Tom Saunders: Visiting Professional

Tom Saunders

He got a job in second year although he couldn't work until two years - he didn't have the experience. Make sure to network as soon as possible - its good practice. Go to the creative networks at college, its a good starting point to networking and it will ease you in for other events.  You need to be stubborn and persistent - he got a job straight away after graduating. His first job was a corporative website job, it was good experience. He does everything from animation to film to after effects to editing etc. Learning all these different practices help - know how to work with other people.

- Use social media, he got alot of work from twitter and facebook - show what your working on, show your work so far. Research target clients - find the right people to communicate with, ask to see studios, be cheeky, ask if they can give feedback on your work.

- Networking - got to some networking visits, some will be worth your time, some wont, confidence building. Practice Practice Practice. Fine tune your showreel - best of the best - hardest thing since graduation for him - fine tune portfolio as well. Try to make your own personal animation - it wasn't until the last part of third year that they had a portfolio - keep showreel to a minute at the most - will pay off more for people watching your showreel - short and sweet.

Dissertation - Start now and plan now!

If a client asks you how much, never answer them! send them an email with a breakdown, don't say it to their face. Pitching to clients a demo of what they are asking for in the brief, an idea to what it could look like, how it could be successful. Be happy with what you are doing - keep motivated, keep going, do what you want and don't settle for anything else. When working with a team - just listening when talking, involving everyone in it - positive then negative. Work as a team.

Animation work - send samples in a pitch be clear about it being rough and not the final animation, an idea as to how the animation would move etc. Or even make a stills of what you are thinking - pick and chose is this pitch work putting all your effort into? Balancing between money, personal life and motivation.

If your doing an animation pitch, don't send a lot of words - send visual images. Continuously ask for feedback - you still have another year to improve!

This talk was very insightful with the pitch aspect with animation works, it really helped with the responsive module in which we had to put a pitch together for the individual and collaborative briefs. I agreed with the pitch work being more visual as it will attract the viewers attention more and gain a better understanding of the work that you can produce. They then wont be put off from the amount of text, as people are busy and may over look your pitch if there is alot of text