Jordan Jenkins

School of Creative Industries / Creative Futures / Student Case Studies 

I’m a technical artist with a passion for art, after joining the university I didn’t really know what I wanted to do as a career, I thought it was animation and put a lot of time into that craft, but during my second year I found my passion for lighting and have been honing that area since, this is more of a hobby for me it just so happens that I get paid for my hobby.

Career wise I’m a junior lighting artist at Blue zoo animation studio, so I’m currently doing all I can to keep that position, too often people look too far ahead at their next position, but I’m focusing on my current one because it’s my dream job, a job I want to keep and love doing more than anything.

Artistically I’m just trying to hone my craft, get as good as I possibly can at all the things that make up my job, things like Colour theory, composition, Lighting obviously and also the technical parts of that job like compositing inside nuke, I’m good in nuke but I want to get better, so I’m trying to learn all these things, as well as learning to code because your more appealing to a recruiter when you can code.

Also I’m trying to improve my drawing skills to eventually become an art director, or if I fall short be a lead lighting artist with decent drawing skills, which is always a bonus because you can paint your keys for the shots. 

I would say definitely go for it, especially if you don’t know what you want to specialise in yet because the course lets you practice in every area until you find the area you enjoy most, like me, I joined wanting to be an animator and didn’t even know lighting was a job but hey now I’m a lighting artist.

Favourite memories where probably when I was thrown in the deep end with stuff I didn’t really like doing, but then ended up enjoying. So one of those times was when we had to recreate a shot from a movie and my group got Coraline, and I played Coraline, so there’s a 20 stone 6 foot man running round the university with a wig on pretending to be a little girl.

I really like all the lecturers, Emily has always been a great support to me since day one, she always believed I would get far but I didn’t see it at the start, heck I didn’t even know how to use any of the software yet, but it was nice having that push from someone who saw something in me that I didn’t at the time.

I also really liked Carl, a lot of good memories come from the life drawing lessons we did with carl, I didn’t enjoy it at the start but I enjoyed it after a couple lessons, my best memory from that module was probably this time the model fell off the table, I know that sounds nasty but everyone was half asleep because it was towards the end of the lecture and those lectures used to be tiring, and all of a sudden the model just fell through the table making the loudest bang, and everyone jumped out there skin, while the model quickly got back into his pose.

The facilities have always been top quality, what more can you ask for when you have 2 rooms of critiques, a stop motion room, a motion tracking room etc, for the first year and a half I spent more time at university than I did at home, I got to the studio before the cleaner most days, which was a shock to her when she opens the door and has the scare of her life not expecting me in the room haha.

If you think your too old to go to university, because in 3 years you will be 34 then remember that in 3 years you will be 34 anyway, why not be 34 with a degree!

Instagram: @jordanjenkinsart