How I Got Started: The Artsy Animator (2003-2006)
Like many others, I spent my teenage years hopping from one dream to the next when it came to my future career. My problem was not so much that I didn’t know what to do, but that I wanted to do it all…. A paleontologist? A Vet? A videogame maker? A cartoonist? A Punk Rock Star (maybe I’ll do a blog post on that)? Eventually I thought i had decided: A 3D Artist!
So, I got myself a spot at Swansea institute’s renowned 3D animation course, only to change my mind at the last minute and decide, inspired by Futurama that, actually I didn’t want to be constrained to a medium, but to explore my creativity in as many ways as possible. Last minute, I phoned the UCA and enrolled on a BA(Hons) Animation course at Art college!
After a great first year, I spent a few years thinking I’d made a big mistake, this choice wasn’t particularly thought out and there were a fair few teenage hormones involved. However, looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way. My class was a very small one, just 8 or so people, and we were only the second year of students to go through the programme. I recall feeling constrained, that I wasn’t learning enough, experiencing enough or getting good enough, but I’ve realised that the course, and it’s tutors, were absolutely perfect for getting me where I am today.
I loved the first year, where we undertook a year of the Illustration course (and I met some spectacularly talented people like this chap Laurie). It was a great idea, a little like a foundation, we did book making, illustration, print making, animation and some graphic novels, in addition to a whole load of life drawing. The second year things seemed much smaller and a little scary, the focus was on animation, but it felt very artsy and I got a little lost in a spiral of self reflective teen angst. But, when I compare this to some uni courses I see today, I admire that we were taught how to be creative, to innovate and not just to operate machines and programs in a way that would get us on the factory line.
The third year got pretty tough, I was too absorbed by my work to get a job, so money was tight. I felt that if I didn’t get a good degree that I would never get anywhere, and I made some bad decisions with who to live with, which came to a head when the guy I’d chosen to do a joint minor project with got stoned all the time and didn’t do any work, progressing to selling drugs from the house. Ask me at the time and I would have freaked out about where my life was going, but i scraped through with a First and slowly, in hindsight, everything started to make sense.
Between 2004-2006 I thought I was failing, I was continually anxious and stressed, working into the wee hours and worrying about my future.
In 2014 I understand: at Uni I developed self-initiative, how to learn for myself, to deal with tough challenges and make major mistakes whilst I could in order to grow. I experienced sacrifice (including overwriting a DVD of my old Punk Rock band just so I could hand in a project!) and endured. And I worked through a tonne of over baked ideas and ambition, until I appreciated finding complexity through simplicity and polish. I would encourage everyone to do the same. Yes, make sure you are employable, but endeavour to tick your own boxes first and find the thing that makes you sing…then get really good at it. Most likely you will find that getting good at what you are most passionate about, will make you 10x more employable!
I watched through my old showreel below and laughed, almost too embarrassed to share, it seems I hadn’t discovered tangent weighting or good rendering techniques; but then I remembered the times I spent agonising after uni about whether I would get a job in the industry, how I went through an animation directory from A to B until I got one (I found it at B) and how a group of people I am still good friends with today, saw something in this unpolished reel and the lad, with the odd haircut, who made it and gave me a chance.
Hopefully, someone out there who is fresh out of uni and feeling the same will read this and think “If he can get a job out of that, then I’m gunna be OK!” and it’ll encourage them to do it.
And….actually, i’m still pretty proud of some of the concept work you can see above ;).
