Bye February!

Hi there, here I am, back to my blog.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted to carry on with this journal project just to have a safe space to document my day to day progress and art explorations. (Some kind of place I can come back in the future and laugh hard about myself) I supposed this is a good way to stay connected with friends and family on the distance, and also to document my creative process.

So I'm going to try to stay committed to this space and use it as both a public and a personal diary, where I can share a little bit of my everyday life.

Another goal with this blog is to exercise my English writing skills and get more comfortable expressing myself in this new language. 

So this week I started working on my volunteer project for Settle Stories, a charity organization in the UK that creates visual storytelling educational videos for children. More info in this link: 

Home - Settle Stories

Honestly, I think this is one of the best things that happened to me in February, I am really enjoying being part of this project, and I already feel that it's teaching me a lot about freelancing, timing and organization while also allowing me to practice and develop my artistic skills. Which, of course, I hope will be helpful in my professional development (if there's ever going to be a professional life for me in the animation / art industry out there...).

Anyway, moving away form negativity, the story I am working on is an adaptation of: "The elves and the Shoemaker" a classic tale from the Brothers Grimm.

I must confess that, sadly, I really connect with the life of the poor shoemaker: putting all his craft into creating beautiful shoes while struggling to make ends meet. 

Other than that, I also see it as a nice story about the power of creativity to shift the context you are immerse in, and about collaboration and its amazing impacts in the creative field. Or at least, that's how I like to look at it.

So far, I got the first rough sketches of each frame of the video, (which would be something like a 1st really crude storyboard stage), and also I've done some research to define the mood and figure it out which kind of style I would like to explore.



Next steps will probably be to start working adding colour to the background of a quaint village among the hills. For this, I'm taking inspiration from some of the small English villages I've had the pleasure to meet while living here in the past years, and also from the beautiful landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales.

For the tone and atmosphere, I want it to be something softly magical, but not too dreamy.. so I will see what can I actually achieve from all this. 

This week also I been keeping an eye to the talks from the Escapeverse Festival of Animation, Games & VFX. My favourite talk was given by Lisa Mae Evans, Creative CG Supervisor at Blue Zoo Studio. She presented the Zookit app, a tool developed to optimise the pipeline for creating 3D characters, props and environments.
At the moment, the app works well for asset generation, but they're still experimenting with how these assets can be integrated efficiently into the scenes. She explains that their goal with this tool is to speed up production without sacrificing quality, while opening new creative opportunities for artists from different fields.

Personally, I found it incredibly inspiring. It's exciting to see studios thinking not only about efficiency, but about how tools can expand creative freedom. 

I believe the talk will be uploaded in the YouTube channel soon, in case someone's want to have a browse over there. 

https://www.youtube.com/@Escapestudios/videos

With all this new volunteer project, I decided to revisit my painting fundamentals and review what I learned in my background painting classes.
So I also did some quick spheres studies just to warm up my eyes and hands. It's always nice to go back to basics!

(I know they don't look as good, but I carry on practicing..)

I also reopened a 3D layout project we did at the end of last year, this is an academic group project that needed some quick adjustments for a final exam (which I can't present yet because I still owe some other exams). But I did my part for the group, and it was cool to open Maya again after a while not touching it. Luckily, it was just a quick fix. 

Here are some stills of some of the shots I was working on..

And here's the final video (with all the group work)

So, this month I decided to commit myself to trying to get a job in animation. Which maybe it's still a bit ambitious, considering I'm still a 2nd year student. But, anyways, I've been applying to loads of different positions, and so far I had a few interviews at the beginning of the month, which was exciting and gave me a much needed good energy boost during this difficult job searching stage.. but yeah so far I'm still looking.. 

Last week, I received an offer asking about my fees, but I haven't heard anything back from this people since, which feels a little bit strange.. 
This week, I also received an offer for an unpaid internship doing some illustration and graphic design for fashion. Its interesting, even if it's not 100% aligned with what I'm currently studying now.. 
Unfortunately, the distance makes it impossible for me at the moment.. So I guess I m going to have to carry on waiting. 

I also join a live portfolio review session hosted by WIA, (Women in Animation Organization) at 2am hahaha which maybe shows desperation or maybe discipline.
The reviews were done by Matt Roberts a Senior Artistic recruiter at Disney Studios, and I gain so much inspiration and also many mental notes about how to improve in my own work. One thing that made me think was that most of the portfolios reviewed were focused on visual development and character design.. and yeah generally a lot of world building and preproduction work..
So that makes me feel that this part of the pipeline is very saturated at the moment. So maybe I should try to specialise in another area.. although I still don't really know which part of the animation process attracts me the most.. 
Still figuring it out.

The last digital meeting I attended this week was a random Masterclass hosted by the place I'm currently studying animation, about developing art for 2D video games. It was a really spontaneous call, but I'm glad I joined in the end, because it gave me a lot of inspiration and also expanded my perspective towards other fields that also feel attractive to me. It definitely left me thinking a bit...

During my free time, I carry on training, pole dancing, climbing and stretching.. as usual. But I also started watching an anime after a long long time of barely watching anything more than movies (which lately hasn't been often either).
I started watching: "Love Through a Prism", produced by Wit Studio and licensed by Netflix. The story follows a Japanese girl who wants to study painting and moves to London to attend a prestigious traditional art academy. The conflict of the story begins because her mother doesn't want her to study arts and instead she wants her to stay in Japan, take over the family business, and of course, marry a man and become a housewife probably..
Instead of forbidding her completely of pursuit her dream, her mother gives her a challenge: she must become the best student in the academy in no more than 6 months. If she fails, she must return back to Japan and follow the lifestyle her mother expects her to do.
What I really love about the series are the backgrounds, they are incredibly detailed. Also each episode introduces different aspects of the English culture and popular iconic places. I think this resonates with me deeply because I moved here not so long ago, and I still connect with that sense of wonder and discovery in a new culture / country. I also loved the theme of course, the travelling and art topics are deep interests for me.. I'm still only on episode 4 so far, but I'll try committing to finish it and take some inspiration from it.  

Lastly, this week my cat discovered a new chair to sleep on. its the first time he picks that spot to sleep, and he looks really cute over there. So yeah, of course, I need to use it as a painting reference practice. So probably I will share more about that in the future xD

 
I think there's nothing else to add for this week, so wish me luck for the next one. I'll try to be back next Friday with more process to be shared.