Summer Projects plans

Making an online course, considering using Skillshare (https://www.skillshare.com/) as a platform to teach people the process of making an animation project.

I've had the idea of a story I wanted to create for the last year and a half and what better way to do so whilst also teaching the full process to a niche audience. I will be attending the Freelance/ entrepreneur course in summer to establish everything I will need to do to make it a successful business.

I've listened to many podcasts/Videos about how to become an entrepreneur and over the year I've learned so much. A list of what I listened to throughout the year:

Jumpcut

A Youtube business that teaches people how to become entrepreneurs.

https://jumpcut.com/

Startup

A Podcast from Gimletmedia that explores how a business starts up alongside the hardships of running a business. A lot of work goes into making a business and I'm learning all the tricks and skills needed to make my business succeed.

http://www.gimletmedia.com/startup.

The Pitch

Another Podcast from Gimletmedia, a show which focuses on people who want to grow their business by pitching to VC (venture capital) investors. It's really interesting to find out and understand how people pitch their businesses.

http://www.gimletmedia.com/the-pitch

Open for Business

Yet another podcast from Gimletmedia partnered with eBay, a show about the skills needed to make a business. I've recently started this and I'm looking forward to finding out more about what I need to do to.

https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/podcast/ 

One example From Jumpcut explains one process that grabbed my attention was:

"advice that people ask you for could be used to tell 1000's of others, your advice is your asset to help you succeed." Jumpcut Jesse 2018  (paraphrased)

I have a lot of knowledge to offer and would love to help others learn, just listening to the advice above is what got me thinking I could do this. I'm not really in it for the fame or wealth, but like everyone who's had conversations with me, I need to make a living one way or another.

The main focuses of the summer project are:

Making short simple to understand videos showing the process for free as a way to advertise the course.

Making long advance videos explaining in-depth what the process is, for a price people would purchase.

Learn how to advertise my product to my target market.

Making a team for this animation!

I hope to succeed and create a business I could live off.

Interviews/conversations

I've had multiple conversations with all these different people I've discovered over the year through Youtube, Discord, streaming and at an event.

each person has given me advice about their individual practice and what work is like for them as creatives working independently/collaboratively in the creative industry.

Unfortunately, I only have a few screenshots of the conversations that I had through Discord, It's really a shame that I didn't realise that the conversations I had with some of the people whilst they streamed there work could have been used as an interview as they explained a lot. Either way, most of the conversations between each person covered the same aspects of everyone said since these are private messages I will be including them in a document that you can find in the submission folder.

Here are the people I talked to, and pretty much paraphrase what they told me.

Cari

I found him on a streaming service called Picarto, I quickly became friends with him and quickly gained some advice on creating a manga that's successful online. Since becoming his friends he mentioned some good news which will be in a document in the submission folder.

https://www.facebook.com/fnpcarillus/

https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/exco/list?title_no=90376

Cooli

I became friends with Cooli and he invited me to his private discord server where I found thefearrasier, the youtuber I wanted to talk to, but unfortunately, he didn't reply to my messages. Anyway, Cooli has given me a bit of advice for drawing and I'm looking forward to being apart of his secret animation group.

https://www.youtube.com/user/CooliSushi

Nigel Clarke

He used to be a presenter at CBBC and the conversation I had with him at Leeds young film festival was about how the creative industry works from his point of view and he mentioned, "A vast majority of the animation studio's in the UK have created their teams mainly based on who they know, the more contacts you have the better chance you will have of being accepted into these studio's"       

Nik

taught me about how he forms his backgrounds. screenshots will be provided in a document.

http://nik0964jyp.wixsite.com/nik0964/blank-c2sr

Wisewolf (Reverie motion)

A graduate in animation, he's built a small animation company and has asked me to join which I'm happy about, he's also been very critical about my work, I met him at Maf. We have stayed in touch helping each other out. (he will be helping me out for my final animation film, mostly doing in-between's and storyboards for scenes that need extra cuts)

Doghateburger(username)

He's a newly formed animator who got into an animation studio within 1 month of solid animating, in the process I provided help and feedback. I met him on the streaming services called Picarto, there he was just creating simple animations and teaching people about learning how to draw. He invited me to his discord server and has taught me through his study together channel. here's his work:

https://doghateburger.deviantart.com/gallery/

Patreon & Ko-fi (donating platform for creatives)

After having a discussion with some people, I've decided that I would need some format of being supported for my career. The platforms Patreon and Ko-fi allow for people to donate money as a way to support my development, both platforms offer different services. Patreon is dependent on a reward system each time you make a drawing or if you make package each month for those who support you at different tiers, everything you make will only be accessed by those who have supported you. all of this is decided by the creator being myself, I look forward to gaining an audience who will support me to support them.

As for Ko-fi, the services it offers is limited. The idea spam from just offering a cup of coffee to someone, but rather than giving a coffee you'd offer the amount of money as a way to support the creator. it's limited but you can set goals and post your creations.

I've yet to publish my patreon page as I'm still setting up a few settings on my page but I have set up my page on Ko-fi under www.ko-fi.com/bashkun

Cost of living spreadsheet

I was quite surprised to see the end result for the cost of living spreadsheet, I filled it in with my support tutor and to my surprise, it was a lot lower than when we filled it up as a class (34k). I'm actually quite happy with the result as it seems like I roughly need about 9k to support me a year if I could find a job and live in an apartment of my own that is. We removed the cost of rent and living expenses and it showed that I could live of 3k a year which was what I'm currently living off of living with my family.

Now that I have an estimate of how much I need to survive for a year, I'll just have to prepare myself for the income I get and plan effectively to make sure I don't spend it all.

You can find the spreadsheet in the submission folder.

socials blog

Throughout the year I've been expanding and growing my social media platforms, from the start of the year I created accounts on:

Linkedin

I've connected with many people and it's a great platform to talk to professionals if they respond. So far none have responded to me and a few people I know, but I've heard some people from our course have been able to get in touch with some professionals, so I'll hopefully get a response. for now I just use it to find jobs.

Artstation

I will hopefully be submitting work here as it's not only a great looking portfolio, many professional artist's use this platform which I hope to be a part of.

I've also expanded on my already existing social media plat forms such as:

Twitter

Which is slowly expanding, it's not so easy to get followers but I know a possible way I could expand quicker using social platforms such as Reddit.

Facebook

My page has been growing quite quickly and I hope it continues to grow, though I'm not a fan of how pages work on facebook as I have to purchase advertising in order to reach to those people who have liked the page and people who are yet to know me.

Deviantart

Since I started my art adventure on DA I've grown slowly but from this growth, I've made some lifetime artist friends. I speak to them quite often on Discord which is my biggest platform!

Discord

As you can see in this Gif above, I'm part of many Discord servers, a lot of them are art servers. It's an application I use on a daily basis to get feedback on the content I make. It's also nice to talk to all sorts of people on there, some of them are successful artist online!

I'm hoping to bring all of these together on the page I create at creativebash.co.uk 

There will be a separate blog showcasing the website development 

Creating my website

My idea for a website is to split it into 2 halves in order to showcase my art/animation and my coding. For now, this is the example

I'm hoping to improve this design once I have a better understanding of how it functions.

update, 22.04.18:

Due to time being put into other projects for other modules, I've not had much time to think about my website. I've helped guide some people onto using CMS's such as Squarespace and Wix, just so that they can set up a simple website quickly without needing to write any code.

Though in my case I wanted to create mine from the experience I've had making website prior to this websites, I have created a Github page as a way to host my website and will be committing new updates as I create the website.

For inspiration of my website at the moment, I've created a Pinterest board showcasing many designs I like and that are suited to my clean sharp simple style approach.

update, 22.05.18:

I've had the chance to work on my website a bit, and I'm just trying to get as much as I can get done for it. Also some big news, I bought my very first own Domain name as creativebash.co.uk I'm so happy to have my own domain name as it now looks professional.

As for how my website functions, on the left you have my Art/animation section and on the right you have my Front-end dev section. Both sections will have links to the appropriate social platforms, as for the middle section, I will be including my logo and showreel.

Ideas for branding

My idea at the moment is to combine my two brands, Bashkun (Art/Animation) and Bashpro (Front-end Dev) together as that is how I want to represent myself.

Update, 11.01.18

After thinking hard about the designs, I decided to experiment to see if I could create the logo I imagined, I came up with this:

(I lost my sheets of paper that had little sketches before this design which I used to make this)

A few people from the course gave some constructive criticism, all mostly referring to how hard it was to remember and how it does not represent me.

I'll eventually get something that represents me because this logo lacks my presence.

Update, 20.01.18

I found a few images on google that resemble what I've previously done and will have to change the design, here are some of the designs:

Definitely need to think of a rebrand, as I want to have something that looks unique.


update, 19.04.18

I decided to create an animation to see what I could come up with, through the process of animating on Animate cc I made a logo that I liked that even had its own animation.

Simple and unique to me

I also included the word Creative to establish that I have a variety of skills.

This also looks quite professional and I will be creating my business card soon.

Update 20.05.18

 I created my business card to have a simple format that wasn't cluttered and can be updated quite easily by swapping the images whenever I make new drawings.

 (Front)

I placed a dark tint over the background in order for my logo to stand out 

(Back)

Keeping to the theme, I simply stated my name, what I do and all the social platforms you can find my work.

I'm happy with the results of this business card and I look forward to getting them made for print.

Fundamentals of art

Throughout the year I've been redeveloping my understanding of the fundamentals of art, which are:

values

forms

light

shapes

perspective

Here are some examples reflecting each keyword above:

 learning how to apply colour to a greyscale render.

 Understanding how to apply values through greyscale for this drawing, exploring light and shadows.

 Perspective work, planning and building places.

 drawing studies from the website https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/

Posing using, a line of action and shapes to form the anatomy.

I was really struggling with my creative ability to create what I want, so by exploring all the fundamentals and asking for advice on some discord servers that have resources for learning the fundamentals. I was able to develop an understanding of each field, one of my friends also gave me some really helpful advice that made me realise that I need to look at everything within a 3D aspect, creating shapes that help to shape (unintended pun) the form of an object. Here are some examples of my development over the year.

my comic with Rey (Animation student)

We've been structuring a script to make a manga for the last 2 years, throughout the journey we've created a story focused using stereotypes and breaking the 4th wall into a plot.

What I love about this concept is anything can work since we have already set the world to work in this matter and this has opened up so many possibilities to develop the story for each individual character. I don't want to spoil anything as we are still in the process of writing each character and finalising the plot for the first chapter, we have a lot of chapter ideas.

We have a lot of content but since we haven't posted anything about it yet, we have decided not to show any of it as we don't want anyone to steal our ideas.

Software I learned througout the year

TVPaint

I've only used the program for one project, but I'm hoping to get the chance to use it in future projects as the format is easy to animate with. I'll need a bit more practice as I only know the basics of the program, it contains a lot of features to explore but feels quite intuitive to use. Cartoon Salon, famous for their animation work use TVPaint as their main software and is why I want to learn it as I'd like to work with them.

https://www.tvpaint.com/

Spine/Dragonbones

I've not tried Spine because of how expensive it is but I did find something similar that was free called Dragonbones (http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html#.Ww1StUgvzIU)

Its essentially a 2D rigging tool, Not only can you make a rig with constraints but you could also manipulate the mesh, giving depth to a 2D character rig. Here is an example of the effect it creates:

Leeds Young Film Festival expereince

I volunteered at Leeds young film festival spamming 4-5 days, within this time I experienced a lot of what happens behind the scenes to prepare and teach kids how to create animations through different workshops. I mostly worked on the VR section with Rosie, it was great fun to see what the children create in a 3D space which they may have not experienced before(especially my younger brother). Some of the children were drawing in 3D as if it was natural.

Overall the whole experience was exciting, I really enjoyed teaching all that participated at the event, as it helped me understand what it is to be a teacher, and what I need to do to fulfil my objective of being a creative influencer.

MAF

I enjoyed the event because I connected to a person I’d met online who I met face to face at this festival. We discussed his independent animation company -  In Lucid Reverie

https://inlucidreverie.deviantart.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/ReverieStuff

We spoke about the challenges he faced being a freelance animator.

We discussed collaborating on future projects, we keep in touch online.

I watched The Breadwinner – fell in love with the film, beautiful style.

The story was well driven and grabs the viewer, immersing, and emotional.

The Breadwinner Directed by Nora Twomey, tells the story of Parvana, an 11-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana disguises herself as a boy in order to support her family.

Mark Mulley – gave the masterclass on The Breadwinner, which discussed work behind the scenes. The process was amazing to see and has expanded my knowledge on approach and software such as TVPaint. 

Cartoon Saloon – I’d like to work with this company who create 2d animation. I went on to watch other films by them (Song of the Sea)

Links to check out:

http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/

http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/our-work/

http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/podcasts/

  

Blue Zoo – Masterclass

UK animation studio, independent, focused on 3D animations, children’s shows and commercial work.

I learned how they successfully market and create their work based on the clients’ needs – being more aware of the whole process. The masterclass gave me insights into job ideas and how to approach different clients and attract them to what you have to offer.

There were so many films and events I went to during the 3 days which I could talk about but it will most likely fill more than 1000 words of my blog alone, overall the experience was amazing and I look forward to attending next year.

Webapp idea and design

I thought I would talk about this webapp I'm creating with a few friends who have a lot of knowledge in terms of coding. The purpose of this project was to make a webapp inspired by google keep but to work in a preferred writing structure I use. I started this project with a simple design which I could easily design using html and css, instead of writing it in the pre-set format I used my preferred languages which are Jade and Sass, both compile the code I write, into html and css.

Here is the design I created:

I drew the layout, heavily inspired by an application called Discord which is a popular service mostly among Gamers, which is its target audience. Aside from the gamers, there are loads of people who use it as a general chat service or in my case, an artist social media platform because of all the functionalities embedded into the application. The layout is not the only aspect that has inspired me from this application, i found functions such as the find section and chat server icons a very interesting function to include in the webapp I want to create. I've looked at how they developed Discord and found out that it is a webapp, designed the way I plan to go about making my webapp.

I could go into detail as to how it functions but that would make this blog to long, although I do want to continue blogging about this project as it is personal to me and is a practice in coding and animation, I'm planning on learning how to animate using code as I really like the turnout of most webapp animations.

I also wanted to create an animated representation of the login screen which I animated on animate cc. But I don't think I will be including it in the application as it does not need it, but here is the animation.

As you can see in the above animation, I would have loved to include this in the design of the webapp but it's not needed for the webapp, even though I would have liked to learn how to translate it into code. but I guess I'll learn by including it in the designs through functions in the webapp, for example when something is clicked on such as a settings button, it will open a window up in the app of settings, done by creating the effect of fade in and slide up.

update 20/04/17

here are a few screenshots of the webapp:

and here is a live view of the webapp:

I've learned a lot in the process of creating this webapp and I hope to progress creating it and learning more about how to animate objects in the app. here is a link to the Github page I made for it https://github.com/bashpro/Notebook-webapp

Fanart Dva (overwatch) WIP

I started this drawing on February 11th which was close to the end of the games current event where we received new skins for the character, one character I've been desperately for to get a skin was Dva, so I decided to draw a fanart of her new skin, plus I have been wanting to draw her for a while. So I present the process I've done so far which in total has taken over 2 months to even be close to finishing.

Rough li

I felt as if the drawing needed a bit extra so I decided to add her mech in the example below: 

Drawing the mech was difficult so I started with the basic shapes I could see,

starting to add more as I'm doing other work,

 The mech is roughly drawn and needs a cleanup,

Clean up and base colours were added,

Rough background,

Background lined and slightly finished colouring,

Added shading, lighting and highlights on the mech and Dva.

And so this is as far as I have gotten for this drawing, I've probablly spent around 16 hours creating this, and yet it is still not done as I've got to sort out the backgrounds which I hope to finish after deadlines. but I've learned a lot throughout colouring this peice, I've never drawn a mech and coloured it in so that was an experince I wont forget!

I've been posting these screen shots on some discord servers, and Alymew absoulutly cant wait to see the final drawing as she also wants to promote this drawing on her youtube channel. she also mentioned the other day that she would love to do some voice acting for future animations and she provided me with  voice acting showreel she created which is super awesome.

Artist influence: Nik

I recently came across a background artist who was streaming on Picarto (art website streaming service ) under the name of Nik, he's from Singapore and mainly draws landscapes of Japan, as we can see in the example below:

What I mostly love about his work is the composition and colouring, each background he's created feels as if it's from real life experience with his own interpretation of colours used. In particular in the example above there is a mixture of red, orange, purple, blue, grey, green, yellow and brown. which are all not fully saturated to blend together and to act as a natural palette.

Here is another example of why I love his colouring:

As you can see, it's all the same environment with different atmospheres, each one gives a great understanding of how the background would look like in different settings which is very difficult to achieve. I hope to be able to create an environment that I could recreate different settings for, just to understand what it would feel like, this is not only good for gaining an understanding of what something would look like but also an understanding of how lighting/colours plays with the environment.

life's a pitch presentation

Life's a Pitch

We were briefed on what we had to do for life's a pitch, (tldr) this involved joining a collective made by us and having an idea to showcase/presents a pitch for what we would like to like to do as a team.

We all started to join different teams and I happened to join Tess's collective, her collective team members are Vlad, Luke, Brenda and Alex. As I joined we got straight into thinking about ideas for our group, we all ended up agreeing on making an Artbook which represents us all as a group of artist/animators who work in different styles for the clients needs. with a variety of styles, we can all provide our skills to produce work together.

We then researched into how artbooks are firstly made and what layout attracts the audience, I gave some advice to Tess and Brenda as they were looking at layouts, and it seems they took it on board when creating mock up layouts. Tess found a website where we can print out our artbook, she asked us what size we should print at and we all agreed on "A5 landscape".

Tess asked us all to put our drawings into the drive that was just recently made and to select from best work and sketching drawings, here is what I presented to them:

And then each one of us made a small mock up of the layout and presented it through our pitching. We hope to develop this into an actual artbook as it is not that expensive to pint out A5 landscape books from vistaprint and it's an effective way to advertise all our works, which we hope to present at the art exhibition at Leeds collage of Art and possibly Studio 24.