As the final blog post, we'll shall reflect on our overall experience when it comes to this particular project; preparing us for the future after we graduate from this animation degree. This project gave us great advice on various choices we'd have to make; like if we should go into the career field or take some time doing a master's, what we should do when applying for film festivals and how to improve our portfolios, CVs and interview presentation. The project also taught us about the good and bad of the various future paths we could take to help us make an educated decision on where we should take ourselves after graduation, helping us feel more prepared.

 

For myself, my overall reflection on this project has more or less helped me mentally prepare for the future path I'm heading towards; as well as help me by figure some alternatives for if things go wrong or don't pan out the way I planned as that's what we also learnt from this decade so far: the future is unpredictable. 

My plan for after my graduation, is that I'm going to take it easy by having a gap year. I won't completely be lazy throughout that year, as I will use that year off to practice some more skills in background artwork and using different mediums; as well as expanding my social media presence as I would have more time to figure out how they operate and build myself up. Plus, I do have my volunteering jobs that I'll be starting as soon as I submit my final assignment in June.

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Then, in the fall of 2022, I'll hopefully start a master degree in either character designing or storyboarding; as those are the two industry roles I want to do when I start work and having those on my CV might help in getting me into those kinds of jobs. And sure, a master's would mean I would have to work even harder than I have in the past five years and I would have to deal with debt afterwards; but as long as I pace myself with enough breaks to not overwork myself and be careful with money I earn from both my work, savings and money from the government due to my disability, I should be ok as it'll give me a small bit of stability and routine.

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Once I graduate my masters, that's when things get a little more mysterious; but this project has given me some great insights to where I can go; there is the more traditional job hunting which hopefully by then, Covid would have calmed down and so it should be easier to be hired, using the job hunting help websites found from this project should help me find it.

But I could also help out with family such as possibly working with my aunt on a small customisable t-shirts where I do the art work and she does more of the business side; where I could use my slight influence on social media platforms to also advertise them.

Or there is also work i could do on my own animated short that I would submit to various film festivals, mainly based on my own life experiences as a autistic person as one of my personal goals is to help in giving representation to that disability to help people understand not just autistic people, but also themselves. 

However, if all of those fail, there's still freelance commissions I could do online and I could just do the other master degree I didn't do if I want to expand my CV even more in hopes of getting better job chances. But that's more of a last resort plan if things don't go well why 2024/2025

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The main take away I got from this project is that I feel more prepared for the future now than ever before as I have a more fleshed out idea of the possible ways I can take my future and know where to find help if I need it. And while my far future isn't set in stone, I'm perfectly ok with that as I have the next two years roughly sorted out and with this global pandemic that still exists, it's better than nothing.