I thoroughly enjoyed my first year of this course. I learnt a lot and expanded on so many skills. The year starts with an awkward first few days as we got to know each other and make friends. I quickly settled into a small group of friends and we worked well within our group. This made the group tasks of the first semester much easier to do and we were able to all support each other.

The first semester’s assignments were really fun as it involved creating recognisable characters and scenes for both the 2d and 3d assignments. This allowed me to be a lot more engaged.

When it came to the second semester, I started to struggle a lot and it showed. I was under a lot of pressure from work outside of class and my mental health took a turn for the worst. This unfortunately restricted me from going to class and put me really behind work on our group project. Luckily my teammates were very understanding and carried a lot of the work – which I gladly thank them for. I did enjoy the parts I was able to take part in and really enjoyed our brainstorming at the start of the project.

The world of animation module was extremely interesting. I really enjoyed learning about the different styles of animation throughout the world – the topic of russian animation for my research poster really interested me. I was previously aware of a lot of the elements of cinema due to my secondary school education which made the group presentation a lot easier for me.

Ultimately, this year was quite enjoyable, even though I hit a large block during the second semester. I plan to use the summer to focus on improving what I learnt this year, as well as getting on top of all my outside problems so I can take a more active part in the next year.