Personal logo

Here is my logo as a personal identity, it is a red panda that I have used as a character for my other work before, such as the game I am currently working on, the graffiti rhythm game. I would be uploading this design to my Wix webpage and apply them as my letter head/CV page as well. I want to represent myself with my name, however it is not very easy to remember, therefore I would be using YQ animation or YQ art as part of my logo.

Graffiti rhythm game - Animating for a new game

After last game we made together as LYD collective, we decided to enter a new game jam after the Extended submission. We decided to make a rhythm game with the character spraying graffiti on the wall with the right beat while skating along the street, a 2D animated based game. I designed the character and started to do the animation after a few tests. With the experience we had last time, we felt it was much easier to pin ideas down this time. I will definitely continue to participate with game jams in the future.

Business card

I have designed a draft version of my business card before, it was out of date so I refined it and designed some newer version of the business card. I designed two business card to hand to different people, as my works can be divided into different styles for different clients, character concepts would be more suitable for game concepts while the other card focuses more on my character designs for animations. I have not printed them yet but I will be printing them for Annecy networking.

NFTS application

The deadline for NFTS application is 5th of July, I have filled in all the text details and the portfolio so it is ready for submitting. As I have longer than other courses to prepare my work, therefore I intend to include my graduate film in the portfolio when it is finished. It will be submitted once the film is finished.

UAL CSM application

I submitted the application for CSM at around the 18th of April. They divided their application process into several stages, therefore I was asked to submit the portfolio at the second stage this week. It was slightly different to the one I submitted to RCA as CSM want to see more fundamentals knowledge of animation, I added animation that demonstrate my skill such as walk cycles. So I am waiting for the response from CSM as well.

Character design challenges

I have been participating with the character design challenges this year like I did in the past. And I have made some connections with other character designers by publishing my work. I would definitely be entering the challenge in the future as well. Here are some of my entries, the first one is not finished, I would be finishing it at some point.

Bluezoo Internship

As a part of the summer plan, I applied for internships of Bluezoo animation studio. The role I applied for are visual development artist storyboard artist. I updated my showreel to the newest version which includes my parts of my rough animation of my graduate film for this application. It is a 6-8 weeks intern so that it is perfect for me before MA courses which will be starting in late September.

RCA application

After the talk with Tim Webb, I carefully selected the films with Mike during tutorials and composited images by category into bigger images in order to compress them into 20 projects. Based on the personal statement I wrote for Central St Martins application, I changed minor parts due to different requirement of the course. As the deadline for the application is May, and I have already received email from RCA telling me to submit my application as soon as possible, therefore I did not have a chance to include my graduate film in my portfolio as it was not finished at that point.

I have already submitted the application, so I am just waiting for the response from them. Which ever University I am going to study MA in, I would be moving to London, therefore I am considering the place to stay during the course as well.

Showreel April 2018

For this year's showreel, I chose the films from the portfolio I organized earlier. I also included my part of the rough animation from our graduate film, Ricominciare, and the working progress so far for our collective indie game. These extracts showcase my understanding of principles, ability of character animation/character design&adaption into animations, and the use of camera angle.

Wolf Smoke - Email

I have been following Wolf Smoke animation studio on twitter, but they do not update social media frequently. I discovered that they have established a newer website, so I tried to contact them on the contact page on the website, however, I did not get an reply. As much as I know about Wolf Smoke is that they are a small studio and is not likely to provide internships opportunity. Based on my knowledge and what Fred said, most studios in China hardly get back to people through E-mail, but if you visit the studio, they would be happy to talk to you and show you around. Therefore I decided that I would be visiting Wolf Smoke which is based in Shanghai next time when I go back to China.

NFTS openday visit

As I intend to apply for Master of directing animation at NFTS, I booked the open day which is on the 27th of April. It last from 11 in the morning till 3 in the afternoon, and it was definitely worth it as I gained a lot out of the trip. From the talk Robert gave, I understand much better what this course is about. Like the title suggests, its about directing a team to visualise an idea into a animation, the key is direct and teamwork. I am extremely interested into the course as I love working within a team and intend to improve my skill of communication, directing and organizing, therefore I do believe that it would be a perfect path for me to pursue. After a tour around the whole school, NFTS seems to me a very traditional media based work environment and they encourage students to work with any media that would suit the purpose.

Other people I met who went to the open day as well are mostly already at work with a few years' work experience, there are a few who are about to graduate like me as well. We introduced ourselves and talked a lot of our own experiences, made connections on Instagram.

Another thing I discovered is that their process of interviewing is a 5 days workshop, where people need to come up with an idea and visualise it into a finished animatic at the end of it. They interview 16 people and take in 8 students per year, which is a 50% chance. From people who did not get in NFTS but did the workshop, they suggested that it is a great experience even if you don't get in. Therefore I'm hoping that I could get a chance into the workshop as I believe it would be a wonderful experience.

UAL CSM visit

Different to NFTS, CSM does a weekly open evening for their character animation course, me and Luca are both interested in this course, therefore we decided to go so emailed them. But due to their email system error, we were not able to go.

But extremely lucky for me, I met a student from CSM who was on exactly the same course, MA character animation that I am applying for, at the NFTS open day. So I told her of my intention of visiting the university and she managed to took me in to have a look around the school and all the studios. What I discovered was that CSM's animation course is mostly based on digital platforms, and the course layout contains more fundamental workshops than other courses. So I would list this as an aspect of comparison when I am deciding.

Portfolio organization

To start to organize my portfolio, I put everything together into one folder and start to decide which ones are suitable for the certain MA I am applying for. Here is a screenshot of the portfolio I am going to submit to the NFTS directing animation. I decided to composite images of the same type into bigger images, so that I can include more of them as all the courses have a limit of images/films to submit in the online portfolio.

Talking to Character designer

So as I have been keep participating the Character Design Reference challenge, I made a few connections on Facebook with practitioners mostly character designers. I have talked to some of them and one got back to me with some useful information, he suggested a online course taught by Stephen Silver on schoolism, a character design course. As I went online and had a look, they actually have a lot more useful relative courses that I am interested in.

Therefore this will be a part of my summer break plan an online course to keep me learning and to help me develop my character design skill.

CV

I am a character animator and character designer. From the past year, I have improved a lot on frame by frame character animation, I intend to explore more on storyboarding and other pre-production part.

Regarding to the feedback from the PP3 tutorial, I made the changes such as the general layout, some wording, and added the reference that I did not include in the draft version. I am going to use an updated version of the CV to apply to MA of UAL. The CV is as follow:

RCA - Tim Webb

Before applying to RCA, the course leader of animation Tim came to our university to give a talk. He talked about his films including A for Autism, the film that I researched for my COP3 proposal on animated documentary. I was very much inspired by his way of narrating through different perspectives within one film.

I also had a chance to talk to him about the portfolio before I submit the application to RCA. He suggested that they would like to see the ability of storytelling within a film, the ability to express narration through media. RCA would like to see films with complete story that showcase this ability. Regarding to the talk I made changes to my draft portfolio and deleted some that was not appropriate.

The Heart jam - making games

By taking part in the first game jam ever as I always wanted to, it gives me an insight of how the indie game studios work. It improved so much of my ability in problem-solving, time management. We purchased the PC Game Maker Studio 2 PC license therefore we can publish games on PC platform. We decided to use the name LYD collective made up with the first letters of our initials, Luca Yixing and Daniel.

Online presense - Artstation

As part of my creative strategy I planned, I created my account on Artstation, and started to post work on there. I found it as a well structured online portfolio, as it is easy to organized and I can upload both images and films on there, I found it especially suitable for presenting of character designs and concept arts. I found and started to follow artist/practitioners that inspired me and some of them I already knew about. In addition, many studios including both animation and game studios posts job vacancies, so it is a good way of keep being informed with job positions in studios.

My page on Artstation:

Escape Velocity - talking to storyboard artist

I went back to China in December and had a chance to talk to a storyboard artist, who I knew before. She graduated last year and introduced me to the animation studio based in Beijing where she's working in to me. Escape Velocity studio is a animation studio that only do the pre-production part of the animation, and outsourcing the remaining part to studios all around the world. She also introduced me about the environment within most animation studio in China, as I am considering staying in the future. Most studios are in a pretty small scale and usually work very closely, which is similar to Golden Wolf that I have visited.

It was a pity that I was not able to go visit the studio as they are currently working on a secret project that they don't want to reveal to the public yet, but it was still a great connection with practitioners.

An animated series they released recently, Wool Wool Town, where she worked for as a storyboard artist as well.

Golden Wolf - Studio visit

A studio visit to Golden Wolf in London. We met Henry Purrington and had a inspiring short session with him introducing the studio to us, and animation studios' environment within the nation. It was informative as the visit actually gave me the kind of view on career within the animation industry, a very closely connected industry. What Golden Wolf make is mostly short films and small project, similar to the studios that I have looked up around the world that I am interested in contacting. After having an overview on their work, what I want to achieve from this point is to improve my work to industrial quality.