MACA Year 1-2

Future plans.

I chose London College of Communication for a few different reasons. Initially I was applying for two courses, the other one was Illustration at Camberwell college. However my main goal was LCC due to positive first person feedback I got from some of my friends who previously studied there. LCC as a college feels very design and art directed compared to CSM which is obviously a lot more fashion focused. LCC has renovated its spaces and opened up many more facilities for people who are doing visual media such as graphic design, illustration, printmaking, publishing etc. I don’t have a proper education in illustration therefore I really want to be able to experiment with mediums and learn about it on a more professional level. 

I started my application process in January, where I was asked to submit a portfolio of my work and a video introduction of myself. To prepare for it, I decided to create a completely new portfolio to demonstrate a range of my abilities that have accumulated in the past 5 years. That included my bachelor’s degree design projects which involved a more hands on skills that I acquired while working in workshops. This also included my personal comic project which I am currently working on, and of course my LIAF film from this course. Because I applied in January, I didn’t have my grad film done yet, and I still think of the LIAF trailer as one of my bigger artistic achievements.

I wanted to demonstrate a wide set of skills to prove that I was prepared to be able to self direct future projects on the course. LCC Illustration and Visual media is a very free course which doesn’t put restraints on projects and ideas, and its very independent led. 

 During my application process I was also asked to write a letter to immigration explaining why I decided to do another masters in UK. 

My explanation is simple: After being in the UK for 8 years I grew very fond of the culture and to me I feel the most free to express my creativity here. Unfortunately the same privilege doesn’t apply to my home country. Taking another masters course will assure at least one more year of me being in the community that I learned to treasure and respect, and most importantly feel part of. 

I’m hoping to find connections that won’t feed me empty promises of a career, but give me a more realistic view on the job market. I’m hoping to find my place in the publishing business or maybe in advertising where my place can be secured for the time being, and not limited to one project only. I’m looking for a position that will guarantee me a presence in the studio or company. Hopefully I can start with being an artist’s apprentice first, as I find being in the studio especially wonderful. But I’m trying to stay realistic and latch on to any opportunity that arises. Whatever gets me through to my goal.

As an immigrant with a goal to stay in UK on the working visa, finding a job in animation industry that will sponsor a visa seems almost impossible. That has been proved by multiple visiting lecturers that straight up announced that if you are not a UK or EU resident you basically have very little chance of finding a job in this field. Regarding this factor, I had to correct my course of action and focus on finding a job anywhere in the creative industry as long as I will be sponsored a visa. As much as I want to be part of animation and film industry, it seems highly unlikely that in such political climate, I with a Russian passport will find any job that’s proximate to my field of interest. Since my primary goal has always been to escape the looming dictatorship of my home country, I’m willing to put my interests and passions aside and take on any boring low paid job in the UK as long as it grants me a chance to stay and later on file for residency. 

Because I am delaying my inevitable exile from the country, I have applied and got into another master’s course under UAL’s branch which is Illustration and Visual Media at LCC in hopes that I will get a slightly higher chance of finding an internship and an in-studio job.

I am aiming at finding connections and internships in the illustration and visual media area because it feels slightly more commercialised. Eventually I got accepted into LCC and I will be starting the course in September 2024.

To prepare for the course, I want to be back in my artistic state. Not as an animator or director, but as an artist with no boundaries. I’m trying to remember my days in high school when I was doing art for A level. I want it to be fun and inspiring process again and this summer before I start the course I will be going back to my fine art roots and explore more subjects that matter to me. However I am not forgetting animation as it will forever be an ace up my sleeve on any occasion. If you can draw-it’s a plus. If you can draw and animate-you are a God. That’s why I am eternally grateful for the skills that MA Character Animation course has provided me with.

What have a learned in these 2 years?

Unit 1 basics of animation/softwares

During unit one of animation course I have gotten a proper introduction into basics of animation, starting with its principles at the core and finishing with software learning pathways. I don’t regret choosing 2D pathway if animation, since it provided me with a lot of useful knowledge in softwares that I haven’t learned before in my Bachelors course, and it gives me a better chance at acquiring a job in a wider field. Since 2D softwares are not used solely for animation but also in other areas of visual design, UX, and motion graphics I think I have an advantage when searching for internship and a job. Also my background in design allows me to reach out into more commercial oriented areas, like advertising.  However reflecting back on my time at the course, I do regret not taking a more experimental approach and valuing emotion over practicality. If I was to start this course over again, I would definitely try myself in stop motion as it seems like one of the fewer mediums that can be freely explored at the university, because in job prospects, stop motion path is incredibly difficult and even more competitive than the general animation market itself (which already is insanely unavailable for new animators).

Unit 2  tough me about working in a team, and the importance of good pitch. During the LIAF project and being the director of a short made me realise that I found my passion in being part of the creative direction and pre production. To me, solely animating is extremely tedious and uninspiring activity. I wish to be a bigger part of the creative process, making my own decisions on the visuals and the story. My long lasting passion for narrative illustration, still proves me that I cannot work mindlessly and executing one task over and over again, without having any creative input in it. Which makes it almost torturous for me to be part of cleanup team or any starting animation jobs. I want to be able to write and visualise stories, create worlds and lore which can only be achieved either through many years of emotionless practice at an entry level role in animation industry or going in a completely different direction. This course made me realise the importance of knowing your own strengths, and patience and obedience are definitely not part of my strengths. 

Unit 2 was also a starting point in trying to make a first film on my own (using someone else’s script). That made me realise about the importance of writing my own script for the film, because it’s a part of my creative strength. However being able to control the visual of the film was definitely something that gave me inspiration.

Unit 3  is self directed project, where I was fully personally responsible for the graduation film. I could definitely sense the overwhelming pressure of being responsible for every aspect of my film. Sometimes too much responsibility can be jarring, and working in a team with a split responsibility is the best way to assure that outcome is to the best standard. However as unfinished as my film is for the submission, I can say that I’m very happy and satisfied with all creative decisions I’ve made so far. This project really pushed me outside of the comfort zone where I had to learn new software on my own, manage my own time with the help of schedules, and keeping up a conversation with people that aided me on this project such as composers and my first year assistant. 

During one of the lecture weeks, Ravi Swami came into the studio to talk to each one of us about our career prospects. I shared my interest with him in potentially setting on a path of storyboard artist. Turns out, he was a storyboard artist himself. However when I gave my opinions and insight into the industry Ravi explained to me that storyboard artist isn’t a position to which you can apply to the studio, which surprised me. When I did my research, t classified storyboard artist position as an entry level job to the animation industry. Of course, there’s a junior storyboard artist position, a senior storyboard artist position, and the storyboard advisor.But from Ravi’s words, the only way to get this position, is in the same way as he managed to get it-apply and work as a cleanup artist first, then animator, and only then you can get upgraded to the position of storyboard artist, which to me sounds unfair. I was aware that storyboard artists are supposed to demonstrate a thorough understanding of animation, layout, composition, sequential drawing and editing. However to me, if I want to work in preproduction department, I might have to switch roles and think of something else, because I’m not passionate enough to spend years working as an animator with the hope of one day becoming a storyboard artist. I will be now looking into character design positions in the industry, as I am still very passionate about working in the preproduction department and working closely with the head of the story, creative directors and designers. Ravi suggested that I might look into filmschools and storyboarding for live action cinema instead of animation, as there they would straight away look closely at my existing knowledge of cinematic language. I agreed with him, because in a lot of cases, my work is heavily inspired by cinematic techniques, realistic acting and action.

Takeaway: Throughout this year, being able to direct a film and work solely on the project made me realise my strengths and weaknesses. To me, it is very important to be in charge of creative direction, story or the visual style. If becoming a storyboard artist is really only possible through animation, then I might not even try it. I will be building on top of skills that I already have like layout, illustration storyboarding, scriptwriting, character design and will be trying to adapt to the industry, showcasing the versatility of my skillset but in the direction where I can find artistic satisfaction. After all, I would even prefer to be a director of my own projects.

During our first year on the course, we were given a surface level dive into what is required to be an animator and what it takes. To me, becoming a cleanup artist on the first stages to work on projects without a single control over style, idea, concept sounded very dissatisfactory. As someone who values visual language and because of my affiliation with comic illustration and scriptwriting, I started looking into positions in the animation industry that could be suited for me other than cleanup artist or animator. A possible career that appeared in my vision was storyboard artist. When we break down what it means to write a comic, as I already do , it breaks down into two aspects: storyboarding and illustration. I really enjoy communicating an idea or a story in a series of consecutive panels. The official definition of the job of the storyboard artist is as follows: storyboard artists help the head of the story create a visual representation of the narrative. This job is part of the preproduction. In some cases storyboard artists do cleaned up storyboards, to make sure that they are in the right style for the project. These are the skills that I already poses and I would be happy to improve on. Next, I had to talk to someone who is a storyboard artist.

As someone who went to study animation on my own accord and out of sheer curiosity, after a year of being involved in the animation I can definitely say that going down the animator path isn’t something that I’m willing to do if I want to get into the industry. It isn’t because I feel the lack of skills, but because I’m lacking one important aspect of an animator-patience. To me patience always means a lack of dynamics, and something that’s lacking passion. The concept of doing something, only to get a satisfaction by the end when seeing the finished product is something that occurs as very uninspiring to me. After working on LIAF and having my pitch chosen for trailer selection for Long Shorts, I realised how much pleasure I get when working in preproduction. The visual development grips me the most, potentially because I have background in illustration, design and fine art. One part of my creative conscience that I always try to push first is branding myself as a comic artist. I’ve been engaged in visual storytelling since the very young age.

Simulated work practice with second years was to help them with their graduate projects but also have a go at working for someone and putting the acquired skills to the test. The second year that I got paired with was a lovely partner to work with. Apart from me, she also had 2 other helpers. Her project heavily focuses on animal animation, which is truthfully speaking is my weakest skill. Therefore instead of putting myself up for a challenge, I went the safe way and offered skills that I’m most confident in which is character design. Thankfully my second year did have human character in her animation so she allowed me to do a character design for her.

In terms of concrete goals that we had with my second year, I found that it was necessary to highlight the mid way and final deadlines for my part of the job. This made my life a lot easier as I had a clear understanding of what to prioritise first. I made a few sketches of the silhouette with simple yet effective shapes, that we were taught in Character design class. The character I was working on was supposed to be an elderly cat lady. She was supposed to be a portrayal of a classic stereotypical grandma, but with a bit of a creepy aspect to her. Thus I made her round and soft, but her eyes are covered by glasses so we can’t see her eyes. Psychologically, when we humans are unable to establish an eye contact with others, we perceive them as creepy or mysterious. That was precisely the effect I was going after.

I proposed a variety of hairstyles, clothing elements and accessories so that my second year was able to choose and mix and mach elements that she thought were the best suited for the character and after getting a final approval from her, I moved to creating a turnaround sheet. My second year stated that because the character of grandma will only appear in a few final frames and mostly in close up shots, it is not necessary for character to be put in 3/4 and back view.

I did a simple black round outline, using round brush to create even, clean line art. It would be appropriate for the drawing to be stylistically influenced by television show character designs, with comically large head, and proportions, and for it to not be too artistic or sketchy. Because the design was very little detailed, I focused on bigger forms. My second year was very satisfied with the outcome.

Unfortunately, the time I was given on this project clashed with submission deadlines, so I was stuck with only limited amount of work I could do. To improve this character design I would’ve done a proper character sheet in colour, as well as assets sheet and full turnaround sheet in colour with back and 3/4 view. I felt like I succeeded in making an effective character design overall. The role that I was given on this project made me reconfirm my confidence in character design as something I enjoy doing and would like to potentially do in the industry. And I found working with my second year a very pleasant experience as she has been very clear with her instructions and very understanding when it came to our workload. She communicated in good detail the intentions of her character and that made it easier for me to construct visuals for it. I would definitely consider trying out new styles for character designs, going out of my comfort zone as I did with grandma’s, as someone who’s more confident in drawing more comic/manga styled characters.

This exercise focused on adapting an audio file for lip sync and coming with an improvisation acting. The topic for audio files was “vines” which are very short comedic videos originated from Vine platform back in 2014. These videos are iconic and well known for their context. To give a selected audio file context, I drew a storyboard. The line that I chose was “Fuck off Janet, I’m not coming to your fucking baby shower” which adds up to 4 seconds in total. Initially the one was longer but Christina advised me to keep it short, and that gave me a lot more flexibility when it comes to context and action. But I focused a lot more on the lip sync in this exercise rather than action, and it was a lot better than working on a previous audio file that I filmed with a partner. Because the character didn’t move as much, I could better position the mouth and focus better on the shape. And the audio that was a lot more consistent and good paced helped a lot. This made me realise the importance of audio quality.

Lip sync using video/audio reference. On this exercise I worked with a partner, and had to translate her voice into animation. Helpfully, we could record our partner and studio record their voice to overlay on top of the animation file. I experienced some struggle working with my partner, as she appeared to be very shy in front of the camera, and thus she instinctively spoke at a very fast pace (her native language is Chinese) . This caused a problem for a lip sync because I couldn’t fit so many mouth shapes in a small time frame. This exercise turned out to be a very messy business for me but eventually it sorta worked out.

Face Acting. Next crucial animation principle was understanding emotion and how to translate it onto the face. once again, we were given a plain simple model, with no particular design characteristics so that nothing will distract us from focusing on the face itself. I chose one of the available stimuli, which is character reading the book and reacting to it.

First it was important to understand the spectre of emotions and what are the main emotions. Obviously, humans are a lot more complicated to be only showing one emotion, so we usually end to combine two or more. But knowing the basic expressions can help us mix and match positions of face features to show more complex emotions.

After this, I sketched out the keyframes of how the character would react to a book. I didn’t find this exercise too hard as I find it to be one of my strengths when it comes to portraying emotion in illustration. However I took it upon myself to switch from already familiar software like TV Paint, to Photoshop, to further my skills in it.