#unit 56- GC1

[noirkleinneko]

Digital Communication in the Industry

It is vital to communicate in the industry for several reasons, including self promotion, tutorials, and critical evaluation. It is also essential to communicate in the workplace to properly convey ideas or make sure that everyone is on task or doing things correctly.

Tumblr

work can be shared and discussed easily by peers on tumblr. This makes it a great site for self-evaluation and other people constructively criticizing your work. It is also simple to follow other creatives and comment on their work or take inspiration.

Behance

Behance is a useful online portfolio for uploading work. It is a useful tool for landing a job, as many employers look on Behance for creatives they like. Creatives can also upload works in progress easily, keeping people updated and allowing potential employers to see how closely they stick to deadlines or upload work.

Twitter

Twitter and similar software are excellent software for communicating verbally, it is fairly good for self-promotion although it is limited in the ability to show off your work, you could always link to your Behance, Tumblr or similar. Many game devs, or film directors use twitter to notify the public of their upcoming work and to also hype the game/film/art etc. this allows the public to not only know about, but get excited for (and therefore be less likely to forget about) upcoming art.

e-Mail

e-Mail is a simple way to communicate with other creatives or send portfolios or CVs to employers. It allows you to not only change the colour, size, and font of the words you want to write, but also allows for file attachment (any file type!) and an option to send mail to multiple people at once, or even bcc, which means that people in that option cannot see eachother.

Dropbox

Dropbox, Googledrive, Onedrive and similar allow for filesharing effectively and efficiently. It can be used to send off work in different stages of development (eg. concept art to 3D artist, to rigging, to animator)

and also to allow people to work on the same file or share the same file for use for everyone.

[alexridgleymga-blog]

Digital communication (Task 1)

As a creative media student digital communication is key to getting my work noticed and getting paid jobs or advancing further into opportunities like apprenticeships. However there is no one set way in which to do it. In this post I will explore all the prominent forms of digital communication and see how they differ from each other and how they would be useful for what we do in the creative media industry. 

First of all Facebook

Founded on the 4th of February 2004, Facebook is one if not the most used social media sites in the world and it is constantly adding new features and experiences. It is also a great place to share and find peoples work as Facebook has an option where a dedicated page can be created; this would create a hole separate news feed that people could comment on and like as they please. 

We as creative students could use it in a multiple of ways. Primarily we could use it to depict a clearer idea to potential clients and fellow animators, using either the messenger function or a group dedicated to the idea. 

There are always disadvantages to social networks sites, the biggest one for Facebook is that to attract potential clients, a group would have to have the privacy status of “open” and one might run the risk of having spam messages or unserious people, making the group page look a mess and unprofessional. 

Twitter

In my view being just as popular as Facebook, twitter with was founded on the 21st of March 2006, it is a place where people can post what ever comes to mind weather it is either on a professional level or day to day personal matters. Sharing a feature that many other social networks have, a page where it will suggest other accounts that the user might be interested in. 

It is a great way to find jobs in the creative media industry, it is also a good way to find out what is going on with the different companies and their content. 

The disadvantage being that it is very difficult to work out ligament twitter accounts, false ones are more common with celebrities, but can unfortunately make an appearance in the creative media industry. 

Instergram

This is a fairly modern appearance in social media sites. However it has become just as popular as the older inventions. It is a place where people can post up images with a short decryption of their choice, also comment on other’s images. 

It would be useful for us in terms of being able to post up concept art and storyboards, to show off the pre-production work.

As this is a form of social networking used by thousands of people it would be difficult to get ones work in the view of the right people as many no-profishinal members of the public use it. That is the main disadvantage with it.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a blogging site where anyone can post text documents, pictures, links, videos and audio documents. The layout of the newsfeed is similar to that of Facebook and Twitter, displaying the posts from the people one has followed and blogs that tumblr calculates one might be interested in. 

It would be useful for creative media members because it is an easy way to share project work weather it is in the writen stage or final render/export stage. It also has a fan main function that would allow employees and clients to stay in contact. 

The not so good thing about tumblr is that much of the suggested posts on the news feed may be irrelevant and with the shear amount of content on tumblr it would be difficult for potential clients to see ones work unless it is tagged correctly. 

Wi-Fi

Limited to a chosen business or organisation, this form of Wi-Fi connects computers to other devices like printers. It is often used in offices where there are many cubicles or a chosen section that will send all their work to one printer. 

This would be useful for cretive media employees because if a whole department are doing written work or digital concept art for one boss, it would be far more simple to send it all to a printer in their possession, to depict the employees separtate ideas rather than keep on disturbing the boss with random bits of work. 

The disadvantage is if the connection goes down for what ever reason or the printer breaks, it could halt work for the whole department. 

Youtube

The biggest place for uploading video content, YouTube not only has the ability to share the content one makes, but also the ability to comment and earn from a large amount of views. 

It is one of the best places we as creative students could put our work on. It allows one to show their work to a very large potential audience.

Like so many forms of social communication it is very difficult to get the work noticed and having one uninterested person put a negative comment, can make that bit of work look unattractive for every other potential viewer. 

Drop box

A site that I personally use quite often, dropbox is not only a form of web cloud but is also a way to link text documents and other files without creating a whole website or blog. 

It is really useful for creative students, too often are files lost from computer issues or external drive corruption. Backing up files on dropbox stops that for sure. It is also useful for if we have some one interested in our work we can link it through dropbox. 

Dropbox is rather plain so if it is being used to present something there will be little to no existence from drop boxe’s basic design. 

Blogger

In a way this is very similar to Tumblr except it has more of a website appearance to it. It gives the admin the ability to upload not just text files but other forms of media too. 

From my own personal experience it would be far more useful than using something like instergram as a far greater number of the people using it are creatives too. 

The disadvantage is the shear amount of members of blogger makes it very difficult to get noticed despite having a greater number of people sharing the same interest. 

Skype

Skype's original release was on August 2003. It has been the most heavily referred to when it comes to video chats and still holds up today. With a simple click one could connect to anyone else around the world with a fairly clear and crisp video call. 

In the creative media industry it can be used to hold video conference calls, it is always a hassle to get a lot of people in one location all at the same time, so this makes it a lot easier and moves a project along much quicker, it also has a text chat function much like Facebook for a quick and easy message. 

The disadvantage is that the connection can not always be reliable and the more people in the video call the greater chance the connection might drop, taking up valuable time to re-establish the connection. 

Task 1 conclusion: 

Though there are so many forms of digital communication there are always going to be one or two that are best for the chosen job. For me I feel that a combination of Facebook and Youtube are best for getting my work noticed and contacting potential clients. Facebook is also good for advertising not just through chats but also for custom pages. 

Some of the forms of digital communication seen in the first image, I feel are not that relevant at all, some have a few functions that I may use like Paypal in terms of being paid money from people/ companies I have created content for but other than that they seem to have little use for me. 

All the information about the release dates were found from the first search result on Google.