Living in a seaside tourist town of Blackpool there wasn't really much opportunity for me, unless I wanted to work at the Pleasure Beach serving chips. This made me think about what I wanted to do with my life and how I was determined to leave that place behind, it could be fun if you went there for a couple of days but after living your whole life there it's novelty kind of wears off. I loved art and film and after thinking for a long time I squashed them both together and came up with the art of animation. So, I began researching the different courses of animation, after ignoring my tutors and mentors at college for 2 years, and decided myself that I was going to go for it. I found Leeds College of Art at complete random and I had, had a few friends who were older tell me how great the city of Leeds was but obviously again I just ignored what they said. I watched the video on the website for LCA and it all looked so fun and seemed to have an awesome environment so I just had to go and see it for myself. I got on a train and headed for Leeds and as soon as I saw the place I knew that I wanted to live here, similarly I stepped into LCA and loved how the place stood out. I loved it so much that I didn't even bother going to see any other universities and my heart was set, so I when I got my offer I was completely over the moon.
Never have I really animated in my whole life unless you count silly stop-motion that I did from a young age as just a bit of fun and the odd flip book without even knowing what one was. Although all that is true I have always had a passion for the animated world, drawing characters from it and collecting DVDs, so I hope to learn how to inspire people the way that it has inspired me, mainly because animation can do things nothing else can. I hope to be able to create worlds and characters that are completely out of this one and have lots of fun on the way. Learning stop-motion would be one of the main things I would love to learn as I find that it's one of my favourite forms, but I have never drawn digitally in my life and this would be something I would also love to learn, as it will help me to expand my skills. Finally, that is why I am here, to expand my skills and learn from everyone and everything here and to come out at the end as who I really am.
I think I am the illustrative type, I draw everything by hand and get too engulfed in it to the point where I find hours have flown by. On the other hand, I am also an oil painter which is one of my newer skills that I have found out only in college. I had never tried to oil paint before as they're pretty expensive and I'd never thought to try it before, to see I could do it was a surprise that I found out in the second year of college. I also have the skill of storytelling, so everyone tells me, which I think I picked up from my mum when I was younger as she's the best storyteller I know and is too good at keeping people's attention when telling a story. Skills are sometimes very hard to recognise and I feel that I haven't actually found all of mine yet as I haven't had the opportunity to find them yet. Studying media production for 4 years really helped me develop cinematography skills such as thinking about camera movement editing, pacing, and the purpose behind the framing. It also taught me to consider sound and how I can use it my advantage, such as making the audience think and feel a certain way without the need for dialogue, all of this I feel is a strength as it will help a lot when it comes to making my own animations.
I want to improve everything, which may sound a bit silly but it's true. I want to improve myself, my drawing skills, my range of skills, my social skills and my knowledge! I feel that if I strive to improve everything, even though impossible, that some things will get better along the way and I realise that I will never be perfect and that there is always room for improvement.
Evaluating my progress is something that is very important as without doing so I will never know whether or not I am progressing. There are multiple ways I could evaluate my progress, I could have a list of goals and see where I'm up to with them every now and then. I could maybe ask my peers about how they think I've progressed to get an outsider's view, as sometimes your own view can be different. Constantly comparing my work by keeping a portfolio would be a good method to use to identify my weaknesses and be able to work on them. Progress could not only mean developing my artistic skills but also my progress in being able to handle deadlines and work effectively each time I sit down to work on a project. To evaluate how I get better at this I could write down what tasks I have achieved each time and record this so that I can see if my work speed is gradually getting faster and more efficient. Finally, I could evaluate my progress by keeping a diary about my thoughts and feelings about certain techniques and see if I start to gain confidence in the things that I do and practice.
