The importance of experimentation during a creative person’s career should not be underestimated. It is often up to the designer, video producer, animator or photographer to challenge themselves and flex creative muscle with their own project. A personal project…self funded and self directed. You are the client, you are the creative producer and you must deliver something inspirational to demonstrate your passion for the medium and compliment other projects in your portfolio. Here are a few reasons why personal projects are important to survival as a freelancer:
Sustaining Your Interest And Passion
Personal projects should be fun or at least very interesting. It makes little sense to spend your time developing skills in areas of creative media that do not sustain your interest or passion for the subject unless there is a strategic reason. Strategic reasons may include financial goals, working in a desirable location or providing a stepping stone to where you really want to be by first proving yourself. However, the ideal is to combine as many of these factors as possible (with a focus on interest and fun) in your personal project choice as this creative energy, vibrance and drive will form part of the package designed to appeal to potential clients.
Design Experience
Experience of working in each creative discipline a designer, video producer or photographer decides to focus upon provides understanding, knowledge and capability. Even if your project does not lead to paid work, the rewards can be as simple as feeling the satisfaction of working your creative muscle and that you completed your personal challenge to the best of your ability. As a result, in some way you have developed, become more confident and matured. The creative process is a complex neural network of experience and skills and you never know when your concious or subconsious will make use of the new information and experiences you added.
Consider The Audience
Personal projects can yield a variety of outcomes, intended and unintended (in a good way). Sometimes it is just about respect from your peers in the industry or larger global creative community and other times it is specifically targeted at the generation of new business. So who will be most interested in your work? For me personally, I am usually aware of how I will share or promote before I begin and manage expectations. I make an instinctive estimate of how this project will be perceived by my current clients, the design community, the appeal to new clients and the reality of turning this type of project into an income stream. Whilst I always aim high and beyond all of my estimations, I am realistic based upon experience and knowledge of the marketplace. However, there have been several occasions over the years when the result has exceeded my expectations very significantly.
Creating A Unique Selling Point
Through experimentation it is possible to provide a unique selling point, in that, you have created a design, animation, video or photography project with a refreshing and unique perspective. You have applied your own indivdual touch. Often this “unique perspective” is developed and refined when experimenting. There is no accounting for fascination and determination as a catalyst for delivering exciting new ideas.
Examples of Personal Projects
The One More Chance music video music video was created as an experiment combining the Vuze 360 3D camera with Google Tilt Brush. As a result of completing this project, HumanEyes Technologies (Vuze camera manufacturer) financially sponsored several projects including an upgrade to the light suit design and a 3D 360 music video which included ambisonic audio called The Journey.
The 360 Video Handbook was written as a way of consolidating knowledge and experience in producing 360 video. Following the launch of the book in February 2018, some of the companies that I had engaged with during the writing process purchased around 50 printed books to distribute to their staff, donated hardware and financially sponsored projects.
The Adobe Character Animator music video created for the song A Little On The Darker Side provided an interesting and intensive learning curve on rigging and animating characters within the Character Animator environment. Following the publication of this project and the subsequent promotion, NetThreat Ltd provided funding for several character based videos.
