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I joined Escape with the idea of becoming an animator, as I wanted to pursue a career in something creative. I was then intrigued with concept or character design, as I enjoy the creative freedom you have and how many variations you can come up with for one idea. Despite that, I am now looking to specialise in storyboarding - I enjoy the creative aspect of mapping out how a story will look and exploring alternate pathways and styles that a story goes through.
Specialisms:
Story Boarding and Concept Design
SHOWREEL
GET TO KNOW SHANIYAH
What was your inspiration for pursuing a career in Animation?
I've always wanted to pursue a career in the creative industries, when I was younger, I would enjoy watching different creative animated shows and films such as ‘Lilo and Stitch’, ‘Finding Nemo’, and ‘Gravity Falls’. Watching these different shows and films inspired me to create different types of characters, narratives and amateur comics. This then inspired me to become involved in something similar in the future.
I found storyboarding to be a role that I am most comfortable in and I also found that I very much enjoy coming up with or taking a story idea and translating them into a visual medium. I found that visualising a story that I myself or someone else had created and drawing them out into thumbnails can be a fun process. On the other hand, it can also become a challenge as you can encounter a change to a story and may have to revise it.
What hobbies do you have?
My hobbies involve drawing, painting, crocheting, pottery, and reading.
In my free time, I like to draw and create characters for fun. I also enjoy painting landscapes and experimenting with different mediums, like acrylic on canvas or watercolour. A recent hobby that I've picked up on is crocheting. And I occasionally like to come up with and create small sculptures and trinkets with clay. I also like to read in my spare time and currently work part-time in a bookstore. The most recent book I've read is ‘Song of Achilles’, by Madeline Miller.
I do occasionally tend to pick up on other hobbies such as baking and gardening and enjoy exploring different types of creative activities.
How would your peers describe you in 3 words?
Creative, Reliable, Observant
Do you have any industry experience? If so, please give a concise explanation of the experience.
I haven't had any direct experience working within the industry, but I have attended workshops and talks from members of the industry, such as Bluezoo and DNEG. These talks have provided me with a good understanding of what is required when entering the industry.
How would you describe your contribution to your group project?
In my latest group project, Fathers' Blade, my role was Storyboard Artist, Concept Artist and Animator. I have worked as a Storyboard Artist for my previous projects as it is the role I most enjoy and one I am most confident at. I referenced the rigs and models we were using to create these boards, also referencing the script to get a better understanding of the story. Feedback was given quite often and changes were made to improve the boards. I was able to retain this feedback and quickly improve the boards to comply with deadlines. I created a concept scene of the training grounds in a bamboo forest for the main character in this project. I referenced different images of bamboo forests and campsites from Pinterest to create the final design. I had about 4 shots to animate during this project. I feel I completed them to a good standard and submitted them within the given deadline. I struggled the most with creating the sneak cycle, for reference I researched sneak examples from different video games. I ended up creating a sneak cycle that may have been too slow for the scene and ended up having to revise it multiple times before having to pass it along.
What lessons did you learn from undertaking your project that you'll take with you into your career?
A lesson that I have learnt from this project that I would use in future projects, and my career as a whole, is to use feedback and criticism as pointers on how to improve my work. I found that by doing this in my latest and previous projects, I have ended up with a better outcome than I would on something I would just focus entirely on my own.
What would your ideal first role in the industry be?
My ideal first role in industry would be a junior Storyboarding Artist, or something similar that would be able to get me into the position such as background designer or illustrator. I feel these type of roles would help me to gain more knowledge and experience in what I want to go into in industry.
What's an achievement from the past 3 years that you're proud of?
For my group project, 'Green Friend', I was especially proud of the concept art I did for the room layouts. I worked closely with the set designer/3D layout artist with creating these and I was fairly proud of the final results. There were a few problems with how the original layout would be depicted in the final stage of the project due to there being too much walking animation, but this was resolved by changing the amount of rooms involved and using the camera to trick the perspective of the audience. The overall design of the rooms were still used for the final product.
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