Marketing myself

When it comes to showcasing all of the films at Ravensbourne2012, our end of year degree show, I will need to market myself in a way to stand out from the rest and to assert my specialist skills.  One method that I am intending to use, which I remember the final year Animation students from last year did extensively at Ravensbourne2011 was to distribute business cards.

I already have business cards that I felt inspired to make (using vistaprint) in November, after my Arcade film project idea did not get green lit and I wanted to offer my skills to as many other groups as possible. At that point, I did not have any contact cards so it proved difficult.  I decided that the best thing to do would be to finally get business cards so that anyone interested in my work could get in touch.

My contact card consists of two sides, on one side I have a red shaded spiralling image, accompanied by my name and my three core specialisms; Animation, Rigging and Character Design.  On the other side, there is a self-portrait of me and a few contact details, namely my website, email address, phone number and twitter.  I chose this selection of contact details as they are the main ones that I use for professional networking.

I intend to leave a pile of these cards at the stall for the Cat and Rat film, as well as keeping hold of some in case I chat to anyone at the degree show and I want to give it to them personally.  These contact cards have a spiralling red background, which is an image that I have just seemed to adopt over the past year as part of my "corporate image".  I adopted this after applying it to a unit specific blog in my second year  and it just seemed to stick.

The motif is also hugely present of my personal website, which is another core means of marketing myself.

This website consists of my showreel, as well as contact details, my blog and a selection of my animation and artwork.  I have made sure that anything that I use at the degree show or in professional networking carries this strong image and directs back to my website, so that people will remember me and will be able to learn more about me as an Animator.

Furthermore, any posters or promotional material that we use to market the Cat and Rat film will carry our names, as well as our specialist areas within the team, as you will see on the Cat and Rat website, meaning anyone interested in my work will be able to track me down.