Creative Futures Two: Creative Futures Week, Tuesday

Talk One: After Your Degree: The First Steps (Games), Dave Boydel

Dave studied digital art for games at my University (Glyndwr) and graduated last year (2011). Before this he studied fine art and graphic design. At University he did things like digital sculpting, 3D modelling, synopsis writing (world creation) and game engines. He said that he would say that he is mainly a concept artist and likes doing character design, environment design, prop design and 3D modelling. At the moment he is working at Dreadnought creating a game for facebook. 

He gave good amounts of advice such as..

After graduating you should keep practicing your art, don't give yourself time off because it's likely that you won't get back into it, so keep sketchbooks, do digital art, explore new media's and technologies, set yourself goals and don't slack off. 

'Prick up your ears'- do networking,, make business cards, open a deviant art account (deviant art is a non professional way to show your portfolio online and communicate with other artists), join in with forums, have your own blog and go to conventions such as MCM, Thought Bubble and Regional Shows. 

When applying to studios be professional, make your CV maximum of one and a half pages, in your cover letter sell yourself and don't waffle, be flexible and go where the work is, be prepared to make coffee and expect not to be what you want to be at the beginning. 

Dave had to move to just north of London to get his job.

He ended on this quote..

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day on your life."

-Confusious

This was a good talk, it was nice to have someone that recently graduated from our university and see that they have been successful in gaining a job. He was also able to give some really good advise, I will definitely be taking this all onboard. 

Talk Two: Character Design and Social Networking, Jonathon Edwards

Jonathon Edwards is an illustrator and does animation design. 

In 2007 Jonathon designed a character called Inspector Cumulus from a couple of doodles. A friend then made a CG model of the character to give him an idea of how it would look if it was a toy. Eventually after a couple of adjustments he had the character made into a toy that sold in various places all over the world. 

He then made some more characters that were monsters, of which another friend who had studied dress making said that she could make them in the form of plushies and so thats what they did! 

One day Jonathon was watching 1982 general elections and sketching away in his sketchbook characters inspired by the politicians and what they were wearing. His friend Louise then said that she would like to make them but bigger than any normal plushie and with lots of detail. And so thats what she did. They made loads of them. They got quite a few people following them on Twitter. One day Louise did a tweet saying that she would love to make one of one of the fashion ladies on This Morning (I can't remember her name), this lady saw this tweet and became very interested. She then asked them both to create some for her window in London Fashion Week. They were in the window for 2 weeks. 

During this two weeks someone from Selfridges had seen the window and so they contacted Jonathon and Louise and asked if they would do a window for them for the following christmas.The theme was a dolls house. Their display was in the window for 2 months.

Part of  Selfridges window design

Jonathon gets inspiration for his characters from everyday people. 

They then went to Japan for 5 weeks to do a project on headspace. Whilst they were there they were asked to do some work for a design on a milk vending machine in Stockholm. For this Jonathon drew the characters and Louise made the characters of which was then stages and had a photoshoot for the final image.

Milk Vending Machine Design

This was an interesting talk, it definitely had a different perspective what could be done with character design. However I didn't feel that I got anything from it in the way of learning more about character design of which I was hoping. I hoped that it would give me advice and tips on character design as I'm not too confident with it but there wasn't anything like that. 

Talk Three: Illustration and Key Graphics: Work, Realities and Copyright. David Newell

The start of David's career started off to be 'awkward', he was clever and artistic and so to start with chose to do Science but his heart wasn't in it. So he went to art college, as soon as he finished he got a job in science. However he ended up going back to art ans was determined to make a future from it. To make money whilst doing his own work he did sign writing. He then got a job in a newpapers and then in an agency all doing creative work.  He then got into commercial work doing work for companies such as AEI, Linnoff March, Super Target, Racing Technik and Party Flyers. in 1996/97 he started doing work for agencies, however when some work came his way he gave an offer to the company which was to go straight through him, that way they wouldn't be paying so much and he would be paid more. They took him up and gave him a job afterwards. He did work for BASF, United Friendly, Tron Bonne (playstation one game) and Doctor Party. 

In 2002/03 he did artwork for The Clothes Show Live, after this he went on to creating and designing packaging for a number of products such as toys for the discovery store, Supacell Digital batteries, Unity Comdoms and Flurodine toothpaste. 

David Newell Supacell Design

It was nice to see how his career developed and to see the variety of work and jobs that he has done. Again, it was nice to see as all of his work has been commercial and that's the sort of direction that I would love to go with animation. 

Overall today wasn't too bad, I have to say that best one was the first talk and the worst was the last. But I gained more knowledge and now know things that I didn't know yesterday!