Web Site and Facebook page Development

This week I worked on creating on my web site and a facebook page that I would you to promote my work on social media as we have discussed in previous lectures. I covered this in my previous blog post of setting up social media accounts on Facebook, twitter or Linkedin and that I will be using Artstation as a source to create my community profile and web site.
I made a review and justified my reasons for using Artstation and Facebook and that I have decided to postpone creating a Twitter account for later on, because I don't think it is necessary at the moment, if you want to remember what I talked about go and check my Personal Branding Part 1&2 post for more detail.

So this is how my web site currently looks like as you can see in the first image and bellow it is my artstation community profile that everybody that is sing up with artstation or not can view. The reason why I choose Artstation as a main source was that is art orientated, a lot of professionals from industry have account as well and I am able to connect with them...basically is a art version of Facebook and Twitter, where people can post their work and other could like and follow them and it gives me the chance to build a small community.
Using Artstation was also really useful in setting up the layout for my website, links to my Linkedin profile and Facebook page as well as mail. I can update any of these and add and remove information very quickly and edit constantly.

My reason for creating the Facebook page is that I will use it like a blog, the same way Torfrick does, to post my work, updates on things I am looking in to as research and work in progress as well as creating another small community that my followers on artstation can join as well, so this way I am getting more exposure and people have an easy way to look me up and connect with me and my work. I have already started posting updates on the page with things that I have worked on and my current progress on other project, so in a way I am already building a library that people can access and find what they like and if they share it on their Facebook more people can see it more and more people will start joining in. Since I made the accounts yesterday, I have 83 views, 9 likes and 3 people following me on Artstation and 26 likes on my Facebook page, this shows that things are progressing very fast and the exposure is massive.
I will be looking in to the development of my showreel next week on which I will post updates, so stay tuned and I have also posted links to my profile in artstation and facebook page, so feel free to follow me if you like what you see, which is not a lot now, but there will be more in the future.

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/ndkolev

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikolaykolev3D/

Week 8&9 - Mark Ranson and Sumo Digital

Last week on Friday we had guest lecturer Mark Ranson an environment artist at Rock Steady come around to talk to us about his experience in industry and give us tip on how to improve our work.

But before I talk about that I will mention that today we had Sumo-Digital a big game developing studio in the UK gives a lecture about the company, potential graduate programs they will have, some of the games they have worked on and advice on how we can prepare for interview and how to approach it.

So back to Mark Ranson, the latest project he worked on at Rock Steady was Batman: Arkham Knight and the main focus of his work was one of the islands which was China town. His main focust during the presentation was game development and how we as artists should approach it and prepare for it. Some of the things that he mentioned I could relate to, because of my experience during my Game Development Project, when me and my team took similar approaches to our work as he was suggesting. He gave us a valuable tip to fail faster and not become to precious of our work, because the earlier to mock things up to test them and make changes to your designs, you will get a better end result and when you build this habit this will save you a lot of time in future projects.
Overall, he gave us a good insight of the game development side of a project in industry and his personal experience of it.
Whereas for Sumo-Digital I will be using my development of portfolio and show real from this modual to apply for their graduate scheme and other jobs in industry. After I have done my show real and portfolio, I might spend some time after I finish to polish it and get it up to standard.
In the up coming weeks I will be posting my development on that and i will add a link to my facebook page which you can follow to see my progress on other personal projects and work related to the games industry. Stay tuned for more.

Interviews and Class experiment

On last weeks Friday session we were given a task during class to get in groups 3 and to do interviews. The idea was that one person will be the interviewer, one the the note taker and one the interviewee and the interviewer will choose at randomly a question from the ones that we were given and ask and relate the interview to that question. We had 5 minutes for the interview and after one was done we would swap position, so everybody could have a turn in each role.
This was an interesting experiment and good experience to answer random questions that were not game industry related as well as asking them and trying to develop an interview from that in 5 minutes. Some people found the role of the interviewer very intimidating, because it is something unnatural for students like us to be in this position. I thought that it was interesting to be the interviewer, but that was only because I had this experience in May while working for a small company. They were looking at hiring other arts to work for the company and as I was the only artist currently working at the company I was required to attend the interviews and ask questions with other two guys. It was an interesting experience, because it was the first time I ever did something like this and also being on the other side of the table to ask the questions and trying to find good and bad things in the candidate to determined if they will fit the role or not.
I believe that this was a good experience for everybody to experience this in a different environment and that it gave everybody an idea of how to approach an interview, which is to level the plain field and treat it more like a conversation with the interviewer than an interview.
Next Friday, we will have a guest lecture from Mark Ranson an environment artist at Rock steady, which will be a good experience to see what he has done in industry, how he has approached preparing and applying for jobs and his experience in the industry, so keep a look at for another update on how that went.