Because I’ve not got very much work on (although I know it’s all about to kick off again just in time for the new baby), I’ve taken the opportunity to try to make my life a bit easier.

Right now, when ever I have to produce a pitch or give someone an idea of what I’m planning to do, I end up spending most of my time making things look good and not much time actually laying out my ideas.

That’s because animation and graphics is difficult stuff, and just creating a lighting setup, background and materials that work is pretty time consuming before you even start on the concepts you’re trying to create.

So what I’ve been doing is building effectively a set of ready made studios. These are sets I can just load up and start to customise knowing that whatever I create in them, when I hit render the results will be pretty. All the laborious playing around with hundreds of settings to get the best result will already have been done.

I’ve also created a storyboarding “kit” – with simple primitive shapes and characters I can hopefully drag around to very quickly create visual representations of what I’m aiming at, so clients, others I hire to work on the project and me myself can get a feel for what’s needed.

I’m hoping the ability to do all this will become more important because I really do want to start pitching for more and higher level work. My magazine article on the pitching process is helpful – allowing me to pester people on the subject, and get lots of good advice on what to do and how.

I’ll put all that advice here once I’ve collated it, but the thing that’s coming across most strongly right now is that I really need to take networking seriously – I (or more likely a salesman who I hire) needs to be out there calling and meeting with production companies and commissioners to ensure that I’m on the list when animation work is put out to tender instead of just waiting for that work to come in from my advertising…