12 month action plan for exiting college
My plan for leaving university is probably not your typical plan to start with, as I no longer live with my parents I don’t have them to fall back on while I find my dream job. When I leave university I will need to get a job pretty quickly to pay bills, as I will be living with my boyfriend back in Grantham (we will not be able to survive on his wage alone). Grantham is actually a great place to live, although I am unsure of career prospects in this industry, but there are direct train routes to places like London, Leeds, Nottingham and Manchester, which are all have better prospects in the animation industry, so it would be possible to commute.
The first step of my plan is to sign onto an agency, or find a part time job in a shop or a cafe. This will allow me to help out with bills whilst living in Grantham yet give me time and freedom to search for a good job in industry.
The way I will go about finding a job in industry is by paying close attention to animation jobs on twitter and actively searching online. The online platforms I plan to use vary from Linkedin, and I have updated my page, Guardian Jobs and Reed online.
In the meantime I plan to continue my creative practice, as I am realistic about the quality of my work and do not yet feel it is of a professional standard so do not expect to find a job straight away. One of the ways I plan to do this is by working as a freelance graphic designer at Craven Digital as they have too much work at the moment and have asked for some of my time. This will allow me to develop and hone my design skills and hopefully build up my portfolio whilst I continue to look for design jobs. Ideally I would love a permanent position in a design/animation studio for financial security and to make friends and contacts, however as well as being realistic about the quality of my work I’m also realistic about the industry and I am well aware that a lot of work is freelance rather than contract based. But I have also analysed the benefits of working freelance, because freelance work means you constantly have to hunt for work it means that you are constantly updating yourself on what’s going on in industry. Also because of the time frame I don’t think you would ever get bored working freelance due to the pace of turning around multiple projects and the need to be as productive as possible to get through enough projects in a year to keep the income coming in.
Another part of my twelve month plan is to learn to drive over this period. I believe it will greatly broaden my field of opportunities as I can go wherever for a job with no restrictions and no expensive train fares for last minute interviews. It would also take the stress out of going for interviews, as trains make me anxious if I’ve never been to the destination before. Of course I need money in order to learn to drive. I am expecting a relatively large tax rebate soon so hopefully that will start me off and then I can hopefully pay the rest with the temporary job I have at the time.
Another creative opportunity that I would like to pursue is working with The Journey Man who did the voice over in my final major project. He was very pleased with how the animation turned out and has said that he would be very interested in finding funding to do more projects like this in the future and will be in touch. I am really excited for this and I hope it will come off as I really enjoyed making it. To try and make this a reality I have looked into some possible funding that you can see on my blog, including the women in film grant but I think it would be good to look together to find something that works for us both. I also plan to join funding networks and soon after graduation, delve further into any possible international stories that could be animated and international pots of money that might pay for it. In the meantime I’ll also return to where I first heard the story I animated at a lantern walk in Skipton castle run by the Woodland Trust. I think it would be a good exercise would be to go back to their next one and hear more stories, as this was big inspiration last time. I will also be looking for more events like this around the country.
This project was so great for me, mainly because The Journey Man was such a pleasure to work with and I truly believe combined with the freelance graphic design work, I might actually have a chance of making enough to be a viable income if we can source funding to do more similar projects to extended practice, and that would be a dream lifestyle. I would set myself up an office hopefully in my house and work from home in a more professional environment than a living room possibly expanding into a separate office with the hope of hiring more employees if the project work took off. I think that this would be a lot longer than twelve months down the line though, but I have thought that it would be good to do what Fettle Animation Studio do by taking on recent Grads from Creative Skillset and then half their wage is paid for by them.
Although this plan of action for the future seems to be quite a nice idea on paper, I think personally I am not ready to go straight into industry, and a studio yet. I don’t yet feel confident enough in my work and I think having a six month period after graduating to do freelance work and possibly work with The Journey Man will really improve my portfolio and showreel and hopefully I will then have something I am proud to show to industry. I think that by being employed by a studio of a really high standard there’s lots of pressure to have your work up to that standard and I don’t feel confident that mine is yet. I feel that this confidence could come soon though, as I am improving with everything I do. For example I am extremely pleased with my final major project but a lot of my other work does not meet this standard, and I think in six months I could be where I feel I should be now.
If this isn’t the case in six months, I will review the situation and take an alternate plan of attack of looking around for internships where I will be able to learn new things, get experience and improve my show reel without as much pressure of having to meet the standards of a paid employee on a salary yet with enough to learn more skills so that I could impress them to be at that stage one day. This could also turn into a job if all goes well or at least create a bank of professional contacts that I can reach out to when I am ready to apply for a job. Another benefit of following this plan of attack is that I think it would be a good opportunity to travel out of my comfort zone and work somewhere I have not been before either in the country or internationally, because I know it would only be for a short term it would not be as daunting as say taking a completely new job in a new place. I do also plan to improve my French and Spanish so this may come in handy when applying for international internships.
As for local, national and international networks, I would like to and plan on joining a few storytelling networks. This would be useful for me to source new material for future projects that could be similar to my extended practice. I plan on not limiting myself by only joining those in the UK, I think it would be best to look internationally also to source new foreign material as this is likely to have been portrayed to a UK audience and it would be interesting to make stories of other cultures relate to our culture as the UK grows more multicultural every day. A great example of one of these networks is The International Storytelling Network that host events all around the world. What I like most about the network is that they focus on telling “stories that change the world” meaning the stories told have meaning, message and objective. The best kind of stories. This might also provide a great opportunity to travel myself and meet these storytellers for first hand research from the country of origin. For this I may need to find translators but I know many people who are bilingual in many different languages including Japanese, Spanish, Hindi, Polish, Latvian, Chinese, and many more. I have also looked more locally at Storytelling clubs where you can go to tell or listen to people’s stories. The closest to where I will be based in Grantham is Leicester Guild of Storytelling, Tales at the Watermill (also Leicester) and Fables, Tales & Folklore in Peterborough. There are plenty to go and explore that will give me many contacts which will be useful especially if the work with The Journey Man doesn’t go ahead. - I’ll be able to take my business cards with me and a link to the work I have already created for extended practice to sell my practice.
The main way I will present myself to new contacts is through an online portfolio with a website that I just set up which will show all of my best work. I think this is great as you can just send them a link and everything you wanted to show them or are proud of is right there easily accessible, no pesky folders and having to physically show people, no YouTube links where they can also see things your not proud of. I have set up a Vimeo account for my professional standard work. I think eventually when I have more of a portfolio to show I will switch to Squarespace or possibly pay someone to create a professional website for me if I have the money.
My strategies for contacting people and making links with industry would be mainly on linkedIn, maintaining connections with the alumni group and following the creative network events at LCA and by volunteering at festivals (which would get me in to see the animations with less cost and also allow me to network with the organizers of the festivals who may put me in touch with professionals). This will be useful to reach out to people who I admire and find out how they got where they are and eventually ask for advice which will hopefully steer me in a good direction to a path I want to take.
I do not wish to undertake a masters degree as I feel like I have had enough of being education and I want to start my life now and move forward and I feel very stuck in education right now. I think my portfolio would benefit more from going into industry because I will learn from the professionals around me and I will face more problems that I will have to solve and I think this would really push me into improving. If I did change my mind I would possibly think about a creative masters where I can take some time out to improve my abilities if I needed to.
However I would be more interested in doing some short courses for example in script writing, storytelling, life drawing, and possibly storyboarding. I think all of these things would really benefit my practice.
Another path I could take would be teaching. However I don’t think I would want to go back to university to do this so a way around would be to get into teaching at a higher education level by maybe in a few years proceeding with guest lecturing to build up experience to be hired part time, and then get my PGCE through that so I can teach younger children. I would want to teach animation or art in general.
So to sum up my plan, I would like to take six months to improve my portfolio and become a better, more confident professional. In which time I will be earning money through a job doing whatever I can get with some freelance graphic design on the side, improving my French and Spanish (and learning to drive), and hopefully The Journey Man and I will find some funding and will plan our next venture together.
After the six month period I will reassess where I am at in terms of portfolio. If I feel confident enough in it then I will start applying for jobs in the industry. If I am not at that stage yet then I will apply for internships both in the UK and internationally. If this is the path I take I will think more seriously about doing some short courses alongside like script writing.
Eventually by the end of the twelve months (or if I decide to intern after eighteen months) I hope to either have a full time job with The Journey Man creating our own series for children’s television which would be fantastic, or a job working full time in an animation studio.
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