I feel conflicted about on the first year of the course went, in my opinion at least. When I initially going into the first semester, I was excited and looking forward to it, and really ended up enjoying it. I really liked being in a room working alongside a group of likeminded creative peers, as I have not had that experience before. Even though I have been teaching myself art and drawing for a number of years, it was refreshing to go through the fundamentals again, but this time around having direct feedback from experienced professional in the industry. I favoured working in 2D because that is where my comfort zone lies. Besides the drier theory classes and that I had to take an extension out for both module final assignments I looked back on those first 12 weeks positively.
For the first half of semester 2 it was shaping up to be the same. I had not had any prior experience with 3D modelling or 3D animation, but I was willing to try it. For the first 6 weeks when it was just about grabbling Maya and learning the basics of Substance Painter, it was manageable. I knew at the time I was neglecting some early exercises, as I wrongly got it in my head that the assignment was my primary goal, in my eye’s exercises were not as important in the grand scheme of things. So, I ignored the bonus exercises and just did the ones that only taught the essentials. I recognised at the time I was a little behind on work and that I had not been updating my blog, but I thought I could recover from that.
But after I was introduced to the practical animation side of Animated Narrative, the pressure slowly started to build. Feeling the pressure of time, I went into it the project with little to no technique or planning. Even halfway through production, I had no idea what I wanted this out of this animation. I did not give myself any references or thought and just went blind hoping it would just workout. There were times where I felt directionless and I just wasted time by making slight tweaks to thinks as a form of procrastination, but I was convinced I was making progress. This caused me no end of stress and frustration. It was not until I was absent from the whole support week, and then proceeded to not be productive the week after, that I realised I was really in trouble. Causing me to squeeze 2 months’ worth of work in a couple of weeks.
Fair to say I had massively underestimated the amount of work that was required for this particular semester. In the end I feel like I really underperformed this semester, and the work I have produced does not accurately reflect what I am capable. I feel I have definitely learned a lot of technical skills this year, but more importantly I know what I need to improve on for next year, so I hopefully don’t fall in the same pitfalls again.

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