#mirp

Today was presentation day and I was a complete nervous wreck all morning as I was going over and over my cue cards, which is a good thing as I now know them all basically by heart. The nerves didn’t lessen either as I walked into our usual lecture room and to my doom (a little exaggerated).

My group was the 5th one up, so I had to wait a while and watch the other groups go up first to give their presentations and as they all presented Cheznie (my friend that is also in group 5) and myself noticed that we may have written a bit too much to say, which then started another round of nerves to course through me, so I re-read through my cue cards trying to pick out any of the unneeded parts (which is hard when I thought everything was needed).

All too quickly our group was called up, and it was my go to speak. However, it wasn’t as bad and I have no idea why I was panicking so much, because when I got up there I just made sure to keep looking up from my cards and face the audience, a bit daunting but I did it. Before I knew it, it was all done and we were asked a couple of question by Helen and Peter, then let on a break before the next 6 groups were called.

I think (and hope) I did quite well on the presentation and I got all the information that was needed out. I also enjoyed researching my person who I was looking at - Mike Cachuela- and learning more about storyboarding, as it seems like a really fun job. Although I do need to work on controlling my nerves a bit more, it all went well.

Today we had the lovely Suzie Hanna come in to talk to us about her experience in the animation industry, she also showed us some of her work that she has done, which was great and something that i’ve never seen before, as she works mainly with poetry and animates to the words which I thought was quite a unique way to animate and could be interesting to try for myself.

Suzie Hanna also gave us some tips about being an animator, she also said that to be an animator one has to be playful and experimental, yet disciplined, which I think is a very true thing to say, as animators have to have a great imagination and be able to put themselves in the right mindset, yet also be able to make the deadlines and listen to the higher ups.

At the end of the lesson Helen told us that our presentations would be next week, which instantly made me nervous, as the thought of having to talk in front of everyone is quite terrifying.

With this news I worked on making my part of the presentation, which is looking at the job of a storyboard artist and also looking at Mike Cachuela. I also had to add something to the ending as well for the future on animation slide, where we are going to talk about the changes and improvements of the animation industry that you can see through the film ‘The Incredibles’.

Once I had all my slides written out and added some animation onto the images and titles, I then started to create my cue cards, as I didn’t want to write all the information onto the slides as that would look too messy and overwhelming for the audience.

I will keep going over what I have to say for the presentation for next week to make sure I am completely ready. I’m still nervous, but hopefully that will pass once I am up there and talking about my slides.

Our first lesson back after the Easter break started off with a guest speaker talking to us. The speaker was, Stephen Ong, an NUA Alumni who graduated in 2010.

Stephen Ong came to talk to us about his work, and how he found work after graduation, just like Millie Woodcock.

He showed us some of his work after uni, and some of the stuff he has done at Make it move, a company that he is co-founder of.

His websites are:

https://stephenong.co.uk/

http://makeitmove.co.uk/

After going through his work, he then gave us some tips for us to think about and use during University and after graduation. Stephen told us to learn to say no, such as when given work that is not possible, or has been asked for you to do for free, try to keep in touch with people, especially with people in University, as the may contact you one day with work and give you job opportunities. Try to make friends and contacts, which may seem difficult, but is worthwhile, and always try to self promote, as you never know who will see your work, or what jobs you may gain from it.

When his presentation had ended, Peter Martin came up to talk to us about our presentations that we will be giving soon. Peter told us not to be nervous, as we are presenting in front of friends and that it may be tempting to do, but try not to hide behind cue cards and the computer.

This kind of helped me, as I felt nervous at first about giving a presentation in front of the whole class, but then again everyone will be, so hopefully everyone will be nice when people are presenting.

The lesson ended relatively early, as we had group tutorials with Helen Piercy to see how well the presentations are coming along. I think our group is working really well together, as in the meeting with Helen we all seemed to have the information we needed, and some of us had already contacted the person we are going to talk about. We all seem to be on top of our work which is a good sign, so now I feel more relaxed about when we have to present. Helen also gave us some ideas about what to put into our presentation, for example, we should talk about the CGI differences in both ‘The Incredibles’ movies.

Over the easter break I went in search for information about Doug Sweetland and his work on the Incredibles, including any images of the storyboards he may have done on ‘The Incredibles’ and any other films.

However, it wasn’t easy and I couldn’t find anything in the end, apart from written information about his life and work, but no images of his storyboards. I then found out when looking at his filmography on IMDb that he has only done storyboarding for one movie, and he was an animator for the rest.

I now had to change the person I was looking at, and went with Mike Cachuela, who actually has a website containing his work, and contact details on linkedin, which I need as we have to email a creative practitioner for easter homework.

http://mikecachuela.com/

Although I’m not sure if the website is run by him, but it has his work on and information about his work and a bit about his life.

I was also lucky and came across a really helpful past interview he had in which they ask about how he got into the industry and what influenced him.

http://animatedviews.com/2008/perfect-nightmare-mike-cachuela-on-storyboarding-christmas/

(Link above is to the interview.)

Getting his contact details was a bit tricky and long winded, as I had to go through the whole process of signing up to linkedin to get his email. Before I did that though I wrote down the question I wanted to ask him, and how I was going to structure the email. I ended up sending this to him on linkedin and through the ‘contact’ on his website:

Dear Mike Cachuela,

My name is Ellora Howell, and I am currently studying Animation at Norwich university of the art. I am contacting you, as part of our coursework is to contact a creative practitioner and I greatly admire your work on storyboards, and would like to ask you a couple question about your work on them.

My questions are:

Why did you choose to work as a storyboard artist?

Who were your biggest influences for storyboarding?

What makes a good storyboard? And do you have any tips for an aspiring artist that helped you when creating your storyboards?

How do you take a script and turn it into something visual?

I appreciate you may be incredibly busy with current work, but I really hope you will be able to find the time to answer a few of my questions.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Yours sincerely,

Ellora Howell.