Start to work

DPS is my wisest decision. During February, I had already decided that I would return to my country looking for some internship and freelance work. After the outbreak of COVID-19, I return to my country in March. It seems that my 2020 will be spent at here.
I always want to be freelance illustrator, so in May I started participating in various competitions initiated by brands, such as Huawei’s wallpaper design. Although I didn’t win the award among thousands of participants, I started to accumulate my cases through this method, and I can come up with a template when the client needs me. My current customers are mostly local brands. I have made food packaging for two food companies and a social platform icon for a bank. But these are short-term freelance jobs, I finished them very quickly, and the remaining time to prepare my skills.
I also started to participate in an online sketching activity in an online sketching studio. I draw eight sketches everyday. I gradually tried to use different media to draw sketches. After getting used to traditional materials, I turned to Computer drawing is much slower than my hand drawing. The continuous accumulation in the sketching studio gave me lucky enough to get a job as a sketching assistant, but I think the internship year has not officially started. I may go to another studio in October, so I did not fill in the work placement agreement.
There is so many things need to prepare to be my ideal illustrator and time is not enough.
In addition of traditional illustrations, I also want to do gif, animation, character design, concept art, children's book, etc. I took three online classes of brand illustration, animation, graphic novels and comic, it's all the knowledge I want to learn. I also found the MICA's illustration course arrangement, referring to their student works and the subject content of the course, and arranged for myself a certain stage of illustration project. I started to list the famous international illustration competitions and figured out which ones to participate in during the DPS.​
Daily online classes and illustration self-project take up most of my time. At the same time, I also sent my cv to company or studio. A health care company wants me to be their advertising graphic designer. However, I am wary of this seemingly easy job. Most of my colleagues are not in the art industry, which means that my design should not be easy to be challenged. It is simple, but the knowledge I can learned from this job is limited.
I really want to go for an art intern in an advertising company. In that company, a friend of mine is willing to recommend me, but after sharing my portfolio with her, she thinks that I still lack some high-level skills. I need to draw illustrations in AI or PS, using all the Adobe software to do the Graphic design and illustration, make them to be gif.
"In the company, you need know all software skills, draw a lot of different style of illustration." I feel a lot of pressure. Although I can go to that health care company as a graphic designer in October, I think The advertising  company's internship experience and the medical company's experience are two completely different levels. How to connect with the brand in the advertising company and draw the illustrations that the brand needs. Such experience must be precious to freelance illustrators.
I plan to spend more time to learn some AI illustration and gif courses after I finish my online class in August. I need to practice more every day to master it. And I also have a 24-page illustration book for an illustration competition, which ends at the 20th of September. I am excited about the heavy tasks to come, and hope that the works in the next two months will allow me to successfully go to my Dream company.

sketch

By
Zixuan Zhou