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.
THIS YEAR EVALUATION AND HOW ITS CHANGED;
From this wide expansion of experimentation I have finally been able to find my specialisation within the animation industry , and that's the ambition to become an immersive storyteller utilising VR , CG characters and a strong narrative.
Character development and animation is crucial to storytelling and to complement a good narrative, so as part of developing my own professional practise I have taken it upon me to become more efficient at character animation. I have done this through 11 second clubs as part of responsive where I picked up skills of lip sync too , previously untouched. And also a competition I entered as part of PPP with Craig about the secret life of humans a parody of secret life of pets for the animation career review competition. My loopdeloop as part of responsive also possessed some technical character animation , all these contests put together have made me a much more competent character animator.
As part of PPP I have attended loads of events to develop my understanding of being a practitioner in the world of animation. These include MAF, Manimation and even volunteering at leeds young film festival in the VR Zone and Animation Central. At LYFF I got the chance to network with professionals and even looks like il be back next year on the board for helping out with VR stuff. I will also be attending a digital futures VR conference in Scarborough where I will have the chance to demo my VR project in front of professionals , an amazing opportunity with people like Tom Box from Blue zoo there.
My confidence has taken a great leap from last year, just from talking to professionals for my creative report. This confidence has aided me in these events, to talk to such people and even, fingers crossed, get me some runner work at superla.tv a 360 company in Leeds.
Over summer I plan to elaborate on my personal professional practise even more. Entering an LD Jam contest , attending meetups and festivals , trying to network as much as possible. I even plan to learn some coding and make a VR mini game. I'm looking forward to getting my hands stuck in and coming back to level 6 ready to start my immersive storytelling journey.
My prime strengths this year have been my experimentation I feel, along with my organisation. Juggling loads of modules I remained organised and was able to submit 4 fully fledged animations for my responsive, around 1 and a half minutes of footage.
My weaknesses this year maybe have been the fact I have focussed far to heavily on the character animation instead of rendering, but then that goes against what I said last year about how I focussed on aesthetic too much and wanted to change that, and so I have and I have achieved that too. But i feel learning some rendering skills will come in really handy and I do want to make my stuff look more professional by utilising lighting techniques.
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