As freelance Graphic designer in the Film & TV industry I was coming to a crossroad in my career and very unsure which direction to head in, in order to create a long term career for myself in the creative industry. Despite having 8 years experience as a Graphic Designer & Storyboard Artist predominantly on the larger Drama's in the TV industry, I unfortunately felt that I was not building the foundations of a long standing career. Due to budgets and crew numbers being increasingly cut, I found that my role was becoming redundant on a frightening number of new productions. The role of Graphic Designer is something that is only guaranteed on the larger productions with a full Art Department. Unfortunately on lower budget productions, this role is often cut and the 'on screen' graphics(props, signage etc) are produced by the art department assistant/runner on a much lower weekly rate. With this in mind I decided I had 2 options: Either spend the next year gaining new contacts and try to get work on some feature films as a Graphic Designer / Storyboard Artist, which would be challenging and involve re-locating to London which I was really quite reluctant to do, or return to my first love, and what I initially trained at university to do-Character Design and Animation. This was obviously a big decision as it would mean re-training in 3D and more importantly losing all of the contacts I had worked hard to gather throughout the previous 8 years.
Having completed an up to date portfolio the night before, I turned up for my meeting with Andrew Thomas and explained my predicament. The meeting was very positive and I was given some welcomed praise about my portfolio as well as very encouraging advice to stay up North as there were many new digital companies that could utilise my skills. Andrew provided me with some very useful contacts and a much needed boost of confidence about my work. Over the following weeks I got in touch with the various companies he mentioned which unfortunately had no work to offer me at the time, but I will continue to update them each time I improve my portfolio.
As suggested by Andrew, I recently completed a 3D animation course in London using the widely used Maya package. The course was fantastic and gave me a good basic understanding which I will continue to learn in my own time. Fortunately I qualified for the Vision+Media training fund to do the course which made things much easier financially.
At the start of the year I did some character designs for a airline content provider in Knutsford. This helped them to secure a contract which will provide work for the next 2 years. During this time I will hopefully get myself up to scratch with Maya and Adobe After Effects. So for now at least I am taking some time out from the TV industry, but if an exciting project came knocking, who knows what might happen.
You can see more of Anthony's work here:
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