What's Next?

Continuing from the last post, I've been working hard and keeping myself busy. To help give myself more experience and confidence I offered my drawing skills to a collaboration project. The project is a competition entry for D&AD and the purpose is to create an advert promoting a new shopping centre in relation to the 2012 Olympics in London. My role was to directly collaborate with the project leader to create storyboards for the camera crew and director to follow on the day of the shoot. I was given a deadline of 1 week to finish the storyboards, during that week I created a set of thumbnails which are small rough sketched out storyboards, I arranged a meet up with the project leader so we could go over the work I had produced and get his input, he liked everything I had done and only requested a few minor changes. After that I went away and made the final drafts of the storyboard and then sent them to him that night. He was very pleased with the work I had produced for him, I was even happier because I put myself out there and offered my skills to someone else, they in turn accepted my help and valued the work I had done for them, this has greatly boosted my confidence, what's more is that I will be credited in the competition entry, so if we're lucky enough to win or be nominated then it will look great on my CV.

In terms of pushing my skills, I found a book on amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maya-Studio-Projects-Environments-Props/dp/0470524030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298223245&sr=8-1 which contains exactly everything that I need to know to fully learn how to work as a digital environment artist, it includes all of the technical information and detailed tutorials on how to carry out and produce work, i already know a lot of it at a basic standard but with this book I will now be able to get to the level I need to enter the games industry and even complete the little test by Splash Damage which I showed in the previous post.

I know I have a better chance of employment if I get work experience, the problem is that none of the game studios in or around london offer it at a convenient time, and some don't offer it all, also I'd rather not do work experience at one of the many post production houses up london like many others from my class do as i have no interest in that field of work. The Splash Damage website says that they don't run a work experience program but hope to change that in the future, I sent an email asking about this and in a way was also pushing them to offer me a short placement which didn't work, but it was worth a shot.

The image above is a screenprint of the email I sent to Splash Damage and the reply I got back from them.

Luckily we was informed via email from our course tutor about a 12 month internship with Disney Interactive Studios in London. This would be a great opportunity to get some experience, plus it would look amazing on my CV if it says I worked with Disney so I definitely want to apply for the internship. However the only problem is I need to know if it is a paid internship, if it is not then I wont be able to financially support myself through the year because I will have no income, to find out about this i sent an email to Disney Interactive regarding this issue, at the moment I am still waiting for a reply as it's the weekend, but hopefully Monday I will get a response from them.

Above is a screenprint showing the email that I sent to Disney on the evening of Friday 18 February.

UPDATE: Monday is here and I got a reply from disney, it turns out the internship is a paid one so now I am definitely going to apply for it. I have to sort out my portfolio, CV and fulfill the creative brief set by Disney before I can send off my application for it.

Above is the email I sent to Disney as well as the reply I got back from it.