This is just a reflection on how I’ve felt this course has gone so far and what I am enjoying learning and just some personal thoughts I wanted to put here for some self reflection 😀
Honestly, I’ve been loving the course so far! Its been so great in terms of getting to experience new things and learning or relearning some skills that I needed to work on. My BA was great, but I feel like I didn’t fully engage with the initial animation exercises that I did..maybe it was because I was younger and more naive/new to this at the time. I’d also never had any animation experience or illustration background when I started my BA (except for my Foundation of course), so it was a lot of new information for me to understand and soak in. I mean I think I did an okay job, but looking back now I can really see where I fell back, which is alright because we learn from our mistakes.
The gap year that I took was really hard for me as I was completely demotivated from animating from all the very negative feedback that I received and that led to me being very doubtful of my ability to animate. So relearning the animation basics was the most important thing to me on this course, alongside of course experimenting with new skills. I have received so much encouragement and positive, but critical feedback from my course tutors, peers and my mentor that has really helped me grow as an animator and has reignited my belief and love for animation!
I have enjoyed learning about timing and acting so much, especially using timing charts which I never really used before! I didn’t know how important it was to use live action reference for character animation and although I still am embarrassed to film myself, it has really really helped bring that sense of liveliness to my character performances! Observing bouncing balls and thinking about the weight and follow through has been exciting and wonderful! I am quite interested in the follow through of cloth, especially because I made a film on the Indian sari for my BA, so had to think about cloth movement a lot!
I had also never used a hacksaw and a vice before in my life, and I’m glad I chose puppet animation because otherwise I wouldn’t have known how good I am at hacking screws hahaha! Just joking.. I’ve really been loving the puppet classes a lot, learning to build wireframe puppets and clay puppets and even mould making (that I didn’t think I’d be good at either)!
It has helped me think about characters and although I consider myself to not be a very good sculptor, it has helped me broaden my skill set! What’s amazing is that everything that I’ve done and learnt in 2D, especially timing, has really helped me translate it into puppet animation. It has really given me a sense of what to look out for, in terms of getting the movement smooth, although of course I have a lot of room for improvement!
I have also been so inspired by all the wonderful talks we have had from the diverse team of guest lecturers! They have all been so engaging and interactive! We’ve had some very fun movement and acting classes as well, which just made my day because we got to engage in some physical activity and really explore the space around us and to really connect with our emotions! Having two different life drawing classes has also immensely helped me improve in my mark making ability and my approach towards observing the human body, its posture and body language.
I do apologise for the long post, I love writing a lot as much as I love talking (I’m a chatterbox) about things, and introspecting and analysing things (sometimes too much). I just wanted to put my experience on here and I wanted to end here saying that I’m really glad I applied and got into this course, because I’ve had a wonderful time so far, and made some amazing and long lasting connections! I look forward to the next term and all the exciting things I am about to learn! 😀