Scan the Horizon

 Scan the Horizon

Looking towards graduating from the BA, I have begun to consider short and long term plans to ensure that I enter into the right career to nurture my strengths and provide me with the right means for living.

My plan for the next year is a postgraduate course continuing on at Leeds Arts. Provided my application is successful, I will continue my learning journey which will undoubtedly come hand in hand with working on commissions, gaining exposure and potentially entering into competition briefs and festivals. A useful avenue the application for the MA has given me is that I have reopened lines of contact with two studios with whom I have done work experience. The first was Arran Stamper of BlinkInk. She has given me contact information for people at BlinkInk. Even though she now works at Mystery Q now, a film studio I have not heard about prior. They have seen an old copy of my showreel and are open to see more, knowing that I am nearing the end of my undergraduate course. BlinkInk is the kind of studio I can see myself working in because of the community of workers there and the variety of commissions and mediums they use to make their animated shorts.

I believe that the MA is going to open up my ideas about working freelance, at least for a few years after graduation. This is also a viable career path If I create the right networks this could suit me well before joining a studio job. I have already started considering collaborations and opportunities beyond the work I am currently doing. One of these is Artsthread. Like D&aD, they run competition briefs, one of which I have been approached to collaborate on.

Further to this I have been contacting a poet with ambitions of entering a film into a number of festivals. He has already won awards for his project cocoa bean, which tackles issues of the BAME community, and hopes to tackle the issue of sustainability in this upcoming project.

The aspirations for these projects which will hopefully take place in the coming 2 years will hopefully establish myself as an employable animator by creating more contacts and reaching more consumers.

It may take a while to get a foothold in the animation industry so I need to safeguard that I will be making an adequate salary. Support from family will carry me through the masters but I hope to gain a form of financial security over the coming years. I have been working on exposure which has been effective in getting me commissions. I have now set up an online store which has gained some popularity through assistance of instagram promotions. Social media has proved to be an effective tool to find work.

This enterprise will hopefully grow through assistance of my LinkedIn account and fore coming website which will give me more of a professional presence online.

Living in Leeds has suited me well in its cheap living costs and booming music/television industries. In the midst of the pandemic, a lot of the live work I would hope to do may be unavailable but there are still a myriad of creatives needing to distribute their work from home. I believe this could work to my advantage. If for example a musician wanted an eye catching video but is working form a studio at home, animators are more than able to provide this. Through the equipment I have at home currently and possibly more softwares, freelance work will be accessible at home and fortunately the animation industry is one that can potentially thrive in these troubled times.