Having recently finished my Bacherlors degree, I thought it would be nice to recount my experience and take you along on the journey that I went through to become the motion designer that I am today.
For those who don’t know, I studied BA Media Production at The University of Lincoln from 2017-2020. Going into the degree, I had no clue where I wanted to end up. I knew that I loved the media industry and wanted to be involved in it, but having not done a lot of practical work I felt a bit like it was out of my reach because I didn’t have the skills. First year was really great as the course is designed to give you a little taste of everything, so I did projects like a motion graphics ident, a 2D scene built from photoshop assets, creating set for a TV show, producing a radio show, my own photography project and a short film. I quickly discovered that my passions lay with digital creativity, so I took my digital media and design skills into the second year.
My second year projects are something I am really proud of; for my digital media module we were set a series of briefs that covered a huge range of things such as creating AR filters to be used on Instagram, to UI/UX design, and 3D composing, as well as building on the motion graphics skills we developed in first year. While I am immensely proud of some of the non motion graphics work I created in my second year, this was the year where I decided what I wanted to do with my career.
I also studied design in my second year, and I think this was a great choice. Studying design meant that I learned a lot that could be transferred to my motion graphics work, including a lot about typography, composition and colour. I think design and digital media were a good combination, I learned the technology in one and the theory in the other. I really enjoyed working to a client brief as well as creating visuals from information, and found so much satisfaction in creating my childrens’ book!
My third year was such a whirlwind, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed. I dedicated my life to making my work the best it could be, and this resulted in me receiving 88% and 90% for my two projects; marks that I had previously thought were unattainable. While I am so pleased with these marks, I must stress that it was not easy. I often spent long days from 9am-7pm in the uni buildings, in the first half of the year this was in a room with no windows! As hard as that was, I miss it so much. The atmosphere in our learning environment was amazing; being around likeminded people to help each other and offer helpful constructive criticisms is something that now in lockdown, I long for. I am so grateful to have studied alongside my peers.
The hard work and determination I had in my final year led me to create this showreel piece.
So now that uni is finished, and graduation has been pushed back almost a year, I need to figure out who I am. In the last year especially I based so much of my identity on being a media student, and now that I’m done and entering into the real world I need to figure out who I really am. I’m so excited to create content just for fun, hopefully enter some creative competitions, expand my freelance client base and create some fun content for sale.
Jennie Hawkes 