End of Module Evaluation

This module has been the most important and useful module of my degree. It has prepared me for life after university, including how to create a creative CV and how to prepare for an interview. I have finished the module with a creative CV ready to hand out, a fully functioning live website and a 20 page professional portfolio so I feel prepared to apply for jobs and opportunities that I wouldn’t have been ready for until now. Although other modules have been more fun in that they have involved lots of making and playing, this module is the finishing touch: I have the information and the core skills I need to start my career.

I started this course with little confidence in myself and even less confidence in my work. I was very anxious and worried that I wasn’t good enough. I would constantly compare myself to others on the course. I feared that I had wasted my time and was on the wrong course. I was still struggling with this anxiety until halfway through Level 6 when I started to gain confidence, realising that my work didn’t have to look like anything else and that being different actually gave my work an advantage in that it had a unique selling point: it was unexpected and broke the conventions of what illustration is.

I have finished the course with a much clearer understanding of where my work fits (somewhere between illustration and model-making) and have developed my creative presence to suit this specific practice. I have responded to the advice I was given by speakers at the Hanbury symposium - that Instagram accounts should be curated (so I have been uploading in collections of three images in a row) and that personality is key (hence the use of a video of myself making work on my website, and the title ‘Welcome to the Jayniverse’ reflecting my passion for world-building and imagination). I have also established that my dolls are very much a part of my identity as a maker, so my Self Portrait image features a doll version of myself (also wearing a crown, a recurring story in my practice that I am the Queen of Jayland) and I plan to create Jay dolls to be given away as part of my CV (as seen in my presentation boards – promotional material) to make myself and my work more memorable. As I enjoy presenting and writing, I like to call myself a ‘Storyteller’ and my presentation for this module will be a performance. This approach to a presentation might not be suitable or professional for others, but it is definitely relevant to what I do.

 As a result of this module, I have prepared a plan for after graduation. This includes location – I decided that I didn’t want to work or live in London and was worried initially that most illustration agencies and publishers are based in London so by not moving there I would be missing out on work, but through talking to practicing illustrators (such as Adam Higton and Tim Budgen) I have discovered that in the age of the internet it is possible for illustrators to work remotely from anywhere in the world. I also realised that it isn’t actually illustration that I would be looking for a career within, it is actually model-making/prop-making for animation and although there are lots of big studios in London, there is a huge Northern animation industry in and around Manchester. I am aiming to find a job within prop-making and model-making, this could be full or part time, but whilst I am looking for this job I will be working part time at a stationery shop in Ripon and making dolls to sell through Etsy, shops and fairs as a sole trader.

It was within this module that I discovered that the BBC offer work experience placements. I applied to work with the BBC in Children’s Design in Salford and was accepted! I had such a brilliant time working in the design team for Cbeebies and CBBC presentation; I learned so much from the people I worked with and it was fantastic to make props that will be seen on TV. This was a brilliant first step in gaining experience in the field and I have made some new connections with professionals through doing so. Going to the BBC was a huge deal for me and a year ago I don’t think I would have been mentally prepared enough to go, but I am so proud that I achieved this and know that I am ready now.

I have used this module as a chance to network with professionals, learning from their approach and asking for advice. I have gained friends (Tim Budgen, Maggie Rudy, Lucy Jean Green), mentors (John Cockshaw, Abi Hynes, Sadie Brown) and clients (Liz from Karma) as the result of networking and I hope that building my connections may lead to future opportunities within the industry.

Presentation Boards

PRESENTATION VIDEO AND NOTES

Level 6 PRESENTATION from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

Portfolio

1000 WORDS NOTABLE MOMENTS BLOG REFLECTION

September:

Newby Hall: I had a very busy summer with my first solo show at Newby Hall (here) and (here). I was referring to myself as a ‘maker’ and a ‘storyteller’, the beginning of my identity and branding as ‘Jay Stelling: Storyteller & Model Maker’; I was starting to understand what it was I enjoyed doing and how that could be used in a job but I was still overwhelmed at this point, avoiding thinking about the future and just making as much as I could. It was after this exhibition that I realised I was more interested in entertainment than products: ‘I'd rather charge people for coming into a space, to experience the art and have a good time than to make things for them to buy.’ Selling my art and dolls brings income but it was the opportunity to curate and have my work exhibited within a space, a ‘world’, that was exciting to me.

Far From the Shire: I was invited to participate in a collective Tolkien exhibition with my friend Guy Brady and local illustrator John Cockshaw (here). It was great to be involved in a bigger collective project, especially as it involved international, published illustrators. Guy and I are just students but the rest of the group were all professionals so it was great to get this boost from our friends in the field. John took us under his wing and mentored us for this exhibition. This was my first experience of collaboration, not in the sense of working hand-in-hand on a project but in helping to promote and learn from each other, which informed the rest of this module in which I contacted, networked and asked for advice from other practitioners.

October:

Manifesto: In my initial statement manifesto (here) I declared my ambitions to ‘continue constructing worlds and telling stories’ which is definitely what I did in Extended Practice this year and I also said that I wanted ‘to be recognised and respected for being a creator’ which is what I have explored in the planning of my future and career through PP3.

November:

Task 2 Websites: Task 2 was all about investigating websites (here, here, here and here) and how they can be used to present and promote artwork, this was integral to my understanding of how to capture interest on a web page and how I could make mine more engaging.

Task 3 Descriptions of my Work: ‘Magical, characterful, with storytelling and narrative at its core. It’s all about creating worlds in which these dolls and figures exist. Everything has a handmade feel.’ Recognising how other people see my work (here) and what my strengths are was a real confidence boost that helped me to think of myself as a professional.

January

Hanbury Symposium: I researched and prepared questions for the visitors (here), made dolls to give away to relevant professionals ‘I decided that giving away one of my dolls would be a nice gesture - something physical with a FACE that you would feel guilty putting in a bin... however, these can't be printed and made in mass, they take time and that's the beauty of handmade objects. They're one of a kind. The professionals should know that these took a while for me to make’ (here) and prepared a goodbye speech for the event (here). I took notes at the symposium, then spoke to some of the professionals afterwards and reflected on the advice they gave me (here, here and here). It was when a representative from BlinkInk mentioned that they need makers for animation that I started looking into jobs like this one (here) and then found and applied for the BBC Children’s Design work experience (here).

Website: In my website, I wanted to do something different (here) ‘As you scroll down the page, I wanted my characters to 'pop out' and meet the visitor. Although this website would probably be visited mostly by clients, I wanted to make it suitable for a child audience and suited to the charming children's book tone of voice that recurs in my work. The pop-out characters make the site really engaging and friendly, something different to the sea of conventional sites of portfolios out there.’

March

Workshops: The CV workshop (here) and the Interview workshop (here) were useful sessions that helped me to apply for work experience at the BBC and will help me again when I apply for future jobs.

Chatting with Ben about the future: ‘Collaboration will be important - keep making connections and use these people! Make puppets for someone else to animate? Get involved with bigger projects.’  This was great advice that I took very seriously and went on to collaborate with Stacy Straub for Extended Practice, then to work with the design team at the BBC. I kept making connections, using LinkedIn to connect with everyone I met at the BBC and I interviewed Maggie Rudy (here) and Sadie Brown (here).

May:

BBC: I did a lot of research before going to the BBC, finding out about the different roles and responsibilities involved (here and here). I had an incredible time which I talk at length about HERE. ‘There was no comparing or feeling inadequate as I sometimes do in the uni studio because we were all working together and the results are the shared work of us all.’ ‘I enjoyed working in a busy studio. Not a noisy studio because there was only ever 5 people in the room at once, but surrounded by creativity, a bit of mess and everything you could ever need for making props with. I felt really comfortable working in this environment and being able to ask 'what would you use to make this?' or 'would you do it like this or this?' when I wasn't sure about something.’

Contacting Professionals

These are the people I have contacted and spoken to through this module:

BBC
Abi Hynes (art director)
Liz Culley (design team)
Lauren Jackson (design team)
Laura Hopkins (design team)
Lucy Jean Green (design team freelancer)
Nigel Pentland (floor/stage manager Cbeebies)
Caroline Broom (floor/stage manager CBBC)
Karim (CBBC Presenter)
Phil Fletcher (Hacker puppeteer)
Ben Cajee (Cbeebies Presenter)
Jess (runner)

Maggie Rudy (author and illustrator)
Sadie Brown (DHMSM writer and miniaturist)
Tim Budgen (illustrator)

Newby Hall SOLO SHOW
Louise Scott (organiser)
Kate Bankier (organiser)

Far From the Shire COLLECTIVE EXHIBITION
Guy Brady (illustration student)
John Cockshaw (artist and illustrator)
Jemima Catlin
Soni Alcorn-Hender
Thomas Hijo

Visiting Lecturers
Laura Carlin
Adam Higton

Hanbury
Lucy Bourton (It's Nice That)
Helen Parker (Blink Art)
Greg Burne (Big Active)
Nicola St Louis (Anthropologie)
Ricky Richards

Assembly of Doll Makers
OVER 100 MEMBERS INCLUDING... Bethany Handfield, Kerryanne Boulton, Shauna Henry, Anna Northrop-Smith, Lisa Thompson, Jo Carter, Georgina Verbena, Monica Rodriquez...

Cop3
Sanctum Aetherealis
Pantovola
Leeds Museums
Katherine Baxter (Leeds Discovery Centre)

Liz Hall (Karma shop owner, Ripon)
Gaynor Gray (Gray Finch shop owner Ripon)

WORK PLACEMENT: DESIGN TEAM AT BBC CHILDREN'S

I have had a really busy and exciting week at the BBC working with the Children's Design team at Flix Facilities in Salford. Salford, especially media city, is a beautiful place and somewhere I'd love to work. It's so pretty and not too far from home. Well connected with tram links and buses too.

I think I was expecting a more official-looking building, older and more business-like staff? Because it's the BBC I just thought it would be a lot more formal and officious but I arrived at Flix (a set of  warehouses) and was met by Abi Hynes, the Art Director for BBC Children's Presentation. Abi was really young and friendly which surprised me a bit - I just wasn't expecting that!

The workroom is a big, messy warehouse filled with props and materials, quite an overwhelming amount of props in boxes, on shelves and all over the floor.

The design team consists of Abi, Laura, Lauren and Liz (again, all really young and cool!) The team is responsible for making props and dressing the sets for Cbeebies House and CBBC HQ. Almost everything that the art department do is for links - the presenters' dialogue in the Cbeebies house between shows. It's crazy how much work goes into designing and creating these links that only last a few minutes and are probably not even noticed!
Little things like making a cape for one of the Cbeebies yellow bug chairs - we spent five minutes in the corridor trying to decide which way the cape should blow and children won't even notice that!

The team is also responsible for dressing sets for Cbeebies birthdays (where cards are read out on set) and Cbeebies Bedtime Stories. There are more props needed for Cbeebies than CBBC. The briefs come through emails: Cbeebies come as a props list spreadsheet whereas CBBC send a paragraph of information which is less organised and has to be broken down to understand exactly what they want.

Props are sent over from Flix to Dock10 where the sets are (just over the road) on big trolleys. The bedtime stories are mostly on set in the Cbeebies House set, but sometimes they are filmed on location. Last week Abi went to London with the BBC to dress the set and provide props for a Bedtime Story with Elton John.

This week was a really busy week in the studio! They were preparing for dressings sets for royal wedding themed presentations, Eurovision links and a themed superhero week in Cbeebies next week. We've had a lot of work to do, Liz Lauren and Abi had courses, Laura has been off this week, we had a health and safety assessment and there's another busy week next week that we have been trying to prepare for! Since it's been so busy, my work experience has been less than conventional. Usually, they would go through each task chronologically with me, showing me through from brainstorming to prop lists to breaking them down, pulling props, making props and handing over at the studios. This week it's been so busy that I've just been thrown right in to tasks mid-make, straight into dressing sets without even seeing a props list and it got to Thursday without me seeing a handover yet!

First Day: 
Made 6 felt superhero masks for teddies to wear on the set of Cbeebies House for Superhero week
Made a Eurovision hat for a presenter and a matching one for Hacker, the puppet dog.
I helped to dress the Cbeebies set for a park scene. I was nervous at first to start moving things about, not knowing how it's usually done or what the producer would be expecting but it was a lot of fun to transform the studio and then step back and see the result on the camera.
It was really great to see the inside of the Cbeebies House set! So colourful and just as comfy as it looks on the screen. The design team can dress the set pretty much however they want - they can hang things from the lights, stick images behind the frames on the walls and rearrange the House Pets.

Day 2:
This week I also met Matt and Lucy who are freelancers who just come in when it's busy and they are needed.
Freelancing seems like a great compromise between a 'proper job' and having the time to work on my own artwork? This is definitely something to look into.
Lucy is a freelancer so she comes in when they are busy or need extra hands but the rest of the time, Lucy is self-employed making kinetic paper bird sculptures. Freelancing (usually a few days a month but sometimes she works for full weeks/months) makes her enough money to give her a semi-consistent wage and then she gets to work on her own art and attends craft fairs/shows with this.

I painted the edges of cloud props for Superhero week
Cut out and spray mounted Cbeebies characters onto foam board (kappa) and then cut out again with scalpel
Spoke to Ben (Cbeebies presenter)
Met runners
Met Floor manager Nigel
Dressed a CBBC set for a Eurovision link

Abi's role as Art Director involves quite a lot of admin. Some days she spends a lot of her time emailing and calling producers, buying props online and doesn't do much making. I don't know if I'd like this, knowing everyone else is making but having to reply to emails all day.
I asked Liz if her role involved emailing too because all of the designers had a Mac on their desk and she said yes, after she got back from her course (just three hours) she had 30+ new emails from the BBC!

Day 3:
Made a drawing of Danger Mouse to look as though it was done by Ben (presenter)
Used paint to 'muddy' a teddy bear to look as though it had been run over (for a Bedtime Story)


Lucy worked on the CBBC 'eggs' sketch today. This involves working with the presenters (Karim and Hacker today). The audience are asked to suggest a character to make into an egg and the designer has about 5/10 minutes to decorate the egg before it's due back on air again. The eggs she made today included: a red arrow plane, Phillip Schofield and the young dancer with big hair from Diversity. She said that one time she was doing this she accidentally got caught on camera with an egg (this is a live show). The tone of CBBC is very humorous and silly so with the Eggs, the stupider and more outrageous they look the better. Because Hacker is a live-action puppet, he often knocks things over and today this resulted in the Phillip Schofield egg cracking but this just added to the humour of the presentation.

I was working a lot with Liz today so asked her a few questions:
Do they have much to do with the other departments? Is it frustrating to be over the road?
The art department don't have much to do with other departments because they are on their own in a separate building. Although it's annoying for the team to be over the road at Flix (out of the way)
they do enjoy working in their own space!
Because they are separate from the rest of presentation, they experienced people not taking design seriously and they sometimes didn't get respected for their role in the production. Directors ripping apart a prop to make it work how they want it to - they wouldn't do that to a light! They don't respect how much work, money and time goes into prop making.
There are also issues like the design team being asked to work on extra shows like Mashup but not being given extra staff or money - just being added onto their workload.
They have only just started doing 'standby' on set whilst filming, before it would be down to the runners to fix/change props if anything went wrong mid-air. Since they have started doing these standbys they have got to know the rest of the presentation team more and are getting recognised for the work they do.
How many props do you make per week?
Liz said it really does vary... When they have a quiet week or day they are preparing for when they will be busy again, getting ahead on props lists in advance.
Do you get the chance to work on other shows?
Sometimes but not often and it is mostly about opportunity and connections. Laura is interested in sport and because knew people in the team she got the chance to work on a Sports show in the BBC. Opportunities come from knowing people and being in the right place at the right time.
What is your favourite part of your job?
Liz enjoys dressing the sets the most. Sometimes she gets given a 'make' that she has fun making but she generally loves set dressing. She thinks this is because her background is in visual merchandising and her previous job involved dressing windows so she definitely has an eye for layout and presentation.
Interesting to learn that although all of the team have art backgrounds, they did a variety of courses, not all specifically film design. Abi studied design for theatre and film but Lucy studied 3D Product design and Laura studied Fine Art.

Day 4: 
Last day! A way quieter day today. Because we'd spent all week working so hard today there wasn't much to do, just finishing off and sending props over on the trolleys. Plus eating food (real food, not the props) from the Royal Wedding Street Party set we did for Cbeebies the day before.
I made a little card to say thank you and they gave me a card and a bar of chocolate. Really emotional to leave but they told me to stay in touch and good luck with my course.

Staying in Touch:
I followed all of the design team on Instagram as well as some of the runners I worked with. I connected with Ben Cajee (presenter) on LinkedIn but the design team didn't seem to have LinkedIn accounts.

What was my favourite part of the week:
I enjoyed working in a busy studio. Not a noisy studio because there was only ever 5 people in the room at once, but surrounded by creativity, a bit of mess and everything you could ever need for making props with. I felt really comfortable working in this environment and being able to ask 'what would you use to make this?' or 'would you do it like this or this?' when I wasn't sure about something. A friendly studio so chatter and discussions but everyone is productive and getting on with their work. There was no comparing or feeling inadequate as I sometimes do in the uni studio because we were all working together and the results are the shared work of us all.
I also quite enjoyed tidying the studio, being able to rummage around all the props that I hadn't seen before, seeing what they had made for different links and asking questions like 'what is this made of?' 'who made this?'

Would I want to work somewhere like this?
Definitely. The team were so friendly so I would be happy to work with them again and get to know them a bit more. I enjoyed the working week and think I could still manage to do some of my own art (Laura is a fine artist and had an exhibition AND a live puppet show this week - she took the week off for this but is always busy making her own work).

What's next?
Keep an eye open for opportunities. Waiting for a job vacancy!
Look for similar opportunities at different companies? Maybe in theatre/other television companies/films.
Make more PROPS. I'm feeling inspired to make make make! I want to have a go at making some fake sandwiches with sponges because they were so realistic. It would be useful to have a portfolio of examples.
Work with local drama group to make some props for performances?

Because most of the content is filmed 2 weeks in advance, I haven't seen much of my work on the tv yet but this clip of Karim and Hacker was filmed live in the 'Eurovision' themed CBBC HQ set I helped to dress. There's nothing here that I made but it's still cool to see something that I helped to put up and arrange on tv. Watch Cbeebies next week to see the props I made!