For this roughly year long plan on my professional development; I would be talking about where I'm headed after finishing my degree course and why I took that path by pointing out it's benefits while acknowledging their flaws, comparing this path to their alternatives and their advantages and disadvantages.

After getting some advice from family and tutors; I plan on getting a masters degree on storyboarding and character designing, before heading out into the world to apply for jobs within the industry after finishing university. This in because of the current, uncertain climate of the world with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown changing tiers suddenly; this would be the best path for me to go through as I would have the stable goal of finishing my masters to keep me going in this historical event, rather than having my mental health (my anxiety and autism diagnosis) spiral downwards when getting no responses from companies while applying for jobs as with social distancing, runner jobs might not be available for now which are the typical jobs given to recent graduates.

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A master's degree is similar to what this current university degree is like, less than five years of studying where you might go into a building or (cause of the current uncertainty of the world right now) attend an online session to learn and gain more skills to take into the industry; but with a master's degree, you would study about a specific job in the industry like storyboarding and character designing for example.

The benefits of taking a master's degree are; the specialised knowledge you would gain from studying a particular field of the industry, so you would have the required skills to be the best at it (for example, taking a CGI animation masters for a better understanding of Maya); taking a master's degree would add some money to a person's pay check, from around 2 million to 3 million; and with a lot of master degrees having tutors that have worked in the industry, a student would be able to have a better network connection to the industry and therefore, have a better chance at getting a job within the animation industry.

However, there are some drawbacks to getting a master's; such as the price, as it can be very expensive and would require a loan to pay it which can drive people away from getting a degree; a master's student might not have the time to socialise with their classmates, which might make it difficult to have social skills when in the industry workplace; and classes are usually smaller so while it would be easier to focus on the course's projects, this also means that the chances of getting into a MA is very small and if you miss your chance, you'd have to wait until the following year or find a different Masters.

But overall, taking a Masters degree would be the best option for me to take in this current year; as I said before, it would allow me to improve my skills in the careers I aim to work in inside the industry and I don't think that trying to apply to a studio runner job is possible when a lot of studios are working remotely. And even with the student loan I would have to pay, the payment wouldn't start until I start getting money from a job so I shouldn't worry too much now.

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But, as a alternate from getting a Master's Degree, I could instead get a PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate in Education); which is a course that would train the student on how to become a teacher so they could teach the subject to other students and work at the college they learnt how to animate as a full circle of their time in the university.

However, I won't be going down this path; as it doesn't specialise in teaching animation, since this course is more of the basics in education such as english, maths and science; but it also doesn't exactly teach the physical side of teaching as it focuses more on the theoretical side of teaching. Plus, I don't see myself going in the direction of being a tutor.

Although, there are some positives to taking a PGCE degree; such as it would make you appear respectable and employable to different schools and educational buildings and would give you many life skill that would be helpful in the future, even outside the education industry.

As of now, I don't have any plans to get a PGCE degree. But it could be a plan for the far future; where I'm too old or tired to work in the industry, so I could take this degree and hopefully work in an animation course for my last few years before retirement.

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After I get my master degrees in the job roles I aim to work in, I hopefully aim to get jobs that require a long term contract within the Animation industry. A long term contract means that for a long while, a artist might be working for a particular company; where if they do a good job the company might renew the contract to keep them working at the company for longer, but if not, the company would just let the contract run out and have the artist leave. Unless of course they're a bad employee, in which cause they would just fire the person to make room for a better person. Usually, a long term contract for a animated production; the contract might last between 6 to 12 months for an animated television series, but it could last for a year at the minimum for a feature length film.

Now, the benefits I would get if I took a long term contract is that; my company would know the target audience off by their hearts (let's say, Disney with their target audiences of families for their films and toy studios for their merchandise), so I would already have an idea of who I would be trying to appeal to and work off from that to create successful character designs for example; the long time I would be able to have working at a company would give me time to make a good impression, which could lead to me staying longer at the studio or at the very least a good reference for my next job; and there would be a secure source of payment and cash coming my way, so I wouldn't be able to worry about not being able to pay off rent or the student loans from my master degrees.

But as a trade off for this job security, there are some drawbacks to having a long term contact; the main one being that you wouldn't have as much flexibility to do things in your own way, such as which days you can work and the exact task you would be doing (say for example, doing background art when you would rather do storyboarding); and if you end up stuck in a bad studio where they might treat you badly (such as cutting your pay down), you wouldn't be able to leave until the contract is up which could mean half a year or more of bad treatment.

But, despite those two main negatives, I would choose a long term contract in a heart beat for the payment security and having a better chance of getting new jobs throughout my time working in the industry. And as for dealing with those negatives; I would just keep an eye out for any red flags when signing a long term contract and avoid any studios that have a bad reputation with artists and make sure the contractor knows what they're doing. 

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The alternative contract I could take instead of a long term one is a freelance contract; which is a contract by a self employed person that might employee people into helping out with a personal or independent project, where the contract would last until the project is completed.

Although I won't be using this pathway for a career, I can see the benefits of going down this pathway for the future career; such as having a bit more control to tweak a contact to have it match more to your schedule, so you won't get as overwhelmed or stressed over the job; as well as not needing to worry about travel, since freelancers can work from home and not in a big studio which gives them more chances to be hired. 

But, the reasons for why I won't be doing freelance work for the majority of my work is because there is a possibility of the contracts being scams, where the contractor runs off with the project after the artists and animators have completed it; and because the contract isn't fully licensed, the victims can't sue the scammer and get compensated for their lost time, work and money. And another major drawback to working in a freelance contract is that, the work you make won't actually count towards your CV from a major studio's point of view; so even if you worked on five freelance projects when applying to major studios in the animation industry, you'd still have the same chance of being hired as someone who just came out fresh from a university degree.

However, I would take a few freelancer jobs every so often; more than likely in-between long term contracts so I wouldn't have to rush into finding a new studio immediately or just fresh out of completing a degree just to pay off some of the student loans.