Unit 16 Promoting Art and Design Work

In this Unit I will be exploring the different ways I can promote myself and my work to possible employers.

Research Methods of Promoting my Art and Design work
Self promotion is very important as a freelancer, as it allows you to show your work and abilities to a crowd, that might take an interest in what you can do, which can lead to getting work or a job.
There are many different ways to advertise and show your work.

The most common way that people advertise their work and skills nowadays is through social media websites such as:
Facebook

Is a great way of showing your work and skills as it is a very common website. it's also commonly used by companies to reach out to their fans. It is estimated that there are more than a billion people are active on Facebook so you are quite likely to get some people interested in your work through this website.

Twitter

Twitter is also another very popular social media website and is also commonly used by companies to reach out to their fans. Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets". Registered users can read and post tweets, but unregistered users can only read them.

YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video sharing website in the world and is commonly used by companies and individuals to show their talents, work and abilities to the internet, so it's great for showing off the skills and work you can do the potential employees and it is good place to get "fans".

DevianART

DevianART is a very popular online art community and is great place for artists to go and show their artwork. Many employees go onto DeviantArt to look for talented artists to employ for a project in which they need artists. And if you have a some fans you could possibly do commissions which is commonly done on devianart.

But using social media isn't the only way to self promote, you can also:

Go to meetups, events, festivals and conventions that you could get involved in a show your work at. Going to events like these is great for networking and meeting people with common interests as it could help you get work and do collaborations with great people.

Make business cards and hand them out at social events. Business cards are great as they are simple to make and easy to give out to people who are interested in what you do. business cards are the best way of reminding people that you exist.

Teach a class and give something of value to your local community, show off your knowledge, and possibly gain a few new customers this way.

Plan a promotional campaign for my own work

What is it that I want to specialise in?

The things I want to specialise in is mainly art: digital/traditional drawing, digital painting, 3D modelling and games development: Unity, C# and other game development related subjects.

So the amount of things that I want to be doing is quite broad as I want to be a "jack of all trades" within the video games industry.

So some of the best ways to show off my work would be to use deviantart and other art related websites to show my artwork, and then use websites like the unity forums and other game development forums to show off my game dev work.

So far I don't see myself being talented enough to get hired by a games company but I do think I have enough experience to do some simple commission work, whether it's for some simple art, logo, poster, 3D/2D animations work, I think I could do.

The plan

Throughout the 2nd year of this course I have been thinking a lot about what I will be doing after.

I decided that I didn't want to go to University. I personally think that I am capable of learning everything I need to learn to become a game's developer thanks to the Internet and other resources. so I didn't really see the point in wasting time and money for doing something that I could do for free.

The main Plan is to learn as much as possible about game development and programming for a year to then try and get a job into the game's industry. And while I will be learning game development, I also will be trying to learn as much as I can about digital art, 3D and 2D so I can create better game assets. 

I will also be planning on making some games that could potentially be released on the market, I'm already thinking of creating a small free to play app game that I could try and get ad revenue from.

during that year I will also most probably need to get some kind of income to pay for stuff, So if possible I will try and get commission work otherwise I will get a part-time job. 

During this year I will also try to create a name/brand for myself, to gain popularity on the internet, this would help to get commission work or even to be hired by a games company.

If nothing much happens from this gap year, then I might consider going to University, but I don't want that to happen so I will be working hard to get stuff done.

My website with My online portfolio

This website isn't great but it will do for now, Once I have an actual "brand" going for myself I will make a better and more advanced website to show off my skills and work.

Some business cards I designed and then got them
printed out by a card making company.

My Show reel

Here is a 2 minute show reel I created to show of most of my best work. this show reel will come in handy to show off to people who might be interested in my work.

End of year show

For the end of year show of the course I have prepared 2 Computers for showcasing my work, I'm going to be having one of the computers continuously running my final major project(The king's arena) and for the other one I might either have it run my other game (Attack on Harbour) or have it showcasing some of my other work or website.

While preparing the show I printed out some of my poster's and other work to stick on the walls of the classroom in order to showcase more of my work.

And next to the 2 computers I will be using i will place some of my business cards for anyone who might be interested in my work.

Evaluation of my promotional campaign

Overall I think that I have done some good research and planning to promote myself and my work for next year. I researched many different ways in which somebody could promote them selves online and some extra ways offline, I have thought a lot about my plans for next year and i created a website, business cards and a show reel to help promote myself further.

I will also be attending the End of year show to showcase the work I did during the course.