Industry Research
Since taking on my Masters I've had a small change in career direction. During my undergrad I was set on persuing a career in Design, specifically for Characters and Concept work. While this is still something I'm greatly passionate about, I dont think it's fully feesable as a career for myself in particular. Since I've discovered 2D rigging, I've found myself more drawn to the work involved and it scratches an itch in my brain that I couldn't reach with my design work. So with that in mind, I want to tweak my industry materials to focus on showcasing work towards a Junior Rigging position.
For my industry materials assignment I aim to;
Research into professional riggers and see how their own Industry Materials appear + how they showcase their portfolios.
Research into previous Junior Rigging positions + see what they require.
Recreate my CV
Curate a showreel for 2D Rigging and Animation ; main focus rigging.
Design new social media accounts for my professional work and compliment my existing socials ; Limseca.
PROFESSIONAL RIGGERS + JOB POSITIONS
Went onto LinkedIn and looked for other Toon Boom Riggers
Noted that majority of Toon Boom Riggers in the UK had a section on their profiles to show rigging certificates from either Toon Boom Harmony or Courses by Adams Animation Academy > This is something I'm going to look into soon while I'm applying for jobs, this could elevate my applications on top of my existing education to show I'm still striving to continue learning to rig.
Took Note of Mulitple Studios that look for Rigging Artists w/ Toon Boom > Boulder Media, Blue Sky, Wise Blue Studios, Treehouse Republic, PASSION Pictures, JAM Media, Paper Owl, and more.
Blue Sky has a position for a 2D rigging artist currently open > Unsure if I could apply since moving to London isn't feesable for myself.
Found it hard to find previous or current open positions for riggers, most companies delete the old hiring forms when the position is filled.
Pixel Zoo has a position for onsight only (cant apply due to it being Australia), they also didnt mention much about what they're looking for other than being skilled in Toon Boom
Discovered two riggers at JAM on linkedin and checked out how they displayed their work.
One had a CV, Rigging Showreel and Animation Showreel.
The rigging showreel showed her rigs animated and then a sped-up demo of the rig in Toon Boom showing its deformers and how it moves.
For my showreel, I can't show any of my rigs animated as its not something I ever got round to doing with my rigs, but I can show all of the demos + the rigging I did for live motion capture with Live 2D during my final year.
Both had CV's that were simplier than mine and showcased 2 pages instead of one. However this is due to her having lots of experience in their fields of work, I believe I can get away with only having one page for my CV.
Noting that a lot of professional animators and riggers upload their showreels to vimeo rather than Youtube!
JAM Riggers showreel
JAM Riggers CV
MY CV
Looked at my old CV, as much as I loved having it be bright and colourful, I wanted to scale down the aesthetics to have a cleaner looking CV that is easier to read.
My CV has a few issues with alignment and text not being readable (too small) so I definately want to retire this CV for a more professional one.
Decided to look at previous students CVs along with some found off of pinterest that matched the style of CV I wanted to create.
I liked looking at CVs that looked clean but still allowed a pop of colour and creativity to shine through. I especially like the idea of showing off my creative side by using a drawing of myself or Hazel rather than a picture and having a few additional doodles like stars and squiggles.
For my CV I would opt to learn a software like Adobe Illustrator but I'm not proficient enough in it and wouldn't be able to quickly learn it in time for submission so I've opted to use Photoshop & Clip Studio Paint for my software of choice.
Clip Studio Paint offers free patterns and brushes on their store which can allow me to get more creative with my CV while Photoshop will help me keep alignment correct.
I followed the approach of splitting the CV into a smaller side and a larger side, keeping basic pieces of information like contact details, skills, software to the smaller side and more length information like a profile intro, education and experiences in the larger area.
I didnt like how my previous CV was all pink, I found it distracting so I opted for a simple white background on the larger side of the CV and a baby pink to the smaller section.
I made sure to include lots of keywords employers would be searching for when it comes to rigging positions like problem solving, technical, team work, quality, organistaion, etc.
I wanted to do a new drawing of myself for my CV but didn't have enough time so I opted to use the new drawing of Hazel from my pitch bible. From this point I also used this picture of Hazel to rebrand all my work (CV, Showreel, Carrd, Social Media)
I'm much happier with the way my new CV looks. I think it looks much more professional but still has a creative flair with the colour choices, star embellishments and using Hazel for my photo. I tried my best to use as many keywords as I could without overcrowding it. I do think my Experience section could be improved upon but due to not having worked in any industry jobs yet I have to make do with other work I've done and try to market it to show how it enhances my skills. I also thought about adding the darker accent pink colour somewhere else within the text but was unsure if it would look too distracting in the end.
SHOWREEL
For my showreel I gathered a bunch of different showreels from riggers in the industry.
Watching these rigs was not only useful in seeing how to showcase rigs, but it was also inspirational to keep working on rigging and improve my skills.
Yu Ueda's demo reel was the most inspirational to me, seeing how clean their rigs looked and how smoothly they moved. I really want to teach myself FK and IK rigging in Toon Boom now. The different tools they used as well to expend the size of limbs, the shading controller on Homelanders rig and the way the head controller is laid out to work with the mouse direction were very interesting, I'm eager to learn these techniques in the future.
Some of the videos were longer than 90 seconds but for the sake of this assignment, I'll keep it to the shortened length and show small snippets of my rigs and how they work.
Some things to keep in mind this time when creating my showreel, were my title cards. Sarah pointed out to me that some of them weren't aligned with others and it looked a little off when playing the reel.
Andrew our technician also pointed out that my old showreel from the 2024 EOYS didnt showcase enough of my rigs, especially if I want a job in rigging. He advised I showcase more rigs and make it the primary focus of the reel, with a bit of animation splashed in.
I decided I did still want to showcase that I can animate, since I believe knowing how to animate and how to rig go hand in hand with each other, so showcasing my knowledge of animation would be a bonus to employers.
I'm happy with the outcome of my reel! I went with the approach of showing my rigging at the forefront, using Hazels rig at the start as my best work then flowing into my older rigs and ending with a good example of my animation skills. While it isnt fully syncronised with any of the beats of the music I still think the reel works well. I hope that by showing both the capabilities of my rigs and my skills in animation it will show employers my knowledge in both skills can benefit a job in either rigging or animation.
As an added bonus I went ahead and created some extra industry materials that were very basic and quick to make.
I made a new carrd to use as a landing page from social media, linkedin, my website, etc. It contains key links to different places employers might want to look; my portfolio website, instagram, linkedin, showreel and a link at the bottom to my small business (incase any customers find my professional carrd).
I updated my portfolio website with my new Hazel profile picture on the landing page, changed my introduction text, updated links and added minor layout adjustments.
I created a Vimeo account and used it to upload my showreel.
I created a new Instagram account to use solely for uploading examples of work specific to the industry, rather than uploading things like that on my business account. It would be confusing for customers and employers seeing two different types of content on my business account so its best to seperate the two.
Looking at all the media together in one, I think my use of pink and the fonts I use could be more cohesive across the platforms. It might be nitpicky of me but its just something to look at in the future. It would be more appealing to have all platforms using the same shades of pink. While on submission my instagram may not have any posts (or maybe one? by the time this is being looked at) I'll be sure over time to fill it up with lots of examples of work from past and present!
Overall very happy with the way my new industry materials have came out! I think they're both more professional looking and more streamlined to the kind of work I'll be looking to do when I leave university!
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