Figuring out the right career path is a lengthy journey for everyone. Often it’s not just about what you like, the reality matters too. I think one must be certain about life goals before making a career decision. But it already took me long enough to even decide on what to study, and I’m still unsure about that to this day. My high school teacher introduced me to art, and I began preparing a portfolio in year 10, with projects ranging from illustration to jewelry design. My goal at that point was to enter an art uni. After receiving an offer for a foundation course at UAL in year 11, I focused less on other A-levels, limiting my uni choices to only art. Looking back, I can’t even recall why the younger me was so certain about studying art. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted it as a career.

I studied film and animation in foundation then switched to production design for my undergrad, the reason being I’m tired of animating, drawing hundreds of frames everyday, production design is just like animation but only the fun parts—script analysis, environment design and concept art, sounds like a dream to me. But the reality is most production designers are freelancers and for internationals it means you have to go back after your 2 year grad visa expires since no one in the field is able to sponsor you a T4 visa. Given the political state of China during that time(covid) I was not sure about if I wanna go back and live there for the rest of my life, so for my master degree I changed back to animation again. At the moment I still not sure about where and what I want my career or life to be, I am not quite an ambitious person, I think I would be content with something as small as a shopkeeper in a remote town, enough pay to buy food, doing repetitive job everyday and just being totally detached from current events. But it is always nice to look into different choices and be prepared, so I looked up the career maps on Sreenskills:

There are two directions: 2D or 3D, I enjoy both and can’t decide on which, that’s also the reason why I tried to make a 2D looking 3D film for this unit, I’m very certain about my 3D learning end goal though, which is to recreate my 2D visual style in 3D. I thinks there’s more space for your personal style if it’s 2D, and 3D though has greater potential and more job opportunities, it’s more technical meaning you have invest much more time in learning softwares, and the style companies are looking for nowadays are quite standard. For now I thinks the junior animator and layout artist on the graph look look like some entry level positions that would suit my situation and I should prepare my portfolio accordingly. I see myself more in 3D but I still don’t want to give up 2D completely, if my 3D animation is not good enough in terms of techniques and software knowledges, I can always have one more choice. Grease pencil in Blender is a great solution for that, I was amazed how this tool have developed through out the year, it is a fully functional 2D animating program built in 3D. I need to find a way to combine them together to make my portfolio more versatile.

3D programs: Maya is still the dominate one in 3D animation, and we can see an increasing use of unreal engine in animation despite being a game engine. I see more companies accept Blender in their job descriptions, but Maya is still top on the list, I am planing on taking an online course during Christmas break to catch my Maya level.