ACM 216: Final Reflection

This semester has been really fun and challenging. Going into this class I already had some animation experience from a previous course, but the application of that knowledge has been different.

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In the past, I’ve worked with a group on animation scenes. That experience was difficult, but in some ways it made the process easier. Instead of just one person’s creative output, the creative workload was shared among five or six people. Even as a team leader, I was still able to rely on my teammates to contribute ideas and work through problems on their own to an extent. Working alone, as I have been in this class, has been challenging but liberating. When it’s just you, there’s no one to lean on. Everything has to come from your imagination and skills, and if you get stuck, there’s no one to fill in the gaps. However, at the same time there’s no one holding you back. Any arguments or miscommunications are completely eliminated when you’re the only one on the team, and you’re free to go in whatever creative direction you so choose. While I do miss the team setting, learning how to work as an individual unit has been very valuable.

In terms of actually drawing and designing animations, I’ve definitely learned some things the hard way. The first and most crucial thing is that timing and planning are non-optional. In the past I’ve jumped almost immediately into the animation process with very little planning, opting to rough out some key poses and add more frames as I go to even out the timing. This works to an extent, but it usually meant that I was winging it in terms of the action. I would know roughly what I wanted to happen, and I would morph it as I went along: making things slower or faster, or adding additional acting to the scene. The end result was rarely a direct product of what I had originally had in mind, even if it retained the same concept. I do like this method because it lets the scene develop as I animate it, but it’s also not very practical when I have a week or two to finish a complicated scene. The purpose of defining your shot, your poses, and your timing in advance is to save time and work in the long run, which is valuable when I’m trying to finish a project while balancing four other classes. I ended up falling prey to this method in my final scene. I didn’t adequately plan my poses and timing, and as a result I spent a lot of extra time that I didn’t have experimenting with these things until I had a rough animation I could live with. In the end, if I could go back in time and tell myself to plan things a little more before jumping into the fray, I would.

The other lesson I’ve learned is similar to planning but falls more along the lines of observing. It’s tempting to make big scenes with complicated actions, but I need to work within my current skills. If I can see an action in my head but I can’t put it on paper, then I either need to choose something simpler or do some research. Spending extra time observing motion and really breaking it down pose by pose is invaluable, and doing so means less time spent frustrated while trying to draw poses for an action I haven’t studied.

In summary, this semester has involved a lot of trial and error on my part, but I’m doing my best to learn from my mistakes. Becoming a better animator is a long process that starts with being ready to learn and ready to work hard and consistently to improve. I feel like I’m really on my way.