Presentation points to discuss

Points I'll be making during my presentation are as followed:

Opening points

•  My interests lie in animation, Game design and digital media.
• I completed a degree in Bachelor of arts Animation and Visual Effects at Charles Sturt University.
• I concluded my university studies with a Masters of Practice Specialization. This involved an animation project called Sun's Requiem.
•  My goal is to gain employment in character animation and game design. Reasons behind this is due to my love of animating characters and games.

Main Points

• Sun's Requiem: A project I decided to develop in 3D in order to gain more skills in Maya. Requited 2nd year students to work on the special effects as part of their own assignments. This enabled more time to focus on animating and other roles like rendering. This project best demonstrates my 3D skills in Maya as a Generalist, due to taking on several roles including modeling, UV texture mapping, Rigging and Rendering.
• A Lone Scar: My favorite project which best demonstrates my skills in 2D character animation. It tells the story of a stray cats attempts to gain the approval of an older street wise cat. This project was animated frame by frame on individual sheets of paper, scanned into the computer and composited in After Effects. An artistic choice was to take out the whites and leave the line work, which gives a chalk like style.  
• Tree with Eyes composite: This project demonstrates my skills in compositing, where I got footage of a tree and three different people. In After Effects, I masked out the eyes onto the tree and gave them the appearance of having eye lids from masking bits from the tree bark.
• Rising Phoenix, Ingenuity and Rotoscope bashing shot: These three projects further demonstrate my 2D animation skills. The first two where animated frame by frame in Flash which is all with vectors. 
• The Rotoscope community project was for A Clock Work Orange theater production. This was a unique approach animating, where I had to draw and color over footage of a mock bashing scene. The character I worked on is the lady being bashed in the middle.

Important part/Conclusion

• For a perspective employer, I will be a valuable assist to employ. I have the skills in not only character animation, but I can take on other roles including UV texture mapping, rendering, compositing, rigging and modeling. I can also work well in a collaborative environment which I enjoy the most. I can also work under pressure especially with meeting strict deadlines.
•  I'm also willing to try and learn new skills/programs especially if it will benefit to perspective employment.
• In regards to character animation, A Lone Scar is a good example of my traditional 2D animation skills. It involved frame by frame hand drawn shots, scanned into the computer for further work. I will always be happy with how this project turned out and will even take it a step further and refine some of the shots.
• Animation is not my only passion. Recently I gained an interest in Game design, where I enjoy the coding aspect the most. If I apply for this industry, my animation skills will also be an important assist to any company seeking an individual with a various skills. 

 

Portfolio research

Okay my portfolio of choice is a showreel. Reason for this choice is as follows:

• Allows for viewing pieces of previous works, which in this case is animations.

While editing my showreel in Premiere Pro, I had choose wisely and pick my best work. Once I've done this, I'll need to cut each animation and leave the best parts in. This is mainly due to my showreel desired time limit being around 2mins in length. If it was longer, the viewers will start to loose interest after around 2mins.
The animations I chose to include in my showreel are as follows:

• Sun's Requiem Masters of Practice major project.
• A Lone Scar 
• Tree with Eyes compositing assignment
• Rising Phoenix
• Ingenuity assignment
• A Clockwork Orange community project rotoscope.

I might include more if the time limit doesn't exceed near 3mins, as I've also got Death School and a couple of over project pieces to include if possible.

Industry Sources-Research Project part 4

Industry Associations

The Animation world network has a page listing various animation associations:
http://www.awn.com/village/associations.php3 .Two of these associations are:

Toon Institute: http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/resume.htm#top
This is Larry Lauria website which showcases several animation tutorials, his background in animation which was at Disney Institute as a program manager for animation. 
What I consider important about this association is the many tutorials on important aspects of animation that does answer the question on the animation process as it covers important information on key aspects and fundamentals. It might only cover 2D works but this can also be applied to 3D, which is the main reason learning the 2D fundamentals is important to know before diving into 3D animation. I know this all too well from my first of studies where we started with 2D then went on to 3D animation. In regards to the questions, this association contains information on the creative process in mainly the key principles of characters animation, examples of Larry's creative works which can found on this pages: http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/sketchbook/shtml/char1.htm#top for his sketches and http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/sketchbook/shtml/anim1.htm#top for his animations. Each done in as earlier sketch style and the animations re from his "2KJ" project and is on the stage of ruff animation which may change before the film is complete.
Larry's lessons include the following:
Bouncing Ball, this employes the "squash and stretch techniques". This a vital animation fundamental that is applied in a lot of animations and was one of the first lessons we were given during animation at university. 
Further adventures from the bouncing ball is a more intermediate lesson on the squash and stretch from the previous lesson.
Character construction lessons on anatomy, which focus on the head and basic figure. This is applied to early character development where having correct anatomy makes all the difference especially for hyper realism you see in current films like Avatar. Having knowledge of anatomy both biped and quadruped based characters is a of the up most importance in not only character design but animating where you need to know how a characters body would move or bend without looking out of place and unsettling to viewers.
Timing, an aspect that will always be applied to any animation and as mentioned at the beginning of the lesson, " the essence of everything we do in animation". (http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/timing.htm) It is to define how fast or slow a character will move like for example a large character like an elephant will be slow. Frame rate is mentioned here which is 24fps but for the PAL region including Australia, it's 25fps. To achieve really fluid animation, 12 to 24 or 25 frames per second is required.
Anticipation lesson covers an animation principle used in animation. it is also a device derived from theater. An example is " Paranorman", which is mentioned at the top of the lesson page.(http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/anticipation.htm) The definition on the page is,
"Anticipation pertains to movements by humans, animals, objects, effects and Graphics."
The remaining lessons are on how to thumbnail a scene, time to animate, posing, character model sheets, overlapping action, character walk and pencil test. Each of these like the previous lessons, covers important principles, aspects and fundamentals that should always be applied to any animation production process wither it's 2D, 3D or Stop motion.
Another page covers information on income and Taxes: http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/toonnews/korkus.htm
This is some of the information Larry imparts in regards to the animation process and the tools are most likely hand drawn with pencil and paper.
(http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/toonnews/project.htm ).
This page tells background story on how tax come about which all because of Walt Disney efforts. it is quite in depth and interesting to read on how Walt Disney has affected the world in different ways and not with just their many animated films.

The Society for Animation Studies: http://ww2.animationstudies.org/
This society is an international organization dedicated to studying animation history and theory.
It was founded in 1987 by Dr. Harvey Deneroff and each year they hold a conference much like Siggraph does, which is annual world wide. At these conferences they demonstrate  and present their research. In regards to contents they have a blog with several entries about animation projects and will answer some of the questions listed. One such entry goes into detail on some of the process of Motion Capture which is becoming pretty big in Realistic 3D animation projects and films like "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy', which requires some actors to wear the motion capture suits.
"Motion Capture the Inner Life of the Marionette" blog entry found on this page: http://ww2.animationstudies.org/, discusses about the 12 minute film, "Actor" 2013. This film is where the performer wanders around the stage citing the final chapter of "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess. His film was not recorded by a camera but with a motion capture suit with a loose fitted leotard with attached gyroscopes on every joint and transmitted the information wireless. This filming process also had no camera, lighting and armatures and ended up getting lots of speculating on the relationship between the actor moving around and the computer generated knight character.
This shows part of the process behind this film and just how flexible the creative process can be which is quite expansive if your freelance or self-employed.
The actor was asked to move in a exaggerated manor by the one directing him and by his own contribution. Motion capture is an area being explored and not just for animation purposes but performance art which this film could fall under.
The skills required was knowledge on motion capture, acting skills despite the over exaggeration and film making skills.
The article also mentions motion capture predating film itself where Étienne-Jules Marey, a french physiologist work was a pointer in the direction of Motion picture camera. He did earlier experiments with subjects wearing black suits with metal stripes and passed through a black back drop and this hints to earlier use of a gyroscopic suit used in motion capture.
On the associations news page (http://ww2.animationstudies.org/ ), a couple of articles mention submission and a call for applications so they do actually some employment and education advertising for the film industry including animation.
This association ethics are quite broad so the cover a wide range of issues especially since they study animation of all kinds through history. I consider this organization unique and amazing in how expansive they are and are located worldwide including in Australia as one photo of a conference was at Melbourne on the June 2012. Through their various articles on different animation projects and historical information, there is a lot of reference material and content to goes into more depth in covering the animation industry that dates back to older times when animation was still all sketches on paper.

 

Showreel Plan

Recently I've decided to make a showreel for the portfolio, which will also be included in my personal website portfolio for the project management assignment.
I searched for all my past animations and other works created either as personal or at university. Also have Digital media work I can include which is the stencyl game and 3D environment. Anyway I plan to import everything into Adobe Premiere and make an edit of my best projects or in most cases the bits parts from the animations.

Portfolio update

Currently my portfolio is also the personal portfolio website being developed for our major projects.
I'm in the construction stage in Dreamweaver. I've searched through my external hard drives for animation work from university and have successful gathered them on my new main external hard drive, which I'll be using as a backup for my files to go on.
Here is a more recent website draft design I'll be basing my site layout on:

This is just a draft and the actual site design being constructed is differing a lot. I'll seek out some constructive feedback to better improve the layout and make it more appealing.

Personal porfolio plan

For a portfolio, I'm aiming to make it designed for an animation career.  For this I will require a showreel which i do have but need to further refine it to only include the best and necessary content aimed for a particular field which is 2D character animation. I do have a few animation project pieces I can include in this:

*First 2D animation made in flash
*Fox animation on the theme ingenuity which was also animated in flash
*Eagle and Bull animation also done in Flash.
*Maybe the Rot scope shots coloured in Photoshop.
*A lone Scar, third year final animation which is completely hand drawn on paper, scanned in and frames edited together in Photoshop.

I can also include a second showreel containing some of my 3D animated works which won't be as extensive as the 2D one.

* An animated shot or two of my dragon model that was a personal project I never got around to animating.
*A couple of shots from my Masters project, Sun's Requiem but will only feature tow of the characters.
* The two shots from Death School featuring the cat and mouse I modeled, rigged and animated.

If time allows I would love to include an animation in the layout. I also plan to include a couple of concept art images in the layout. This will be the two characters from A Lone Scar and additional images of other characters I've created.

I do plan to include some character art sketches I've worked on which are of the anime/manga style. I might decide to color these or outline them digitally due to the actual drawings being on big A3 size sheets. I could even take photos of them with a camera but for good quality, will need to be a HD camera.

Also would love to include game design works too especially in regards to the 2D stencyl game assignment. I have a lot of new skills from this subject and wish to include in a portfolio.

During the up coming TAFE holidays , I plan animate a couple of hand drawn short animations to include as more recent projects. This will help in refining my drawing and animation skills.

Hopefully this can be incorporated in with another major project I'm working on. This is also a personal portfolio website.

Five Portfolio examples.

Here are some animation Portfolio examples I've found through google search.

1. http://www.bahadirtosun.com/

2. http://www.deeboyd.com/

This portfolio is one of my favourites. I like how it uses flash animation in the actual layout at the very top of the page. Sometimes animations incorporated into the layout will work against a portfolio due to being  overly distracting but this one isn't. The reason why is because it's all black line art with colour so it actual blends into the layout without being too distracting. It even adds character to the layout, making the portfolio more animation orientated. From what I can tell, the artist has a lot of experience with Adobe Flash due to being able to make this portfolio in the program. I've actually attempted this before but it can be very technical with the scripting involved. The information and content is well done without being confusing and easy to navigate through.
 From what I noticed, the portfolio does support the artwork immensely as the portfolio is designed for animation and does contain all necessary elements with a little extra detail going into adding the interactivity with the cat and the yarn ball, which have pretty smooth animation.
One element I wasn't fond of was the audio at the start when you click to enter the site. It could actually work fine without it but on a good note, the animation clips have the audio still which is very necessary in demonstrating the audio work including in each animated short.

3. http://www.tughan.com/animations.htm

4. http://www.jessejaymesjones.com/

5. http://www.jeremypstewart.com/#works

Twenty Jobs in Animation.

I managed to find twenty more Animation job opportunities advertised on a few different sites, several in Australia and some overseas. I mainly screen grabbed the ones concerning 2D, 3D, Vector, Internship, Freelance, full-time, compositing and animation. Also found some with Maya generalist as a requirement which I wouldn't mind applying for due to having skills in Maya from my studies at University.

Create a professional Resume or CV assignment part 2

This position is for a 2D Animator and to apply for it, I will chose the Chronological resume format.
The reason for this choice is the chronological format allows for more detail in describing duties performed in specific resume categories like employment experience.
 I do lack in a couple of the requirements, Stop Motion and Final Cut. I however can make up for this with gaining a familiarity with Stop Motion from animation lectures and despite not being familiar with Final Cut, I can composite and create final edits with After Effects and Premiere Pro.
I can also learn Final Cut just in case it's a major requirement.
I believe I'm best suited for this role because I have gained various skills in more than one area and not just limited to one specific role. I'm also very flexible in given roles and willing to give anything new a try.

Create a professional Resume or CV assignment part1

To begin, here is three resume examples for Animation positions.

Functional

Chronological

Combination

Functional: This example I found contained a lot of  relevant information but only a couple of dates indicating the start of the qualification and employment history. It's a resume that contains the usual categories of qualifications, employment history,  relevant accomplishments and education/training. It benefits greatly from having only the relevant information tailored for employment in the animation industry.

Chronological: I found this example to be my favourite. This resume goes into more detail on the duties performed in each category including the relevant experience, internship experience, technical summary and education. Everything has a year of when is occurred which shows how much years of experience has been attained. This resume is tailored for a Computer Graphics and Animation position and does contain the relevant information for that.

Combination: This is a resume tailored for a 3D Modeler and Animator position. This example is straight to the point and contains only the necessary information in dot points. Some employers prefer a more less detailed resume like this but does require the relevant information, which this example achieves quite well. 

Unlike the chronological example, this resume doesn't include many dates like the functional resume example. I feel it could benefit from having more dates showing when each of these experiences occurred.

Here's a sample of an animators Portfolio:  http://animation.byu.edu/sample

An example of a professional Portfolio: http://www.kontrastiv.com/
                                                            http://www.habihanna.com

Industry Sources-Research Project part 3

Software
In the Animation industry, having experience and knowledge with various programs is a requirement.
Software and equipment required for this particular job includes the following:

*Adobe Programs-
-Photoshop
-Flash
-After Effects
-Premiere Pro
-Illustrator
-SoundBooth
-Dreamweaver

*Autodesk Programs-
-Maya
-Mudbox
-MatchMover
-Softimage
-3Ds Max
-Toxik
-Combustion

*Blender
*ZBrush

Equipment
Equipment depends on the type of animation like 3D needing a really high powered computer, 2D requiring sketch pads/pencils if a hand drawn style, a Graphics Tablet if drawing digitally on the computer and Stop Motion needed a highly quality camera to take each frame, armatures for rigging, clay for molding characters and materials for building the environments like wire, cardboard and paper. These will be provided especially the computers and render farms required for the high quality productions. You can use your own computer if possible but it will need to have the appropriate license and not a free one found on certain websites.

Skills
Having the necessary skills in these programs from Intermediate to Advanced is a huge advantage to getting employment. Also knowing fundamentals of animation and demonstrating the ability to animate a character properly either key framing or inbetweening is also an requirement.
Appropriate education in the area is highly important and there are a few institutions that offer it like Charles Sturt University offering the Bachelor of Arts Animation Degree. Having a degree will at most times get your foot in the door, but promoting yourself to employers is also highly recommended. Having a showreel which showcases your work starting with the best projects you have completed to the least best. Having a personal website featuring your showreel, CV and resume is another more preferred means of promoting you skills.

 Employment Locations
The location of employment in regards to Animation is mainly in bigger cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia. America is where the more well known production houses are like Dreamworks, Pixar and Disney.
If your located a distance away like maybe five hours then you can still work long distance and able to take time to travel if required to, so you don't have to be living in the same city to be employed in animation as work progress can be sent via the internet.

 Challenges
Working on an animated project is filled with challenges. It is a time consuming process filled long work hours that can even lead to pulling an all nighter. Even with proper time management, a production can be worked on to the very last minute. It is never easy but despite this is fun and rewarding to see a final edit that turned out as planned. The challenge starts form day one to the final moments of completing a production, for example developing a concept, getting that idea across to the concept artists, translating the 2D concept sketches over to 3D which is a challenge to get the aesthetics correct, building the rigs that can lead to many problems especially if controls or joints aren't grouped right, animating can also be very challenging if the rigs aren't animator friendly, renders failing or lighting not being correct which can be avoided if test renders were made prior and compositing all the elements and layers together.

 Creative Control
In regards to creative control, it depends on your role. If you're a director, you have a lot of control since it's technically your idea. However if you are given the role of assets creation then you will have to model based on the concepts and designs.
The one time you do have creative control is if your freelance in some cases but if working for a client, then they will have more control than you. Also producing your own for a personal production that you want to submit in a festival, screening or assessment then you will have substantial amount of creative control. In a sense it all depends on your role and profession in the field.

Industry Sources- Research Project Part 2

 Creative Progress
The creative process involved in an animation production can be extremely immense and time consuming. This information I gained from my time studying the animation degree at university as a lot of information was covered in regards to the animation industry. Also during assignments which we worked through the process from start to finish excluding financial information which was covered during lectures.
This site also goes into detail on the production process: http://www.creativeskillset.org/animation/overview/article_3768_1.asp .
The process can be broken into three main stages of production:

*Pre-Production- This consists of the early development process following:
- A log line, a one sentence summary of the main plot. An example: A young cat attempts to gain the approval of an older street wise cat.
 -A detailed plot summary and also a character bios for developing each character.
-Writing up the script which is the backbone for a production.
-A story board which must include the shots in a series of rough sketches.
-An Animatic, an animated version of the story board. Usually very rough and sketchy like the storyboard. This also helps in getting the frame count for each shot, important for rendering and animating, cutting out any unnecessary shots and managing the correct timing especially with audio.
Must show the scenes, shots and the actions like a character moving from point A to point B in a shot or not moving at all for example a close up with dialogue. Also needs the audio and soundtrack included for timing purposes.
-Audio and Soundtrack. During my time studying animation at CSU, we were told to allocate 50% of the production schedule towards this. This is due to how important audio can be for a production like giving that additional scare from atmospheric sounds, a sound track that adds more emotion to a scene like an up beat tune to a happy scene. Also realism with footsteps each time a character takes a step or the sound of running water. Audio must also be edited to remove unnecessary background interference and if the volume output needs adjusting.
-Concept art for developing a final look for characters and environment concepts which is done by the concept artists. Different films these days have a concept art section in the extra's menu especially animated films.

*Production-  This process differs depending on the animation like whether its 2D, 3D/Computer Generated or Stop Motion.
-Developing the assets, including creating the matte painting backgrounds, modeling and adding textures to the characters and environments, rigging the characters which is a technical process in it's own right.
-Animating, the process involving a lot of time. Reason is due to the amount of refining, key framing out the animated sequence then the inbetweens added to give a move smoother look.
Most of the time will be spent animating and is important that rigs are made animator friendly, so all trouble shooting and rig test should be done prior to animating.
Also adding in the audio in the time line is extremely vital in getting the correct timing especially with lip synching and for sound effects like footsteps.

*Post Production- The process that involves the final stages of a production.
-Rendering out all completed shots and frames. Depending on the quality, this can take a ridiculous amount of time to render every frame out. Hours to days even years for all renders to be completed. It's extremely wise to have good time management and enough allocated to rendering shots.
-Compositing all shots together to get a final edit. Ideally compositing is done in After Effects which was done in the animation degree at CSU. The edit was then brought into Premiere Pro for adding title, audio and credits.
Depending on how high quality the final edit is, this can take some time to export out. Sometimes even errors can occur like the audio not exporting out, so time should be allocated to required trouble shooting.

Hours Worked
The total hours spent on an animation production is quite immense. Based on my experiences working on projects in the animation degree, we spent over 50 hours or more working on a project.
Each duty can take a while depending on the quality of the project. For huge productions like Avatar, its taken them around 10 years to finish it due to how high quality with the level of realism they were aiming for. This industry work is time consuming and despite short cuts taken to complete a task, will never be a quick, easy process. Despite this its a worth while experience working with like minded peers and completing a project to the best quality you hoped for.

Promotion/Future Aspects
This industry has a wide range of positions ranging from assets to animator roles. Usually a graduate or someone with basic knowledge and skills can start out as an intern for a company with beginner knowledge as basic requirement. There is a wide range of opportunities for example, internship, freelance and in an actual production for a company like Pixar or Animal Logic. Personally I'm seeking 2D character animation so freelance might be a future aspect for me. 

Examples of Creative Work
http://www.awn.com/news/places/disney-sets-release-date-miyazaki-s-wind-rises
http://www.awn.com/news/television/cn-s-uncle-grandpa-wins-ratings-race
http://www.awn.com/news/technology/rovio-taps-aspera-angry-birds
http://www.awn.com/news/people/animator-richard-williams-kicks-academy-exhibit-oct-4

Here are some examples of 2D animated productions and events occurring. It explains the process and details for each project. Found on the animation world network website which has many more articles on different animation productions and is very informative and recommended to read.

Industry Sources- Research Project Part1

 Industry Sources Research Project

 Area Of Interest
An area of interest I've chosen within the Digital Media Industry is 2D & 3D Animation. The reason behind this choice is that having studied the Animation and Visual Effects Degree, I wish to further my knowledge on this area.

Research
The are many different resources out there in regards to Animation, mainly online but can also be found in Magazines and books.
Online sources of information will include a variety of sites:

*http://www.theloop.com.au/ - Contains are variety of job advertisements for Digital Media including Animation. This is also the main site I collected twenty jobs from.

*http://www.animallogic.com/- The main website for Animal Logic, a company located in Sydney. Site contains a Job listing and production information.

*http://www.siggraph.org/ - Siggraph's main website.  The site features upcoming events, a digital library and the latest news and conferences. Another good source of information especially the digital library. Siggraph has also had programs featured in the International Animation Festival.

*http://www.awn.com/ - Animation World Networks main website. Contains two online magazines,  Animation world magazine and VFXWorld magazine. Also was a job listing, up to date news, blogs, events departments and various information on other departments like Visual Effects, Commercials and Reviews. I consider this one of the most important resources out there for Animation.

 Industry Sector
The industry sector animation is found in is mainly the creative media industry. My main goal for employment is in 2D character animation but I don't mind if it's 3D animation too.  I don't mind at all about the industry it belongs to as it consists of a variety of different sectors but despite this, it's still a highly competitive industry for employment.

http://www.creativeskillset.org/animation/overview/
This site gives information on the industry and the type of productions you may find yourself employed in regards to animated content for example television, feature films, commercials, video games, animated shows and websites.
This site also goes into detail on the whole animation production process from start to finish, information on whose employed in animation in the UK and an overview of animation in general.

 Ethical Issues
http://thesignificanceofanimation.blogspot.com.au/
This site blog site gives details on the different Ethical Issues in this industry.

• Intellectual property: This is the same as copyright laws where respect must be given to another work and to never copy it. This is somethings that must be avoided at all costs unless on a public domain and not self-owned by another.
• Image content: Another form of Intellectual property. This involves the use of similar materials to another production which can be difficult to interpret and thus leave a company with a bad reputation. 
• Non-disclosure: The tight security placed on early concepts like storyboards and scripts. This prevents any production from being stolen.
• Business Ethics: This industry is changing in regards to this where it's increasing its focus.

In regards to the Ethical Issues, I do agree with all of them especially with the work they do. The is enough creative freedom in this industry and rules each abide by like copyright and legal issues.
Some works can even question or parody different issues like religion, ethics and even politics.

Alone or in a collaboration
This depends on you position whether your a freelance animator which will be mostly on your working on personal productions or employed for contract work with a company which will mostly involve team work with other people. Being employed for an actual company like Animal Logic will be collaborating with other people in different roles like rigging or animating to complete a production. Each section of the production need to work and communicate to each other efficiently to achieve the goal of completing a high quality production. I don't mind working in a collaboration or alone but I prefer an actual collaboration with like minded people which makes things that more fun without being alone and bored. Collaborating also means being able to work in a role your most efficient in while others work on the other roles saving you the pain of working in a role you don't like. This is a down side to working alone where you have to practically do everything by yourself even the roles you don't like completing like for example rigging or even audio.

Management
Depending on your role in the industry there is the Director who has the most creative freedom in a production since it's there vision being created, Producer who organizers and arranges specific matters of importance like making sure the director is fulfilling their responsibilities, the production chart, contacting voice actors, actors, audio experts and setting up the dates and time lines of when specific roles must be complete by. There's also the leaders of each station like the lead animator, modeler, rigger and texture artist. Technically it depends on your role if your leading people or just being apart of the team being lead. Personally I'd be satisfied with just being a part of the team since I'm not really into leading people unless I'm required to.

Average Yearly Salary
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes271014.htm
This site shows the statistics of multimedia artists and animators in general. It has tables the display the wages for each industry sector in multimedia including animation but is for America.

http://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Job=Animator/Salary

Not as detailed but is for Australia. For an animator it's AU$39,731 - AU$117,343 total. This page also has job listings for animators 2D and 3D so it's a pretty informative site to explore if job searching for animation employment.

Identify Opportunities Written Exercise 3.

Animation is a highly competitive industry to get employment especially in Australia. However there are ways to get noticed through promoting your own work, since having just Qualifications on paper may not be substantial enough.

Opportunities include entering your own work in a competition which can be found on many websites by just searching on Google.

Each year in May, The International Animation Festival comes to Wagga Wagga for three days. Many animation students world wide enter in their best animated films for people to view in the cinema. Only the best animations are chosen, but this is not  the only thing this event has to offer in regards to opportunities. There is also the chance to catch up with other classmates, talk to other film makers for information and advice as some of the film makers are from independent collectives and even freelance animators.

What is now possible for me is to produce an animation with newly developed or perfected skills and submit it into a competition.
"A Lone Scar" is a 2D animation both my classmate and I collaborated on in 3rd year at university. Mostly some of the hand drawn frames and Matt painting backgrounds will be worked on, then I wouldn't mind submitting it into a competition. If not entered into a competition, then it will prove valuable in a Show reel.

Another method of promoting your skills is building your own personal website featuring your Show reel, CV, contact information and resume. Websites are usually the most preferred way an employer will want to see your skills and information.

What I can now do to continue on this pathway is studying this course, Interactive Digital Media. My main goal was to improve my skills in Web Design and build my own website to show case my work, but now I can also get skills in Game Development since I have an interest in playing games and love the idea of actually making games. Once I finish this course, I'll have improved chances of getting employment once I move to Melbourne.

Positive Self-Reflection/Evaluation written exercise 2

Position:  Animator

Position found on:  http://www.theloop.com.au/jobs/

This position would require someone with Intermediate to Advanced skills in both 2D animation. It could require someone with just Industry experience or if possible someone with only the qualifications in Animation and Visual Effects.

Skills, qualifications and experience I have is the Bachelor of arts Animation and Visual Effects Degree and the Masters of Practice Specialization, which involved an animated project produced for 12 months. Also completed a correspondence course in Cartooning and Illustration.
From studying these degrees, I gained skills in various programs including Autodesk Maya, Mudbox, Adobe Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Illustrator and Dreamweaver.
Also studied electives including, Photography, Graphic Design, Illustration and the theory subject Story Writing. These assisted in developing my skills further especially in some of the above programs mentioned and script writing, narrative and character developing skills in regards to Story Writing.

The area I'm strong in is 2D character animation. I also prefer doing frame by frame animation rather than the tweening method found in Adobe Flash and Stencyl. A good example is one of my collaboration projects, "A Lone Scar". This involved hand drawing each frame on paper, scanning it into the computer, putting together each shot in a sequence and compositing it all together. I wish to go back and refine this project so I can include it at it's finest in a showreel.

What I'm lacking in and want to develop is Matt painting, colouring mainly 2D and Web Design. This was my major weakness in the degree and  I consider it of importance for finessing a 2D animation and promoting myself.
In regards to Web design, I wish to have a personal website to showcase my skills and promote myself. I could also collaborate with past classmates from animation who speciallize in this field, as what I really need to focus on is animation, namely continuous practice to improve my skills and increase the contents in my showreel especially with recent work. 

Other skills I believe would be beneficial for this career pathway is customer service. I gained this from studying Hospitality Operations Certificate III through TAFE. This mainly developed skills in hospitality, waitress and bar work but I believe the customer service aspect will prove useful especially when dealing with clients where you need good listening and verbal skills.

Braging post written exercise 1.

To start off with, I'm aiming to get employment as a 2D character animator.

From a young age, I have loved to draw and always wanted to incorporate it into a future career. That started my dream career as an animator, where I could bring my own drawings to life via 2D animation.

Also from my current studies, I gained a passion for using Stencyl, a 2D game engine which ties into one of my favourite hobbies in playing games.

I have studied the Bachelor of Art Animation and Visual Effects degree for three years and followed by the Masters of Practice Specialization.

Through out my studies, I gained skills in 2D & 3D animation, Adobe programs including After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. Also worked with Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Mudbox, Microsoft excel, PowerPoint Presentation and the various stages involved in pre-production, production and post production.

Studying these degrees also helped in teamwork skills, mainly working with fellow classmates in a group production and gaining an eye for detail especially with analyzing various animated films.
 Also studied various electives including Photography, Graphic Design and Illustration. Studying these assisted greatly in further developing my skills in some of the programs mention above and including Adobe InDesign.

Another subject Story Writing, was one of the theory subjects. This gave me beneficial skills in regards to the pre-production stage in Animated productions. This subject explored script writing which is the back bone for a production, character development and writing narratives for any media like short stories, films and even poetry.

Before my time at university, I completed a correspondence course in Cartooning & Illustration for 12 months and gained various skills required in the industry, like working with perspectives, Comic strip layout, using text appropriately.

Therefore I gained skills I know will assist me greatly in attaining a future career in 2D Animation.

Introduction

Welcome to my Interactive Digital Media journal blog. Here I'll be posting my work in progress for the assessments including research, references, observations, links to important sites, screenshots and video links mainly for my projects. Of course there will be random quirky nonsense abound too! XD
Technically we were given the option of a hand written journal or one on blogger. Due to the atrocity of my handwriting I had no seconds thoughts coming to blogger. :) Seriously my freaking hand writing even made my English teacher in high school suffer...0_o Anyway more posts to come very soon.