PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE: CV & SHOWREEL

As part of our Professional Practice module, we were given the task to create our own CV and Showreel as practice for applying to companies in the animation industry. I began to look into creative CV's and study how they stood out from the crowd. Many creative CVs show a good sense of graphic design with a clear layout. I liked how these CVs showed personality and had an artistic flair to them. Below are some examples that I found which caught my eye. They stuck to the point throughout and were quite succinct at the same time.

After studying these artist's CVs, I wanted to implement some of these aspects into creating my own. The colour scheme I ended up choosing was predominantly blues with a yellow font. I think that the yellow stands out against the darker background. I wanted to keep the layout relatively clear and the contents to the point. Although I am happy with the layout, I believe that I can improve upon the overall design by adding more personality in future.

After designing a CV, we were instructed by Alec to create a mock cover letter to an animation studio of our choice. I chose Jam Media in Belfast after hearing Lauren Patrick come in and talk to our class. She seemed like she genuinely enjoyed the work she was doing and I found the studio had it's own unique style of animating. This led me to research their worm and I was pleased to find that they had worked on 'Roy', a kids television show which implements CG elements into live action footage. Having watched this show years ago as a child I felt like this studio was a good choice to pick for a mock cover letter. Again, I wanted to keep my choice of words rather succinct and straightforward; being clear about my desire to work in their company as a trainee.

Next came the showreel. For the final part of this task we were required to make our first showreel which would exhibit our best work so far. I took to researching how to build a good showreel online and there seemed to be several articles on the topic. This article proved very useful, along with Alec's in-class notes about the do's and don't's of a good showreel. What I gathered from my research was to put your best work first, keep a bit of personality in it, and tailor it to the job you are applying for.

An example that I really liked was that of Siddhant Jain. His showreel demonstrated clearly his ability to composit, colour grade, create motion graphics, etc. He didn't show any bad work and kept it brief.

WATCH MY SHOWREEL HERE