READ ME - The future of this blog since graduating.

Hello Jacob here,

I graduated from my university foundation degree in animation and illustration in August 2019. This Blog was used to track my development and growth during my 2 years of studying this course. This blog is no longer used for this purpose.

Thank you for taking the time to observe my development over the two years. I wish you all well in your own endeavours! 

 What is this blog moving forward?

During my education I found the active tracking of my own development to have a positive impact towards my progress and growth. I found the self-reflective cycle that I had previously used this blog as a tool to implement into my creative process to be something that enacted me to consider and action plan my projects effectively. This as a result caused me to continue my development consciously when seeking to achieve targets and expand my abilities.

In contrast to this, since my graduation I have been aimlessly doodling and procrastinating around my targets achieving none of my personal goals leaving me without a clear path of progression. Without the reflective cycle I have not achieved satisfactory achievement or growth. I believe this is due to not having structured methods of progress such as the technique that this blog had offered to me in the past.

To conclude when I used this blog as a tool to aid my project executions and to self-reflect to grow my abilities and knowledge I achieved more and grow more as a creative. When this blog was absent from my life I lacked in this achievement and my growth was stunted. Therefore, I have made the decision to come back to this blog and track my progress as a way to reignite my drive and measure clear progression as well as stimulate new learning.

My intentions as a creative

On the 22nd of September 2017 I created a post outlining what this blog was intended to be, who I was, what my goals where and what my abilities are currently. This layed the foundation for what was to come and I wish to reaffirm this now, 2 years later, to state the person I have become and what my new goals as a designer are now that I have graduated.

The original post I made in September was created at the very beginning of my foundation degree in the first couple weeks. This post can be found here: https://jacobakennedy.blogspot.com/2017/09/welcome-to-my-blog.html 

Welcome to the rebirth of my blog

As you are all aware, my name is Jacob Kennedy I am a creative based in the United Kingdom in the region of Newcastle Upon Tyne. This blog will showcase my development moving forward as an Illustrator and aspiring entrepreneur enabling myself the opportunity to gain insight into my creative workflow and decision-making process. The title of this blog is “Sick Juju” which is a call back to the pseudonym I created to represent the productions which shall be displayed throughout this blog. Firstly, in order to help you understand my work, I would like you to take the time to hear more about myself.

When creating my pseudonym originally, I wanted to assume an identity that was personal to myself and represented my desires and interests. The inspiration for the name came from my interest in tribal culture. 'Juju' in African culture is their way of representing the karmic system found in modern Buddhism. If you do good things, you receive good Juju and so forth. The word 'Sick' was derived from modern slang meaning good or cool, creating the rough translation of my blog to mean 'Good karma' or as I prefer to view it as 'Fun times'. I have much passion regarding my creative works and it brings me great pleasure to create and share my artwork with people. I feel 'Fun times' or 'SickJuju' represents me as an artist with genuine accuracy.

Originally when starting this blog, I did not limit myself to any one technique, material, or process but since studying my foundation degree and graduating I have begun to focus solely on Illustration using digital software such as the Adobe suite. To be more specific, the niches of Illustration that my interests have grown towards are: Food packaging design as well as product and apparel design. These two niche interests in illustration have been born from my new passions since graduating marketing and business. These are two subjects that I am also deeply passionate about and they influence each other due to been interactive in a large way.

Currently in my professional life I have started a company called Commaxis Limited which seeks to break into the ecommerce market utilising specialist marketing and supply chain management methods for fulfilment. The first ecommerce brand that I am developing is a clothing line utilising print on demand business fulfilment which I am tasked with designing the clothing for. On top of this business venture I also run a side hustle where I curate a gallery under the brand community title of MunchyMay. This side hustle uses Instagram as a platform to reach out to a growing community under the cross-niche of Food lovers and Illustrators. I intend to start a movement under the same title of MunchyMay in the month of May where Illustrators are invited to draw their food everyday for the full 31 days of May and submit it through Instagram to our branded account. For both ventures I will be using this blog to update its development.

My aspirations moving forward are to achieve 2 key things: Develop my creative knowledge and abilities further and develop self-sufficient business assets within markets that align with my interests. These two targets can also align in centralised projects but essentially, I have 4 projects in mind moving forward. The first is the development of my start-up company Commaxis Limited. The second is the development of my side hustle MunchyMay. The third is to build a portfolio to potentially start a design agency. And the fourth and final project is to develop my investing understanding and financial intelligence.

My priority moving forward is to use this blog to systematically tackle projects which will result in the combining of my passions with fully automated assets securing my happiness and financial future in a world that is constantly uncertain and unstable. I hope that this post has given you insight into where I am currently. What my goals are and how I intend to move forward. Thank you for reading.

To conclude this post here is a sample of my graduated portfolio showing my current abilities as an Illustrator: