LAU Graduate Entrepreneur Research Summary

Products and Service

Animation
Editorials (moving, still)
Zines + prints?
Community engagement events in the form of skill-sharing

People we'll be contacting for support

Leeds Inspired (Link) - They are doing small grants for people who are serious in doing cultural events in Leeds
Handmade Cinema (Link) - Sheffield-based community cinema.
Hyde Park Picture House (Link) - independent cinema at Hyde Park, Leeds.
Girl Gang Collective (Link) - Collective of women and non-binary who wants to break social barriers through creative engagement with the public.

Market Research

Opportunities
Leeds 2023 - European capital of culture in 2023; creatives who comes from different cultural background adds the value of the collective. Moreover, Leeds Film City campaign also demands for expansion of any form of film production in the region. This increases the opportunities for us to enter the Leeds' creative industry.

Customer Profile
Leeds student population; they are passionate about social issues and art.
General public who are interested in art and culture; creative engagement, workshops, exhibition, selling prints and zines.

Need to consider about  business competitions! (as stated in the forms)
Other than that, I felt that our body of work shows strong and unique understanding of illustration and animation which came from our overlapping interest in communicating through the moving and the still aesthetic.

Communication & Promotional Tools

possibly during the end of year exhibition, we will be screening the May Day! protest animation and showreel. Leah Tomlinson from second year Animation is also running an art market in July, and there will be projector for people to screen our showreel and films. We will be exploring more of Leeds' independent and arts scene. We will also be attending animation networking events such as Festivus and Loopdeloop screenings.

Finances

cost of setting up and management: (undecided)

estimated income: target of £50,000 investment funds (as required to switch to Tier 1 entrepreneur visa)

other sources of income aside of sales: workshops, grants, crowdfunding websites.

Operations

work week: 5 Days a week, 9 to 5

physical space: Creative workspace; Studio for two, and possibly a workshop space. Duke studio or something similar?

physical equipment & IT software: 

Physical-

Scanner

Photocopy machine

Laptops or iMacs

Papers

Art supplies

Software-

Adobe Creative Cloud (After Effects, Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Pro)

Manufacturing and/or distribution process: 

offline - Print Fairs

online (e-Commerce) - bigcartel, domain website, and maybe other selling platforms such as everpress, awesome merch, and mercht HQ.

Legal Protection 

Business registration: Nobigi. Ltd, 

Protection of intellectual property: Animation and illustration by issuing a "purchase order" which consist of contract terms and conditions that needs to be signed by the clients at the beginning of the project. Also, issuing properly referenced invoice to keep track the finances of the company.

Insurance & Licenses needed:

from home office website

Legal documentation: Invoicing, bookkeeping (consider getting a freelance accountant to work with us), event notices.

Critical Reflection

I have found out that we are still far away from getting to a 'credible' business idea. Despite having found out a lot about the market in Leeds, the realisation plan of the idea still needs working. We will need to research further on legal and financial sides, and also contacting the people whom I'd like to get the support and advice from after PP3 deadline.

LAU Graduate Entrepreneur Update

I have emailed the LAU International team the other day telling them that I am interested in the opportunity and asking them to provide me further details. I have also clearly stated that I will be setting up the business with Galuh.

The International team has got back to me about the necessary details and the deadline for the pitch. We've got until 11th of June to fill up the application form.

In the application form, there are a lot of things we haven't really considered yet, such as building the 'team', marketing, finances, operations, legal operation and sustainability practice. However, they do provide a helpful framework to fill up each sections of the application form. Hopefully, I will be able to do some research which might help to fill them up for the submission so that I can get feedback from the tutors.

On a side note, I have also thought that it will be nice to work with other social enterprises and charity organisations based in Leeds. I feel like we should contact the Leeds Animation Workshop, a feminist independent animation studio, and their works connote strong political message. Looking at the council website and film festivals that'll be going on in Leeds could also be a good start.

Reflective Presentation

Design Board

Online Presence: Twitter & LinkedIn

Twitter and LinkedIn is my least used social media. I don't use Twitter often because I have aversion to reading too many short sentences. Twitter also have limitations in terms of the media shared, and more often than not it will link to another web page which is quite a hassle especially when browsing with phone. Meanwhile, I do not use LinkedIn as much too, as I thought it would be a bit dry and I am too shy to add people I don't know too. However, I found it quite useful for connecting with new people and old friends when I got log on to it earlier to take a screenshot of my profile. It can possibly be the place where I can connect with professionals and look for future clients, collaborators or employers.

Here is a screenshot of my Twitter and LinkedIn profile:

Twitter Link

LinkedIn Link

Twitter profile

LinkedIn profile

Online Presence: Instagram

Instagram is my oldest and most-used social media. Despite the sayings that artists should keep their professional account and their personal account separate, I choose to have just one account out of convenience. Most of the things that I've been posting are my artworks, with some photos to add more variety. Ultimately, it serves the function to show the relation between art and the artist's personality. On a side note, it is nice to keep in touch with some old friends and acquaintances who commented on things I have posted or replied to my story.

I think I am quite addicted to scrolling endlessly on my feed and following a lot of artists and creative bloggers to find inspirations. Despite the addiction, I have maintained a handful of friendship from Instagram, especially friends whom I met during Annecy. Although, nowadays Instagram has become a bit dull as they changed the feed algorithm as the things that popped up are quite same-y.

Instagram: Link

an overview of my Instagram page

Online Presence: Vimeo & Youtube

Throughout my 3 years doing animation, I have done myself an animation portfolio by consistently updating my Vimeo content. My Vimeo channel consist of a curated range of the final animation pieces I have done during my time at Leeds Arts University.

I also uses YouTube to post some unpolished process video for the blog, which are not appropriate to be posted on Vimeo. My post in YouTube is not as consistent because I am not really good in keeping up with the documenting, and usually upload process videos when I have to put something on my blog.

Vimeo: Link
YouTube: Link

Branding for LAU Graduate Entrepreneur Scheme

Brand identity:

• illustration, animation directors
• focus on visual storytelling
• low budget medium
• playful caricature to communicate heavy subjects

Idea brainstorm

For the branding, we came up with the name 'nobigi' as it came from our anagram. We like it because it doesn't make sense and the name itself sounds Japanese; signifies that we are influenced by Eastern culture too. It can also sound like 'No Biggie', which unintentionally suits our intention to instil entertainment values while presenting the heavy issues in our films.

Initially, we thought that it will be a good idea to be lopsided tits as an irony that when women says its not a big deal, you know it's a massive problem.

Anagram

The design becomes more abstracted. Aside of the tits idea, we also thought about creating an anthropomorphic characters of ourselves, which is what we went for in the end.

Developmental Thumbnails

nobigi logo

business stationery design

instagram feed

2018 Showreel

Ident

Showreel

Showreel 2017/18 from Brenda Christie Muliawan on Vimeo.

Where are You From Exhibition

I saw this exhibition poster at the uni and was curious of what it is all about. They do an open call for submission, but I thought most of my work hasn't got much influence of where I came from. I didn't submit anything, but still went for the exhibition instead.

The overarching intention from this exhibition is for people to sign petition to fill up the quota of ethnic minorities in the university, and also promote equality in the learning environment and the creative industry.

I enjoyed the exhibition and met some new people and exchange thoughts about discrimination towards ethnic minorities in creative industry and in the art uni. It is good to be able to celebrate diversity through the artworks exhibited. 

Personal Animation Project: May Day!

May Day! is an campaign project which would be the starting project for nobigi. The purpose of the animation is to comment on the Home Office's jeopardising the opportunity for international student to stay and work in the UK. The current rules imposed by the Home Office only allow student to find highly-skilled jobs up to 3 months after graduating, while 4 years ago students can stay for a year and earn less. Moreover, international students are the least priority in the job application process.

This is xenophobia-inducing and disregard the cultural diversity, which society have been trying to embrace. The animation will be targeted to audience who are coming to our end of year show. We wanted to keep the audience entertained while also effectively communicate testimonies from international student through a visual which can help the audience to reflect on the unfairness of this policy and how they should treat us, internationals, more like 'human' rather than means to make £20,000,000,000 per year.

Protest poster 1

Protest poster 2