Blog Post 5: Social Media and Your Career

It’s pretty common knowledge these days that social media is a vital aspect in getting your work out there, promoting it, forming connections, finding a niche and all that fun stuff. That’s what the lecture covered this week, and it explored techniques for self promotion, professionalism, popularity and portfolios.

Out of the objectives in the lecture I can fulfill with social media, valuable feedback, networking, and building/joining a community are the most relevant to me currently, I feel. I have a DeviantArt and Tumblr account which cover the above goals fairly well, but I also see the benefit in joining Twitter and Polycount, as well as smaller art and animation forums. I only have a tiny following right now of mostly people I know from school, so I have to work on boosting that, as much as I like the coziness of my quiet little corner of the internet! The biggest hurdle for me is a lack of community engagement. I’ve grown into the habit of posting my own work but not going out of my way to connect with others or groups, so that’s something I’ll definitely have to get used to. There’s always room for improving my skills as well!

Lisa from Lachri Fine art on Youtube has a many videos with tips on using social media as a platform for art. In this video she explains ways you can expand your audience.

I currently use an alias because I am more comfortable with using that in web spaces that are completely public, which is basically everywhere except Facebook, where I at least have some control of who sees my posts. I don’t really think using an alias will affect my professional identity all that much, seeing as there are many professional artists and animators that do the same, though I’ll attach my name to it down the line if I feel the need. I also don’t really see the point of creating separate accounts for projects. I’d rather hear subjective accounts from the creators themselves rather than the impersonal updates that tend to come from project or company specific accounts.

In regards to professionalism and popularity, I’ve been lurking on the internet for long enough that so far I’ve been able learn from others mistakes before creating them myself, thankfully.

I’m looking forward to setting up a portfolio! Right now it will just scream ‘amateur’ but it’ll be good to have ready when my work is of a quality worth hiring.

And since this is about self promotion, I guess I better get some practice in! Here’s my DeviantArt and Tumblr and some art:

Dena, C. (2015). Week 6: Social Media and Your Career Self-Directed Practitioners Retrieved from: https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-6-social-media-and-your-career-21ec52b2b003

Clough, L. (2015). 5 ways to get more followers for your art on social media - w/ Lachri. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/E2odgLkxZA4

Blog Post 4: Inclusive Design

This week we covered inclusive design! In other words, not isolating people from your potential audience. It’s something that I find is a very important yet largely overlooked aspect of media. The lecture covered accessibility, race, gender, sexuality, and conflict styles and competition. I was fairly familiar with issues regarding accessibility and representation, but I was completely unfamiliar with conflict styles and competition, and found it really interesting.

As the lecture covered, there are many different ways to make media more accessible to to people in your audience that otherwise would have difficulties enjoying your creation to it’s fullest potential. There is often little reason not to make your design more inclusive. For example, basically every major piece of media that I can think of that includes visual and audio elements also has closed captioning, yet many games still fail to provide a setting or design that makes it accessible for color blind people, even when they’d usually only be simple changes to the visuals. When you consider that colour blindness effects roughly 10% of the male population, it seems really lackluster on the part of game developers. Cameron Gidari wrote an article on his experience playing video games as a colour blind person with a range of visual examples of games failing at this particular aspect of inclusive design

Hacking in Bioshock 2

Proper representation of demographics can allow large portions of your audience to feel more connected to your work, while without it you run the risk of isolating them. It was brought up in class how some people didn’t like the inclusion  or representation of social minorities in situations where it felt like they were just there to ‘tick a box.’ Honestly, if ticking a box means simply acknowledging the fact that the demographic exists and that they are complex and human and worthy of being represented, then I think that is reason enough. (A better argument would be why all the characters have to be Caucasian, straight and male, in my opinion.) Rebecca Sugar, the creator of my favourite cartoon ‘Steven Universe’ explains the importance of representation really well:

I think so much entertainment deals in those terms that almost everyone is left feeling abnormal if there’s anything specific about their life at all. I hope to represent people who have felt a lack of representation, but I hope to also show people who have felt represented that they can also relate to characters that are not heteronormative, and to families that are not traditional, maybe even more so than the more generic characters and families that they’ve been seeing on TV.

I haven’t given much thought to conflict and competition in regards to gender, though after reading the lecture it seems pretty obvious. I don’t really have any preferences with direct or indirect conflict in games but competition in jobs is something I identified with quite strongly. I would much rather the non-competitive option but I can’t even come up with a good reason why!

 Dena, C. (2015). Week 5: Inclusive Design Self-Directed Practitioners Retrieved from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-12-inclusive-design-9df8f239653b

Gidari, C. (2015). What It's Like To Play Games When You're Colorblind. Kotaku. Retrieved 8 July 2015, from http://kotaku.com/what-its-like-to-play-games-when-youre-colorblind-1606030489

Woerner, M. (2015). Steven Universe Guidebook Spills The Secrets Of The Crystal Gems. io9. Retrieved 8 July 2015, from http://io9.com/steven-universe-guidebook-spills-the-secrets-of-the-cry-1704470546

Blog Post 3: Secret Interview Techniques

This week the lecture discussed all things interview, which is vitally important thing to be knowledgeable about seeing as if you ever want to be employed, you’ll have to go through one! The lecturer discussed their own personal experience of getting an industry job, and then went into aspects like phone calls, likely questions we would be asked, and trickier questions we might be presented with.

Honestly for me there aren’t many things more daunting than an interview, though the lecture helped me relax a bit. The notion that the interviewers aren’t actually testing you to see that you are the perfect human, and instead are getting a feel for your work ethic, personality, lifestyle and passion to see how well you would work in their company is comforting to me. Most of the questions listed there I feel I could answer pretty well, and most of the ones I couldn’t is down to a lack of experience. One thing that I acknowledge is important that I really have to work on is hustling.

In class we did an activity where in groups, we interviewed other members of the class. I didn’t get a chance to be an interviewee, but even so I learnt a lot from being the interviewer. I didn’t really know any of the people I interviewed very well at all, but afterwards I felt like I really learnt a lot about them and how they think, and was really impressed with how well they handled our tricky questions. I even felt pride when two of the people I interviewed won, even though they weren’t in my group! I felt like I understood the necessity of interviewing people after that. It really is a great way to gauge the positive character traits of people.

Once again I call on one of Will Terrell’s videos. In this one he goes through the process of getting a job at Warner Brothers and proving he is a valuable employee.

Dena, C. (2015). Week 4: Secret Interview Techniques Self-Directed Practitioners. Retrieved from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-8-secret-interview-techniques-8cdd5b225eee

Terrell, W. (2015). Breaking into the Animation Industry - people sketching episode 20. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/mwEd8qEYPbU

Blog Post 2: Your Income and Your Art

This week’s lecture explored ways of earning a living from your art, something extremely important to any creative professional. I found it quite comforting knowing there is so many options and methods you can use to earn some money in the creative field. These avenues included employment, sales and pricing, running your own studio, crowdfunding, having a day job, consulting and public speaking, commissions, funding, residencies, sponsorship, advertising, and licensing and royalties.

A few of these options I hadn’t really considered before, such as consulting, public speaking and sponsorship. However, theses methods a far from accessible to an amateur animation student, but it’s still good to know they’re there if I end up in a position where they are a possibility. The most feasible options to me right now would likely be commissions, having a day job, sales if I set up an online store, and possibly employment or freelancing after I graduate. I feel like the biggest hurdles for me right now are getting my work known and improving it to a more professional level, both of which I am working on.

Here’s a video from one of my favourite youtube artists, Will Terrell, giving some tips on freelancing:

In class we discussed the option of crowdfunding, and assessed the pros and cons of the project based model (eg Kickstarter) and subscription based model (eg Patreon.) Kickstarter has the benefit of raising needed funds for a project upfront, except is becoming over saturated with projects from large companies that don’t need the funding and instead are using it as a platform for profitable advertising. Patreon has the benefit of being more accessible to a wider range of artists seeing that you aren’t supporting a project, but a creators content. However the income received from Pateron is subject to change due to patrons canceling their subscription, making it a potentially unstable and risky source of income. Even so, I’m very happy these methods of crowdfunding are now available to creators! It makes living off art and creating dream projects more accessible than ever.

Dena, C. (2015). Week 3: Your Income & Your Art. Self-Directed Practitioners. Retrieved from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-3-your-income-your-art-133fe7b09488

Terrell, W. (2013). How to be a freelance artist - people sketching - episode 10. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfOd1-nEMu4

Blog Post 1: How Are We The Same

The lecture content for our second week in CIU111 explores the similarities between the different types of new media professions. Rosalind Gill describes new media as having ten key aspects: Entrepreneurism, short term work,  low pay, long hours, a constant need to improve knowledge, the necessity of being able to teach oneself, informality, inequalities and exclusions, lack of foreseeable future, and a love of work. I found it interesting how the different fields of new media seem so alike that their most distinguishing features are the different types of work that is preformed. For example, it seems the biggest difference between a games programmer and an animator is that one programs games, and the other animates, not other factors like workload or pay.

I was already aware of these 10 features and expected to have to face them throughout my future career, but besides acknowledging their existence, I haven’t given most of them much thought beyond that. As an animation student and artist, however, I am already very well acquainted with low pay aspect that many creative people face, especially when they are emerging or working for themselves. Online, many artists undermine the worth of their art by offering commissions and charging prices substantially below the minimum wage of their country, which in turn sets low standards for artists planning on selling their work in the future. Recently, crowdfunding platforms such as Patreon have assisted many kinds of creators in producing work that both the artist and their supporters want to see- however this again requires a notable following. Another topic related to low pay is spec work- where the client offers exposure or the artists enjoyment as payment. There’s a twitter account that quotes these exact kinds of proposals. It is hilarious but at the same time infuriating.

Must be available at least 3 hours a day.
Salary: $0.00 /year
Required experience:
1 year

— For Exposure (@forexposure_txt) May 29, 2015

This general public disregard of a new media professional’s livelihood appears to relate to a few other of the ten key features of creative media practitioners. You could assume that the unreliable short term work, unpredictable career, and long hours also stem from a client or corporations reliance on the idea that creators are desperate to create, or as the lecture mentioned, having a  “sacrificial ethos” (Andrew Ross, 2000.) Otherwise there would be little reason to even become a creative professional, let alone continue to work in the often undesirable circumstances. It is this exact love of our work that allows creative practitioners to put up with all the other crap, and also keeps the new media industry going. Without it, we’d probably get better hours and pay!

http://41.media.tumblr.com/c1774b9f14a7d1f624eb7663258ff7d5/tumblr_ngjlt0reAi1r51oypo1_1280.jpg

Who am I kidding. I could never fall out of love with animation or drawing. What I have learned, however, is that new media professional’s passion and dedication is both a blessing and a curse. It sets us up for exploitation but also allows us to enjoy our work, which is a lot more than what can be said for many other professions.

Dena, C. (2015, February 9). Week 2: How Are We The Same? [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-2-how-are-we-the-same-d12edb71b5e8

Gill, R (2010) "Life is a pitch": Managing the Self in New Media Work. In Mark Deuze(ed.) Managing Media Work. London (etc) Sage

Ross, A. (2000). The Mental Labor Problem. Social Text, 18(2 63), 1-31. doi:10.1215/01642472-18-2_63-1