Personal reflection of the year

At the start of the year I evaluated myself in the, Who am I, Why am I here? and What do I want to learn? study task.

Now at the end of the year, im taking time to personally reflect on how I have developed. One of the ways I am doing this is by looking back at the answers to those questions to see if I have met any of them;

What do you want to learn on the programme?

- Valuable skills in the world of work, improving my confidence and how to find my feet and make a living in the real world. 

- How to turn my lifetime hobby into a career. 

- The aesthetic that suits me best as an animator. 

- To develop skills in animation across all areas (stop motion, 3D etc) so I become a flexible individual industry. 

- How to work efficiently within a collaboration. 

What things do you feel you need to improve on?

- How to work around the top end (really complicated) software (after effects and maya inparticular) 

- Balancing work and play, I seem to work myself down far too much. 

- My focus in lectures. 

- To stop being such a perfectionist to an extent as it can get very time consuming focussing on the most minute and pointless details. 

- My animation skills in general !

With it being my first year, I haven't yet got to do the collaboration side of things and the career teaching side of things.

However skills-wise I feel I have improved so much. Having learnt and employed a lot of the principles of animation this year that I didn't even know really existed. I feel I can name them all by heart and describe them thoroughly in depth. This I feel was the most important factor that I wanted to learn as with this, I can develop as an animator with whatever medium of animating I want.

Next important was software, I have learnt so much about software this year. With me not even WANTING to touch After Effects last year because of how scary it seemed, now I am perfectly comfortable with it and can't wait to learn more. However I feel I haven't really learn as much about software as I would have wanted. This summer it is my task to binge learn a lot of After Effects, Maya and Unity. Because next year I am going to experiment a LOT more to make up for this year. I am going to try more digital mediums of animating (3D and 2D) maybe even some hand painted stuff too. Because I am quite upset with myself how I haven't experimented much, it got to the end of the year when I was reflecting to suddenly realise this..

Also In the reflection at the start of the year I said how I wanted to find my style, which I haven't really done. I don't really have a particular aesthetic, I keep switching between loads of different styles of drawing


However there are a few things I wanted to improve on but havent. These are; Balancing work and play, and also being a perfectionist.

Along the way this year, what I have learnt additionally is the ability to juggle loads of modules all at once and prioritise them all equally, and with that, manage my time effectively.

Ive really enjoyed this year, just having that time to develop valuable skills, with it being a year where grades don’t really count, it means you can experiment and develop in the process.

I’ve also loved the emphasis on art over tech, something I feel was lacking in all the other unis I went to, and is lacking with animators in general nowadays.

I heard a few weeks ago actually, how for the new animated van gogh film, they had to employ all these artists to paint each scene because the animators themselves they had employed, have no art skill whatsoever. Which is sad because animation is an art and it should stay like that.

I have also really enjoyed elaborating on my art skill with the life drawing classes this year, just being able to sit down and draw for a few hours is very theraputic, especially when taking time out of a busy schedule, I also really liked this part of Visual language too.

However, one thing I have disliked, which was really hard to think of  because I have thoroughly enjoyed the year, would be the fact that I would have wanted a little bit more time for personal professional practise. I would have loved just a little more time to watch tutorials in detail and not have on my mind at the same time how im wasting time just sat for hours watching countless tutorials when I could have been working.

A lot of the software is very difficult for me to get my head around and I need time to look at some tutorials on Unity, Maya and After Effects.

Mistakes I have made this year;

I feel I focus on aesthetic far too much. I want things to look pretty, and for the other side I feel that restricted me , I focussed too much on everything being too neat and nice, that I felt the movements were neglected when that’s what animation is mainly about.

Im also a massive perfectionist. So much time has been wasted from me refining and perfecting my work, I know perfectionist can be a good quality too, but I feel it always limits me, it also limits my experimentation because I want everything to look perfect all the time.

With the Other Side project, I felt I focused far too much on capturing a realistic movement that my animation almost started to seem quite robotic and unnatural, it went the other side of the spectrum of what I wanted. To work on this, I need to stray away from the perfection side and be more exaggerated with the way I approach animating to bring my drawings to life, rather than just alive.

I also feel I didn’t approach things as confidently as I could have, with the expectation to make mistakes, to learn and encourage experimentation.

What I identify as my strengths now at the end of the year;

I am very observational, I am good at focussing on the little details, finding little errors within my frames and being able to correct them to get the movement fluid and realistic.

With this comes my strength in patience. Animation is a long process, it takes a lot of time. So having patience is crucial, for being dedicated to tasks and having that persistence when things aren’t looking the way you want them to look.

I feel I am also good at making myself work.

I feel another strength is the fact that I ENJOY animating. Theres nothing worse than forcing yourself to work at something that you don’t like, which is probably why I am able make myself to work so well.

The whole labourous process of animating I really enjoy, its like a dream job.

Weaknesses;

I have difficulty balancing work and play.

Outside of college I have a part-time job and when im not working on that job I’m doing uni work, I hardily give myself any time to play. Ive not played any video games since I started the year which is a very sad fact, having being on them non-stop all last summer. I recognise it’s a weakness for myself but I am  a self confessed work a holic, when im not working, I'm thinking about working so it makes me happier just working.

I am very unconfident in my work and I often like my work at the start then at the end after seeing everyone elses, I then begin to realise how bad it is and end up hating all that I have done.

I did this for The Other Side, after seeing so many flaws I hated it so badly, luckily this was after I had animated it so none of this negativity showed in the production.

Obsessing over little things comes directly from me being a perfectionist. If something isnt right, however little it is, It will annoy the hell out of me till its finished. I know this can be a good quality too in areas but, I consider it a weakness how I spend so much time correcting things other people would believe are pointless and time-wasting. With animation you have to have that element of perfection but being far too over the spectrum would mean you would have issues producing things on time.

These weaknesses are hard to address, they will take a lot of time, its about building my confidence in my ability which is a long process.