SWOT Analysis

In this PPP session we focused on SWOT Analysis; Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Looking at these characteristics under four different categories; personal, interpersonal, technical and artistic, we listed what we thought about ourselves as practitioners. Once this was done we then grouped up and did the same for our peers in order to gain a better understanding of how people perceive us and to see if there were any strengths and weaknesses that we may have overlooked.

Personally, I found it very difficult to think of my own strengths and opportunities at first, as I'm not used to focusing on what I'm good at but rather things I need to improve on. However, once I wrote a few things down I feel that I managed to get some accurate strengths and weaknesses down, some of which were also pointed out by my peers.

Based on my personal analysis and my peer's analyses of me, I have found that my personal strengths consist of; being good with time management, being very motivated, I'm a hard worker and I'm passionate about my work. My interpersonal strengths include; being a charming and very friendly person, I'm easy to talk to and easy to discuss work with, I'm open to new ideas and concepts, I'm approachable and I'm a good listener, I put my work up on a variety of social platforms. My technical strengths consist of; being good at Maya, I'm good at Photoshop and I'm quick to learn new technologies/ software. Finally, my artistic strengths include; digital drawing/ painting, 2D work, design and illustration, life drawing and versatility.
In terms of weaknesses I have found that, personally, I lack confidence in myself as a practitioner, I don't voice my opinions or thoughts enough and my passion for my work doesn't always show. in terms of interpersonal weaknesses I'm seen as being quite shy, I lack confidence in presentation based tasks and although I have a range of social networks set up, I don't have many connections. Technically, my weaknesses revolve around me losing motivation very quickly if I don't understand a piece of software or if the task is too tedious or long. I also use software I am familiar with and don't experiment enough with new/ different software. Artistically, I lack confidence in my own work and my abilities as a practitioner, I'm not very good at character design and I don't have my own style.

Thinking on opportunities and and threats I found that there are many opportunities for me such as PPP, festivals, association with Leeds College of Art, critiques, and networking. In terms of threats there are quite a few that I need to focus upon including my lack of confidence, financial constraints, not knowing how to build connections and competitors.

Overall, I'm really pleased with the feedback I have received from my peers, as it has given me a huge insight into how people view me as a person and as a practitioner. It has also given me a huge confidence boost to learn that people think I am good at what I do, but it has also boosted my confidence learning which areas I'm not so good at because I now have the opportunity to work on those areas to develop myself further.

At the end of the session, we were asked to re-do the task and create a more visual representation of the sheet we were given and this is what I have.