1. Demonstrate through the curation of a series of animation artefacts a planning portfolio communicating effectively your professional and transferable skills related to career-specific or further training opportunities.

Application

Communication

2. Analyse and evaluate current animation recruitment roles and production contexts through the development of a portfolio to understand the relationship between industry creative expectations, and your current stages of development to apply for employment and training opportunities.

Analysis

3. Apply a range of employability resources to enhance and develop your career goals, evaluating their effectiveness in relation to your career planning portfolio and to respond appropriately to feedback to optimise your professional next stage opportunities.

Enquiry

4. Evaluate and reflect on your personal skills development and further development opportunities in relation to a professional career area and/or further training.

Reflection

Reflective Career Planning Portfolio

A reflective portfolio of curated animation artefacts which showcase an intended career path within the animation or animation related creative industries, self-employment, or further study opportunities, with supporting evidence appendices such as: production showreel/outputs, personal promotional materials, mock interview, employment and work experience applications, summary of attended networking events and/or career related activities, feedback presentations, and contribution to a collective graduation showcase - 4000 words.

LOs (Learning Outcomes): 1-4 100%.

This module is designed to enable you to reflect on your progress in developing animation employability skills and allows you to articulate your current stages of development and to research and consider your next steps after graduation. The delivery will take place over the entire year and will be driven by your independent study with strategic guidance, feedback and support sessions scheduled to help structure your individual progress toward an optimal professional profile and portfolio.

You will be encouraged to iterate your work regularly and in response to a variety of inputs such as feedback of peer and staff, professional guidance and advise, industry knowledge, and social media engagement.

This module is an opportunity to showcase your best work and present yourself as an industry ready creative.

It will involve you investigating employers and professional roles to identify the skills needed to enter a particular area of employment, self-employment, or further study and you will be required to evidence real employment applications. This could be for work experience, a placement, a junior role in a small, medium, or large studio, volunteer work, a teaching position, working for a charity, festival support roles.

As part of your career planning portfolio, you may wish to undertake and evidence other creative and professional development such as; life drawing practice, participation in societies and clubs, skills certifications, software knowledge certifications and awards, short courses, micro-credentials, group work and collaborative projects. You will also evaluate your personal strengths and areas for development to refine and present your skills, abilities and attribute to best align with industry roles and expectations.

You will likely focus attention on profile development opportunities online such as website development, social media engagement and other networking activities, but the scope and content of evidence should be highly personalised – being well-informed, and career orientated.

Part of your work for this module can be focused on your graduation show and related marketing and awareness building activities associated with your completion of the course and transition to graduate work.

The module allows you to build a portfolio alongside opportunities to consider branding yourself to potential employers through careers related promotional platforms. The module is about preparing you and making realistic decisions about your personal development beyond graduation to achieve your goals and putting into place building blocks to prepare you for the challenges of securing employment within the creative industries.

Get ready for launch into industry by building a knock-out professional animation profile and portfolio showreel to dazzle potential employers and attract new members to your growing creative network.

You will work with tutors to negotiate and build your career planning portfolio, reflecting on your current skills development through your course related activities and external experiences. Learning will take place through mixed-mode delivery sessions, which may include best practice portfolios/showreels, professional profiles and platforms and networking guidance. Through working closely with tutors, you will develop effective techniques of enquiry and form a realistic appraisal of the opportunities in different occupations. There will also be an opportunity for you to engage with the careers hub and careers connect team to get support with finding and securing work experience opportunities and to enhance your personal careers development.

Independent Study will include time allocated to building your careers portfolio, researching industry employment roles, attending careers guidance sessions and networking events.

You will also be undertaking independent work to examine the necessary processes in curating work to build an effective professional profile and portfolio and/or showreel.

Students will be encouraged to seek outside input and guidance from within their growing professional network, alongside peer and academic feedback within sessions.

You will engage in work-based learning, acquiring new knowledge and skills gained from being immersed in industry contexts.

Academic tutorials will also be used to review your research and planning.

Barr, P. (2019) The Successful Career Toolkit, London: Kogan Page.

Collington, M. (2017) Animation in Context, London: Bloomsbury.

Furniss, M. (2017) Animation: The Global History, London: Thames and Hudson.
Levy, D. (2021) Your Career in Animation, New York, USA: Allworth.

Smith, V. & Hamlyn, N. (2018) Experimental and Expanded Animation New Perspectives and Practices, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

See Reading Lists Online for a full listing of reading texts.

University of Staffordshire Careers Hub - https://www.staffs.ac.uk/students/careers

Websites:

https://unity.com/features/2danimation
https://www.clipstudio.net/en/functions/animation/
https://www.dragonframe.com/tutorials/