1-5 Year Strategy

In my final year at university I have already tried to take strategic steps in the right direction for my future career path. I have already sent out a job application for a studio called “THE LINE”, which offered a three-month paid internship. Unfortunately I never received a reply for my application this leads me to believe that I have not gotten the internship.

I was always expecting this outcome anyway, because I am just a fresh graduate, who was going up against potentially tens of thousands of other applicants that probably deserved it more. I think this will be a blessing in disguise to realise that in order to really be satisfied with a future job position, I am going to have to learn that it may take a bit more humility and hunger to obtain it.

A silver lining to my first rejection is that I now have a version of my showreel and personal portfolio that I will be happy to show to future clients. Both of these documents have been carefully considered alongside the rest of my branding identity that I have established over the past two years. They can both now act as working documents that I can add to and edit over the course of my career.

One aspect of university that has made me produce more work over the past few years is the people that have been around me. I think I work at my most efficient when I have peers, mentors and team mates around me that have a knowledge and passion for the same creative outlets I that I do. I need to establish this kind of environment for myself once I have left university.

I think a primary and possibly the easiest way of doing this are via online methods. I now have a LinkedIn account that is already establishing quick professional connections for year group and myself. I am a member of the ‘character design challenge’ group on Facebook, where one can submit their work for peer reviews and I intend to begin uploading performance animations for the 11 second club monthly challenge. The reason being for the latter is that I need more strong examples of character design and performance in my showreel than the amount I have now.

I also have valued that another way of maintaining a community of practice has been going to festivals. Manchester Animation Festival and Manimation have been good starting points for this. I realise that the networking opportunities at these events have been too good to pass up, but a lot of getting to see the right people involves being at the right place at the right time. That statement relies heavily on ‘luck’, the only way to increase my ‘luck’ is to make sure I’m in the kinds of environments where ‘luck’ happens the most.

The film that I have just finished for my graduation project: ‘The Interview from Hell’ will be the perfect entry point for going to a lot more festivals. I intend to attend the festivals that we are submitting to and that way, not only will I be able to network at an event that has screened something I have made but I will also have the chance to take inspiration from other peoples films and attend the various workshops and master classes available at these events.

This strategy, along with applying to other studios in the Manchester area, such as Kilogramme, Brown Bag Studios and Flix, should be good enough for my first year out of university as my film has a shelf life of about eighteen months. But thinking further afield I know that another core tactic to how I will maintain a community of practice within my life will also come from maintaining the collaborative spirit that I have encountered over the past three years.

To break this down, I am referring to the creative and collaborative teams that have formed during my participation in competitions such as Anijam18 and 24 HOURS. These projects with fast turnarounds really seem to metaphorically squeeze every last drop of creative energy out of oneself once they are finished. Whilst doing these competition briefs, however the energy was unmatched to anything I’d experienced in animation before. We worked well under the pressure and I was given the opportunity to work with people form other year groups I wouldn’t have worked with otherwise.

On the other hand, within university projects such as Negotiated Project and Engagement Challenge I was given plenty of time to establish my first proper relationship with real industry contacts, (Nathan Cunningham: Low Flying Geese Productions & Greg Bass: LANOR Productions) and establish my first proper relationship of peers who chose me as their director (GUJ Productions). I have already offered my services to the second years below me, for their graduation films next year.

Both of these collaborative environments have resulted in myself producing the best work of my last three years because I have been motivated to do my best and impress the creatives that I admire and work with. I am already gearing up to collaborate with an Australian animator: Alexander Hilson, who produces online cartoons and parodies through his alias: Animunch. This collaboration has come about through my friend Adam Frith, who is also collaborating on this project. The pattern I am beginning to see is that with every new collaboration comes the opportunity for even more new collaborators.

Along with all of this, I plan to expand on my own personal passion project, which appears to now be expanding the characters, story and world I have created within ‘The Interview from Hell’. It’s been a while since I’ve been so obsessed and engulfed in a project like this. It almost reminds me of how I used to daydream worlds as a child and how that ultimately lead to me becoming an animator in the first place. I need to keep this flame alive and nurture this source of imagination and creativity because it will become paramount further down the line.

My overall main ambition to start my own production company, with its own shows and films can only ever happen once a lot of very important career milestones are in place for myself. I stress in this statement that I am not making excuses or stalling, I just realise that I need to be realistic and that I am not ready for that dream just yet. I must first obtain some years of experience in seeing how a studio is run and how a good director works in their day-to-day life.

I plan to act like how a student is meant to act like: a sponge that absorbs every piece of knowledge and experience it can. Only then will I be able to start my own production company, with a few years experience under my belt and the right people by my side. It could and probably will take decades to achieve but I can’t wait to begin.