The final project at Confetti…I can’t believe I’m already here! I remember writing my induction letter for the college as if it was just yesterday, and whilst I planned to gain skills, experience and confidence, I never thought I would have come out of the course with so much work that I’m proud of and so many projects that I have had fun on. This last brief has been a rather pleasant one, partly due to the fact that it was a lot smaller than the Creative Project, but mainly because it allows me to view my success on a broader spectrum. I saw my experience of the course from beginning to end and got to consolidate all of the animations, clips and art into one place which is something I am really grateful for. My scheduling worked quite well and I had a much better work-life balance with this brief, in comparison to the last one. I was less tired, less stressed and able to divide my time in a more productive way (although this might be because I had quite a bit of work done beforehand, such as the logo and I simply had to talk about it). Another thing that went well was my production execution; usually, when it comes to the final products, I’ve found that I had to take a lot of shortcuts and make changes just to get the work done in time, and the results end up being quite different from what I pictured. This time, everything went according to the vision I had in my head and I am incredibly pleased to say that my showreels, website and branding all meet my standards and look the way I want them to! I now have a brand identity and professional portfolio and can confidently go to university with the proof of my skills behind my back.
Even so, there are always things that could be improved upon. Despite the success that I had with the final products, I believe that the showreels could have been more polished. I could have added text/labels to determine what the media on-screen was about and further demonstrate my skills and a lot of the clips also weren’t rendered in high resolution, particularly in the 3D reel. Even though they are engaging and fun, to enhance them, I would have liked some more time to add in a watermark, transitions and text but since there were so many to do, I decided to focus on the necessities, which were to showcase my work and edit them nicely. In addition to this, my socials still need updating! My goal-setting is decent, but following through with them is something I need to improve on since I still haven’t created the social media schedule like I planned, and have only updated my profile picture and header on most platforms. I still need to add details, sort out bios and ‘about me’ sections and create some sort of posting schedule so that I don’t fall behind with the industry.
When I really knuckled down and started working, I was churning out blog posts quite fast, even though most of them are quite detailed! I also loved the method that we employed for the Industry Research Report, which was to update it bit by bit over the course of several weeks. If I was to do this project again, I would use this technique of adding in small parts frequently for some of the other long blog posts too because it made things much easier to handle. I would also start my ‘intense work period’ a couple of days early so that I would have more time to work on the reels since as I mentioned earlier, I had a period of organising myself and trying to get my head clear of the previous project before jumping into this one and really honing in on the work. The extra days really would have helped me enhance the final production.
VFX & Animation at Confetti has been such an amazing time for me. I met wonderful people, spoke with industry professionals, learned how to do so many cool things and really got my foot in through the door. My dream is to become an animator, but thanks to college, this is already a reality! I sometimes find myself in disbelief when I look down at After Effects or Animate and see that I am actually creating moving images and translating my ideas in such a wonderful, visual way. My storytelling and character design have come leaps and bounds from what they were but I would still like to improve on my drawing skills and confidence in my work (especially when talking about it and presenting it!). In general, I feel that I am quite an independent person and didn’t really ask for help during the projects, even when I felt that I was in-over-my-head and couldn’t manage the workload that I had given myself. If I could do it all again, I would open up more and share – communicate with peers and teachers and ask for criticism whenever I can. I would also set aside more time for my hobbies and health since I let those fall behind on multiple occasions when I was absorbed in the work.
I am so excited for the next step of my creative journey and thanks to this brief, I can see just how much I have gained from this course. Thank you Confetti!
