A couple of weeks ago I got the chance to spend the day with thoughtful upstairs in their studio. It was a great opportunity to see the way that a real studio environment works. As a result of a chat on the day, they were interested in the work that I was producing in Moving Image. It seemed that they hadn't worked with anyone from Moving Image before, so they were intrigued to see some of my work at some point.
Last week I decided that it would be a great opportunity to get some feedback on my work and interesting at the same time getting feedback from people who work primarily with a graphics background. So I emailed Thoughtful and asked about the possibility for a Portfolio Crit.
Here's a copy of the email I sent them and their response:
First of all I'd just like to say thanks to James, Chris and Stuart who all sat down with me when I turned up in their studio last week. This was a little daunting at first, but nice to get all of their opinions. When I sent the email last week I wasn't expecting such a quick response, which meant that I had to spend the majority of last week finding a range of work that I could show them!
After creating our websites for Kodak last year I've been wanting to have a play with creating a portfolio site, so last week I put a little one together in order to present my work. I came to the conclusion that if I didn't put all of my work in one place, that I'd turn up and would be searching frantically for work and not knowing where to look, (which I didn't think was the right impression give!)
I decided that I would show them a range of the work that I have created both on the course last year/early this year and some of the things that I had the chance to get stuck into over summer. Work that was 2D, 3D and also the Video project that we worked on towards the middle of last year.
The feedback that I got on my work was good to hear. They liked the range of pieces that I took to show them and told me that they could see the amount of time and effort that I had put in on the pieces.
They asked me whether I felt comfortable with the the technical side of my work, as this is obviously an important element in the production of work. Ensuring that if they were asking for work to be created, that it could be produced at the right size and in the right format for example. I felt comfortable in talking about my work in terms of the technical side because I think the technical aspects of work are one of my strengths. But it's interesting to hear how important that is in the considerations of getting someone to carryout a brief.
They gave me some great advice, to make sure that don't just primarily just rely on working on screen. To actually get involved and create some stuff myself. Which was nice to hear because I really like organic and handcrafted design and for a while now have wanted to bring a bit of printing into my work. For example using printed background as backdrop for example.
It was insightful to have people who aren't moving image based give their opinions on my work because they probably look at it from a slightly different point of view, being print based.
Cheers again to Thoughtful!
