Networking

We've always been told networking is something you can't just forget about and not do, we need to get ourselves out there and make contacts with people. When attending Animex, it's all I heard from the speakers, that they got their jobs through the contacts they had, through the people they knew and met along the way. I've only started networking recently, so it's still a new thing to me and I honestly find it hard to just strike up a conversation with someone. It feels like unless you have a common interest with that person you're bombarding them with your business card. I was lucky enough at BAF to meet a couple of people there who were really friendly and for my first time networking, it was a nice experience. At Animex I found that everyone was more interested in talking to the professionals and getting advice than networking with each other. That was my view, but I may have just been too shy to talk to other people. I definitely need to build up my confidence more. Once I get talking to someone it's fine, it's just that beginning point. 

All Animated is a networking organisation for the North, run by a group of lovely people. They are still in the process of creating their new site but you can keep up to date via Facebook and Twitter. I've only attended one meeting so far but hopefully can get myself to the next one. The one back before Christmas, was where I met someone to create the score for my last piece of animation, Invasion!. I also got some great advice from a freelance animator, Mike Green, about what to include in a showreel. Sometimes it's not all about getting contacts but the advice you can get from other people who have had more experience in the industry. I've also began to post more of my works in progress on twitter, to try and get feedback from other people as I have a lot of other animators on there. This also is building up my confidence of my work as I always think it's never good enough, but I know that I'm not the only one to think this. It's all about confidence at the end of the day and it's something I really need to work on.