The program has been incredibly useful to me and I have learnt so much. One of these things is that I have begun learning how to use the software Maya whereas before the course I had never even heard of it before, I found it very tricky to begin with but I feel I am now starting to pick it up. Secondly I have learnt how to use layout paper when developing a traditional 2D animation. And on the subject of 2D animation I have also learnt a wide range of techniques including squash and stretch. Before learning this process I had no idea how important it was and simply believed it did not apply to me. Furthermore I have also learnt about the process of Anticipation, that is also an essential part of traditional and every type of animation that I now know is essential to every bit of animation I do, at least that involves movement. Finally I have also learnt about how important research is, you can't just dive into an animation with what ever is on the top of your head. You always need to research in massive depth, this process I have now figured out is basically as important to the animation as the final animation itself.
The five things I want to learn more about are obviously 3D animation. Now we are in second year it is the point where much of this time will be spent learning 3D computer animation but right now although I am learning a lot in a very short space of time I feel like we have barely scratched the surface. I would also like to learn about how I can actually get work in animation because don't get me wrong I know exactly what I want to do full time as an animator, I would just love to know how I can accomplish this. Furthermore I would love to do some more acting, acting is essential for us with getting our referencing and primary research but I still feel like I have not done enough of it. Thirdly, I would love to do some more voice acting which is related to getting acting for reference but with the intention of actually using it for speech in an animation. I would also love to do more background designing, and when I say background designing this can apply to digital artwork or hand drawn, but I would love to introduce water colours into my work as it's such a massive part of Studio Ghibli films of which I love. Finally I would also like to learn more about how I can use colour in my work as I feel I am very inexperienced when it comes to colour theory.
I feel my strengths lie heavily in traditional 2D animation, it is completely what I want to do with my career and I feel drawing on layout paper is definitely one of my strengths. Secondly and on the subject I feel drawing is one of my strengths and I feel I do have a good understanding of drawing from reference and drawing humans. Thirdly I feel that I am quite good at coming up with initial ideas for animations. I also feel I am quite good at adding a soundtrack to my animations and understand enough about where what music works and where it doesn't. Finally I feel I am quite good at acting for reference, don't get me wrong, I am not a good actor but when it comes to acting for reference I do try to give it my all.
I would really love to improve on my skills with colour as I feel I don't really have a lot of confidence in what colours work well together and have often wasted a great deal of time worrying about what I think looks nice and then have often given up and made the entire thing black and white. Secondly I would also love to learn more about shading. I currently do a lot of shading anyway as I am in the middle of the process of shading an animation we did as part of a past brief but I would love to get better at it. Furthermore I would love to get better at using After Effects, the animations people make using it are incredible and I would love to understand it better. I would also love to get better at initial idea generation because I tend to come up with one idea I really like then jump straight to actually making it. On the subject of idea generation I would also like to get better at storyboarding, I tend to find storyboard as a bit of a hassle when in actuality it is very useful to do.
Hayoa Miyazaki is a practitioner I find incredibly inspiring and his whole work ethic is something I most definitely aspire to, the man is like 76 years old and he still works five days a week, 11 till 7. I also am inspired by the animation director Rich Moore who directed Wreck it Ralph and many Simpsons episodes. What I love about his style of working is that he injects so much emotion and raw humanity into everything he does, whether that's on television on in a big budget movie. The third practitioner who inspires me is Brad Bird, I love how with everything he makes, for example The Iron Giant or The Incredibles, the concept might be huge yet his stories are often far more small and contained, for example The Incredibles is about being middle aged and having a family, it just so happens that their also super heroes. I also love Jamie Hewlett, I have always loved the artwork for his band Gorillaz. The visual style to me is incredible but I also love the humour he puts into every one of his works. Finally I have to mention John Lasseter because he created Pixar and even though I don't really ever see myself being able to start another Pixar, I do immensely appreciate that even though his films are huge technical achievements, he always puts character and story above technology.
A website that demonstrates my interest in animation is the social media website Instagram. I feel that Instagram is a website where people generally put high quality photos instead of just anything so I have found many other artists and it has been a great experience putting my own stuff on it. Secondly a good website that demonstrates my interests is YouTube, that is where you can basically find any animation, it's all on there as it is universally used and that is primarily where I put up my own animations. Another website that demonstrates my interests is Facebook, even though a lot of it is rubbish, it is a great way to see my peers work and also show my peers my work. Loopdeloop is also an awesome website for finding smaller more independent animators and it's a competition so I would love to one day get around to submitting an animation of my own. Finally a good website that inspires me is Tumblr, again with Facebook a lot of it is of a pretty low quality, but it is incredibly popular with artists, independent or very mainstream.
