Stoke your fires - Day 2 of the festival (Curtis Jobling)

The second day of the animation festival started with Curtis Jobling, an author and illustrator. You’ll know him from one of his most famous character designs, Bob the Builder. I really enjoyed Curtis’ talk as it was very encouraging and motivational. One of the best things he said was about your creative portfolio. He said that qualifications should never count more that the portfolio. If the work is good then it’s good, you don’t need a piece of paper with a qualification written on to say it’s good. In his words “the work should speak for itself”. I like this philosophy, because I believe this is how it should be. Even though I will have a degree at the end of my course, I’d hate to think that someone would judge me on my qualification and not the work itself.

He also said that getting work and jobs is sometimes down to being in the right place at the right time. The only way to make this happen is to “put yourself in the right place at the right time”. Curtis talked about using sketchbooks too. He said its good practice and it allows you to stock pile your work and ideas. He talked about character design a bit and said you should go through a character right from A to Z. In other words draw every possible shape size and style for the character to make sure you get what you want. It was stated that criticism is a good idea too. It allows you to bounce ideas around, and may lead you in a direction you would never have thought of. In my opinion the most important point he made was to “Put the hours in”. He said he left college with his portfolio and didn’t really like it at all, and it didn’t reflect what he could do. So he redid it in his own time after work and in the evenings. I think we all make excuses and say “oh, I can’t do that, I haven’t got the time”, but really were just not motivated enough. If you really want to do something then you will “make the time.