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.