By the end of second years PPP presentation it dawned on me how much I have changed this year in terms of my abilities, the skills I've acquired and the type of working I am producing now compared to last year. This module has been incredibly insightful and made me look at the industry in a more in depth way than I have before. There was a number of tasks I undertook throughout the module that made me aware of things that I wasn't previously, whether this was animation studio research or analysing my own practice and reflecting on the year through the create strategies tasks. I saw the creative strategies brief as an opportunity to explore and understand a range of processes and techniques that I otherwise wouldn't necessarily have done. Specifically, I made the effort to look into areas of familiarity such as film and some areas that I wasn't so familiar with such as the industry, careers and studios. The 'Brand Me' brief also gave me the opportunity to start thinking about what I want to do further and how to represent myself visually through the use of bespoke branding. I learnt that I much prefer visuals when branding to the use of text and think that in many cases an image is more effective and communicate more to an audience than a word or two could do in its place. The research brief on an animation studio made me aware once looking into various studios about the types of infrastructure studios have combined with the types of projects different studios work on and what seperates them from each other. I think as much as I have learnt myself throughout this module I have been informed by others about animation studios, different types of work that is out there and from collaborating for the 'Pitch Perfect' brief I learnt a lot from my group regarding communication and efficiency within a group as well as working in seperate roles.
Collaboration was again emphasised in the 'Pitch Perfect' brief. This was a difficult but undoubtedly rewarding brief as it informed me of areas that unless I went ahead and tried them out I wouldn't have known. The way we created an imaginary brand with all the real life considerations that would have to be made was very helpful and put things into perspective for me when it came to costs, opportunities and competition within the industry. Working with my group was a good experience overall and gave me another chance to improve my ability to communicate and collaborate with others. The dynamics in this particular collaboration felt different to the previous three we had done throughout the year and I believe this was because instead of being a purely creative endeavor it was a business driven task that meant we all had to take on roles and support each other in order to succeed as a group - especially when none of us had any real experience doing something like this. Visiting professionals such as Barry Purves, Dave Alex from Aardman and Zane Whittingham from Fettle animation gave me some first hand insight into the industry and because of their contrasting roles within it we were given a broad spectrum of ideas and experiences to think about. I particularly liked Barry Purves as a visiting lecturer and thought his enthusiasm for his craft was inspiring. Furthermore, his work and his ideas I think in some ways embody what animation is about: performance, storytelling and art.
From my self analysis I can say that although I have a broad range of focuses at the moment it would be good to narrow down that focus and really explore one particular way of working or one particular role within all the fields that there are. I currently have interests in 2D and 3D animation as well as writing, film making and illustration - so I want to decide what I'm best at and see where I can go from there. The vatiety of platforms I enjoy lead me through Mike's advice to 'transmedia storytelling' and the method of communicating stories over a variety of platforms is a concept that I have started to investigate as this year has come to a close and I look forward to finding out more about it as I start researching it over the summer as well as undertaking a variety of other creative endeavors to hopefully in turn discover my focus.
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