THURSDAY 11th OCTOBER SESSION

Rona Innes was our guest visitor in the morning of today's session. She is primarily a Flash Animator (2D) and along with her animating, she does a lot of soryboarding and idea generation for her projects. If you check out her website / homepage: www.moshimachine.com, you can see a huge range of different multimedia applications that she and her teams in the past have created.

Storyboarding is a vital part of any animation / film / E-learning project. It should be used whenever a storyline is involved and personally I enjoy this part of any project. It allows you to put what's in your mind onto paper and from your sketches you can eliminate problems and improve areas of the project in a practical and efficient way.

Flash is an excellent and enjoyable program to use, I seize any opportunity to use Flash but there is always room for improvement e.g. CSS is an area I feel reasonably comfortable using but could work on.

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**IDEA FOR DESIGN FUTURES BRIEF**

When Rona Innes was showing us her work via the Projector, I had a brain storm. I thought that the Projector(s) that we commonly use could easily be made more practical, smaller and portable. I will put this idea into my sketchbook and will decide whether or not to pursue this for the final presentation / deadline.
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After the break Rona showed us some more proffesional work, some of it being quite amusing and some very serious. Again if you look at her website - www.moshimachine.com you can this work.

After we were showed work we had the opportunity to ask questions about the multimedia industry, in particular getting work as a freelancer, here are the points I took:

1) Getting Recommendations from companies helps to get work.
2) Working via an angency.
3) EPIC - company that uses freelance (EPIC is One of the biggest companies in this industry within Europe.
4) WORKMEDIA - another company that uses freelance.
5) Wired Sussex - a whole range of job opportunities.
6) Bang (Brighton Animators Network Group) - useful to join.
7) Lots of work available in London (contract work)
8) CHINWAG (www.chinwag.com - company that emails job contracts around from various agencies)
9) CREATIVE CATAPULT (www.wiredsussex.com/Projects/CC/index.asp) - post-graduate scheme helping the stage between graduation and career paths.
10) FLASH BRIGHTON - another useful group to join in terms of getting Flash animation work.
11) UHC (Manchester Based Ethicallly sound company)
12) Probably better to start off as freelance before becoming soletrader.
13) Or start off in an agency.
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Afternoon Session - Angie Taylor (The Guru of After Effects - www.creativeaftereffects.com)

I feel that I am not the only one that was seriously impressed about the skill Angie Taylor has using the program After Effects (After all, she did write the book!). Not only was her tutorial on using After Effects Enlightening but also awe inspiring, this combined with her creative and "different" background made her a very interesting speaker and kept the class very involved.

Her history followed a similar to path to what I believe I am taking e.g. Angie became a DJ / Producer around 1990 - 1994 and became a Designer in 1994.

I feel that I could relate to her due to this and this made the talk that more interesting! Her show reel was excellent and extremely diverse, this opened up my mind to creating my show reel. It is important to be specialised in one area of multimedia but also have a versatile manner. Your show reel should also show potential for companies with low and high budgets so you can appeal to broadest audience.

I have recorded her brief time line in my sketchbook for the Design Futures Brief because it showed how history and technology has vastly changed over the last 10 or so years. One way of looking into the future is examining the process of history in technology.

When asking Angie "What do you think the future will bring in terms of technology?" her answer was as vague as ours. Again the possibilities are endless and you cannot really predict the future, for example how did mobile phone texting become some popular!? Nobody would have predicted that years ago.

We were given some useful links and programs / plug ins to visit which I have listed below:

Marketing and advertisings Links

1) Mobstar Media (www.mobstarmedia.com)
2) LSN-SINGE MEDIA

Video Integration Systems Online

1) SILVER LIGHT
2) ADOBE MEDIA PLAYER

After Effects Plug Ins

1) 3D INVIGORATOR
2) TINDERBOX (Better Blur Plug in)
3) CINEMA 4D
4) POSER (Copy movie image files particles e.g. Dancers in Club Scene Anige showed us on After Effects Tutorial)

Protect Your Work and Spread Your Ideas

1) Creative Commons (This allows you to patent/copyright your work in a specific way e.g. I want my name credited for every time my work is publicised, but my work cannot be stolen or copied)
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Angie Taylors Tutorial was quite intense and I have noted down some of her points in my sketchbook, this is because I aim to use After Effects for the main presentation in the Design Futures Brief.

To end this post, I spoke to Angie about working as a Freelance Demo Artists e.g. showing lecture halls how to use a specific program. I have emailed Angie about this as I can see it as a potential path towards a successful career. If anyone wants any more information, feel free to contact me.

NEXT STEPS:

- RESEARCH / IDEA DEVELOPMENT
- SKETCHES