, the only thing is, I just don't enjoy animating. I find that when it comes to doing a project, my main area of focus will always be in the pre production field. I enjoy the process that has to be undergone when developing characters and environments and visually interpreting scripts. I excel in doing concept art and easily able to portray what is needed through layout designs, character concepts, sketches and more. I tend to experiment with my work be it by hand drawn sketches, painted, mix media or computer software such as Photoshop or Flash. However, this is not necessarily what I want to do and that is when it dawned on me, I didn't have to solely take the animation route into a job, there were many different aspects of art I could go into. During my years in education, I've done Fine Art, Photography, Graphic Design and Illustration, there are plenty of opportunities out there to combine these skills, it's just a matter of finding what would best suite me.

Once more, that is when it dawned on me again I don't enjoy animating however I do enjoy drawing, painting, illustrating, concept work, etc technically the stationary side of things. This whole idea of doing something different cemented when I took a visit to see my baby cousins the other week, after hours of fun and play, bedtime was around the corner and there it was, sitting right in front of me, a potential career I could go into. As I picked up this book and opened it up, it became even more apparent that I could potentially search for a career in being a children's book illustrator, and that is exactly what I have been looking into over the past few weeks. Not only that, I've teamed up with someone who's looking for a job in publishing and over the next few months I will be working on illustrating her short stories for submission.

I understand that most work will come as freelance and nothing happens straight away but even with this, I have taken the initiative to look into such illustration agencies as Plum Pudding and Beehive Illustrations to gain a better understanding and to give me an insight into what I need to do to potentially get me somewhere in the future. I plan on building my creative portfolio and developing it further as well as liaising with others who are hoping to get there written work published and hopefully something will eventually come from that.