The End of a Great Experience

This is a bit of a delayed post, which I should have written a week or so ago, but better late than never.

So as some of you may know, my part-time contract at Woozworld ended 2 weeks ago. I was very sad to leave, as it was a really awesome work environment, a great team, and the perfect job really for the full-time student that I am. Though I have cumulated a lot of experience over the years working freelance contracts, working on film sets and in small cinema and FX studios, this was my first job in a larger studio setting, and my first experience in the world of social gaming. I feel extremely privileged to have had the chance to join their fantastic team for those past 5 months, and I am so grateful for the experience.

Though I wish I could have stayed there longer, and I already miss it a lot, I can see how much I gained from that job, and it makes me look forward to whatever will come next. I'm glad for the new friendships, the work I accomplished, and the knowledge that however hard it may have been to get here, and despite all the doubts and bumps along the way, I'm on the right track, and it is possible to get up every morning, and go do something you actually love! :)

So I'm now looking for other part-time opportunities, whether in gaming or cinema. But meanwhile there's still school, which is enough to keep me plenty busy! 

To conclude the Woozworld experience, here are a bunch of assets I did for them. As usual, everything has already been released in-game, and is shown with permission. You can check out the game at www.woozworld.com if you'd like to know more.

Cheers!

Back to School!

So it's official, summer's over!

After four months of going from job to job and contract to contract, cumulating experience and making new contacts, it's time to slow down on the professional and refocus on the educational. I have had an amazing break, and am extremely grateful for all the great people I got to meet, and the great things I took part in. It's a little hard to put a stop to my full-time job at the studio, as I have gotten really fond of the place, the work, and the team, but I am thoroughly excited to start my third semester at Centre NAD! Plus, I am lucky enough to be able to remain at Woozworld part-time for the school year, which pretty much means I get to have my cake and eat it too for the next few months! :)

For the occasion, I am posting a few more images of some of the things I drew for Woozworld in the past month. Again, all material below is property of Woozworld Inc., and has been released in-game already. You can visit Woozworld at www.woozworld.com

Woozworld update!

It's already been 2 months since I've started my job at Woozworld! Time has just flown by, it's crazy. I still love it as much, and more so now than ever. We moved into our new offices last week, to accomodate our rapidly growing team, and the place is great. We're super close to Jean-Talon market, which makes for an awesome neighbourhood, and the studio is sooo much bigger than the previous one. Also, I have a window seat which is pretty sweet!

And most importantly, I've become pretty comfortable with Flash, which really helps the creativity flow. Once you've wrapped your head around the technical stuff, it's actually a lot more enjoyable and simple to go ahead and draw. I started off doing garments only for the first few weeks, which turned out to be a good thing. Outfits are probably the hardest thing to do because the process and file structure is somewhat more complex than for other elements. So I think it's good I got that mastered first.

I was very excited to move on to furnitures and environments afterwards though! Now I'm drawing anything from clothes to chairs to cites and secret grottoes! Best job eveeeeer! :)

I figured I'd show some of the earlier stuff I worked on before we moved, when I was still doing mostly  garments. Everything down here has already been released in the game, and I checked with my boss to make sure I was allowed to show stuff online! Please note that the character isn't one of my own designs but simply our template puppet which we use to draw all of our clothes. All images below are property of Woozworld Inc., and you can see them in game at http://www.woozworld.com/.

In case you're wondering, we always draw the rotations as well. So we end up with 8 drawings for each outfit, which allows the 2D characters to move around in every direction.

Enjoy!

(I assume someone from Woozworld is probably watching again so hi! :))

First day at Woozworld!

Technically this was my second day at my new job, but I didn't have time to write last night so bear with me.

So first day at Woozworld was AWESOME! We're located on St-Laurent near Mont-Royal. The studio is fairly big I guess, with about 40-50 employees. (This is the awkward part were you can't remember anyone's name even though you were just introduced to them an hour before...but hey, I'll give myself a few weeks for that.)

I'm lucky to have my formation done by one of my friends from Concordia, Mike, which is super cool. I was also lucky to be able to jump right into production from day 1, which is really motivating. I'm already drawing clothes and hairstyles for some of Woozworld's characters, and sort of figuring out how to do things more efficiently as I go. I'm not super comfortable with Flash yet, but I've already learned a lot just in the past two days, so hopefully by the end of the month I'll be a pro (sort of)!

I'll be working from home for the rest of the week because my new office computer hasn't arrived yet. I'm already looking forward to starting work in my pj's tomorrow! I still can't believe I'm getting paid to draw cartoons. My 10 year-old self would be so excited right now (probably almost as much as my 23 year-old self)!

Here's a little snapshot from the Woozworld universe (none of it created by me). I'll be designing and illustrating a bunch of the clothes, accessories, furnitures, etc. available in the game (there are sooo many already, it's crazy!).

Also I figured I'd show the little clothing and hair design test I had done after my interview (after all, it won't ever be used in the game), which allowed them to evaluate whether or not I'd be good illustrator material or not. Looking back on it and having a learned a bit more on the job, there's a lot more I could have done with it, but hey, it still got me hired so I guess it was good enough!

If you want to learn more about Woozworld, check out their corporate site HERE.

Summer Craze

Hey guys!

So I've been a little inactive around here lately, but with good reasons (of course!). School ended for summer break about a month ago, and I've been suuuuper busy since. To tell you the truth, I can't quite believe it's only been a few weeks. It feels like I've crammed so much awesome stuff into the month of May it really feels like much longer.

So what awesome stuff you say?

Well I started off my break by putting together a simple yet pretty useful little portfolio website to showcase my work and support my many job applications for the summer.

fannyberthiaume.com

Thanks to the awesome people at Centre NAD, I was given the opportunity to participate in a really cool focus group at SAVA Transmedia, a young emerging gaming studio here in Montreal, playtesting one of their upcoming games and discussing it with members of their team.

I was also extremely lucky to land a part-time job with Ubisoft Montreal, hosting their exclusive Interactive Experience Container (basically a kickass 3D presentation to celebrate their 15th anniversary). The said Experience is being presented at several events throughout the summer, namely C2MTL, Chromatic, Mutek & Fantasia.

Not only was this a great experience altogether, allowing me to participate in some of the most exciting creative events in town, but it was also an amazing opportunity to create valuable contacts within the industry. I have met so many cool people, it's been a little dizzying. From these meetings a couple of potential projects may arise, so hopefully there'll be more news about that later on in the summer!

What else is new then? Well I am very excited to say that tomorrow I am starting a new job as a Flash Illustrator at Woozworld Inc.! Woozworld is a gaming/social online platform for tweens, and I will be designing a bunch of visual material for that. I am also proud to say I barely knew anything about Adobe Flash about 4 days before my interview, so it's been a good kick in the butt to finally get familiar with it.

Speaking of learning software, I also had a great opportunity to dust off my old After Effects knowledge with a nifty contract with Campagna Motors, who creates the T-Rex vehicles. I was hired to redesign their opening logo animation for the T-Rex brand, to be used on their instructional consumer videos. Below is the original T-Rex logo, which I did NOT design. I was only given the task to set it in a cool environment and animate it.

You can see the final result HERE.

So I am now getting ready to start a new job which promises to be super fun, gathering some more potential graphic design contracts, and working on securing a few more exciting opportunities for after this contract with Woozworld is done! Life has been so good to me for the past few weeks, hopefully the hard work will keep paying off!

Cheers!

Fanny