Idents and internships – a conversation with Ciara Williams

To be honest, I didn't know that they did internships. I saw a post from someone whose work I like, another graduate who I follow on Instagram and LinkedIn, and they said they’d just done this internship with Jelly, which sounded amazing.

I couldn’t see an internship application page, so I just emailed them over the summer and they literally replied the next day. Leading up to graduation and then post-graduation, everyone's so worried about not finding a job, so to secure this with Jelly was a huge relief.

Leanne Rule, who graduated from Illustration in 2019, works at Jelly and she came in to deliver our first-ever guest lecture in my first year. At that point, I had zero interest in 3D. It had never even crossed my mind. It was so different to what I was doing at the time, and I remember watching Leanne during her guest lecture and being like, "Oh my God, I love what she's doing!"

They offer internships on an in-person or remote basis, and have an open studio policy. I knew I wanted to experience the studio environment because it was one of my favourite parts of uni, and something that I would want to look for further down the line too.

I did the first two weeks fully remote from here in France, and then the last two weeks I went into London and was in their studio a couple of days a week and then working remotely from the flat I was staying in.

When I was in the studio, it was really interesting to meet other people working there who weren't part of the animation team and see what they were doing. And then, when I was working at home, it was good for working on things that needed more focus, which is why I think the balance works really well.

I think it's quite liberal when people decide where they want to work and how they want to split their time. I really enjoyed the balance.

I think it was pretty much as I expected, although I was a bit more independent that I thought I’d be. I was helping out on some storyboarding for one of their ongoing projects and I was pleasantly surprised with the responsibility and being trusted to handle my own projects while working with them.

It was good exposure to that sort of environment. That balance of teamwork, being trusted to get on with what I planned to do with them trusting my vision for that and getting feedback along the way. I really enjoyed being able to bounce ideas about the ident around with the team and I think I surprised myself with how happy I was to carry on and work on my own thing.

They were working on some animations for a client at the time, so I helped them with the storyboards while I was there. That was really interesting and I enjoyed doing that; it was great to see how the storyboards and the animatics look at that level.

I also worked on creating an ident from start to finish in a month, which was a pretty intense experience but I loved the outcome. And if there were other things I could get involved with, when they were working with clients directly, I was able to pitch in there too.

I loved pushing myself to make something that they could share with the clients at such a huge agency. That was really valuable experience.

I was surprised at how many people work on one project, and you don't realise how many freelancers are taken on board for projects of this scale, or how many specific stages there are.

I found it really interesting to see what you'd have to prepare to send to the next person for them to start doing the rough animation. Then it’s sent over to the cleanup and all those stages. At university, I was used to doing all the stages of a project, but in an agency, these are all divided up into individual jobs.

So I was learning how the team all works together, what makes it all work like a machine. How everyone works together and how many different roles there are. I was in the studio working next to one of the producers and talking with him about the role of production and all the work behind the scenes, not just doing the physical animation. I found it really interesting and not something I'd ever considered as a role before.

Since then, I’ve been working on more production-based jobs and I just love being in the industry and in that sort of environment.

Yes, that’s right, I was also interning for The Different Folk, a boutique illustration and animation production studio in London.

Balancing both at the same time was certainly a challenge, but it was really great to have experiences of the two agencies. They were both great and everyone was so lovely.

The Different Folk is a smaller agency so it was interesting to see how they worked. Like Jelly, it was great just meeting different people who do completely different roles. At The Different Folk, I was mainly doing marketing and production stuff, and I'm still working there now actually!

I started interning for them in September, and now I’m working as a production assistant.

It’s quite amazing really; I emailed the agencies at the same time and got work placements with them both. And then I thought, I’ll ask for a job and see if they've got anything open, and they did!

What started as an internship at The Different Folk carried on in a really good way. I’m enjoying it so much and get on really well with Emily, who I work with. She's the executive producer. I love working with the team in London too and I’m also really enjoying doing the production side of things. It's all going very well.