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.