Work Placement February 2008

My Next work placement will again be with Bruce Dunlop, but this time in London.

This time it's for 4 weeks, from Mid-February to Mid-March (covering 3 weeks of college term and the winter-term reading week). I am very happy to be doing this placement, despite the obvious problems of it being a a bit far from home. The idea will be to travel down early on a Monday, then work 4 day weeks, returning home on Thursday evening after work. This means I can work until I drop on the work days, and hopefully learn a load of new skills.

My old school-friend Andy Olley is a senior designer there, and has been there since 2000, his first permanent contract after studying at the NWSAD. His work is great, and keeps getting better. Below area few screen shots from Andy's idents designed for Disney's Cinemagic channel;




























The idents are really slick, and perfect for the channel. I had seen these at home when my kids watched the channel, before i knew Andy had designed them. They were co produced with the Art Director from Disney and a team of 3D post-production unit. They can be viewed at BDA under the London tab.

I went down to BDA's London office on 22/11/07 and had a meeting with The company Secretary Joan Dunlop and the production manager from the design department Amanda Robinson. We discussed the placement and I got grilled by Amanda on what I could do, and what I was into. I admit I got quite nervous and suffered from blank-mind syndrome, but they are still going ahead with the placement, so that ok. It will be for 4 weeks, on a 4 day week (I asked for a 4 day week so I can be at home for 3 days a week for my family). Work days are 9am to 6pm with 1 hour for lunch, and I will be there from 11th February until the 7th March 2008.

I think realistically I may have been slightly hasty trying to get such placements at this time, as I think they are usually for students in their final year or even new graduates, however by doing this I am pushing myself forward, and have plenty to work for. It's a case of throwing myself in the deep-end, learning by doing. The only problem is I am now a bit nervous, and feel that I need to cram as much as possible before I start the placement. They will require me to work on Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects and audio post-production. I know I will need to get very busy with After Effects as I haven't done much with that yet. All those applications as well as creative ideas are a day to day reality of that type of job.