Character Animation Experience

Write a short paragraph about your experiences during this production. Describe any challenges you faced. Talk about what you would do differently next time.

      Character Animation, as I experienced it, gave me incredible joy and insight as well as incredible pain and sorrow. At the beginning of the course I was a naive student hoping for a chance to make wonderful animations, but quickly I realized that I was far removed from my league. In all reality I was not ready for this class, however I don't think there was a better way to prepare me and develop my skills than by taking this class that I was not ready for.
       My first problem arose from trying to create a story that was compelling and meaningful. In the past I had written stories, but there were a few things hindering my progress this time around. The first and most apparent hindrance was the time limit, because communicating substance quickly is an art in and of itself that I had little practice with in the past. Meaning was also a difficult thing to work through as well, yet my biggest set backs were my own skills.
      Clarity is something that story telling requires, and my drawing ability was never so definite, it more or less gestures towards things. Overcoming the idiom of my drawing was something I battled against when trying to storyboard and create the 2D animatic. Also I had never drawn well without a reference, and trying to do so really challenged me to become more familiar with facial and other parts of human anatomy. It was difficult to deal with an unsure story, and an unsure style of drawing and I think that a lot of this showed in my work. Much of the work seemed incomplete, but I truly was trying to pull something off.
     Once we got into the technology the learning increased, but the confusion and lack of skill did not. I was glad to have a crash course in after-effects, but I wasn't really proficient with after or effects or maya. My modeling skills came a long way in this class, as did my texturing skills. Overall I felt more comfortable with Maya, but there was a very real fear of it at the beginning of the class.

     If I could go back I don't think I would have nearly as much trouble as I did. Much of my struggles resulted from not knowing how to do anything. Atia taught me a bunch of what I was supposed to do, and that was outside of class as well as inside. If I took the time I spent trying to learn what to do/how to do it I probably would do much better, but the class is really fast paced so it's difficult to keep up with if you fall behind even on one assignment.
     If I could go back I probably wouldn't take this course; instead I'd take a modeling course or a more basic animation course or even a digital painting course would've helped me. Then after learning one of those things better I would attempt character animation.