It’s that time again for the newest installment of AM Memoirs! A blog posts series where I talk about my school experiences at Animation Mentor. A couple weeks ago, I finished up another course about Advanced Acting and I spent the whole semester working on a two person dialogue shot. This is the longest time I’ve ever spent on an animation piece and it was also the hardest assignment I’ve had to do by far.
It was honestly pretty touch and go for me this past semester. It took awhile for me to nail down the composition for my shot and even then there were plenty of camera and acting changes that really required me to manage my time closely in order to meet my deadlines. It was a very interesting semester, in that by focusing on just one shot for 3 months I learned a lot of important information when it comes down to animation.
Granted, a lot of that was through trial and error. Ok, maybe it was just trial and error, but sometimes you gotta bite the bullet in order to learn. So, with that in mind I’d thought I would share with you guys some of the lessons I’ve learned during this class and hopefully give you some tips to not follow in my footsteps.
1. Test Your Rigs!
The rigs you choose in your animation are really important, especially if it’s for a shot that you’re going to be working on for a long time.
They’re the actors in your scene and it’s your job as the director/animator that your actors are equipped and right for the role you're casting them in. If you just throw any rig into a scene and decide to roll with it, you might find that you’ll run into some technical problems pretty fast.
One of the more frustrating setbacks that I had to work around was trying to fight one of my rigs, so it would animate properly. The rig that I chose for my shot looked perfect for the character. My shot consisted of a pirate and a scholar talking to each other and the scholar was a very proper gentleman, with great posture and bedside manner. The Franklin rig that AM offers on their website looked like the perfect fit for the role.
However, I discovered later on that Franklin wasn’t the best made rig in the world. His body would break a lot in weird places, especially in the wrist and shoulders and I had to do a LOT of counter animation just so it wouldn’t look broken the whole time.
The other problem was that I didn’t realize how broken the character was until after I took everything out of the blocking stage and into spline. At that point, it was too late to turn back and I had to just push on through to make it work.
If I had spent more time playing around with Franklin in the early stages of production, I probably could’ve caught these issues early on and decided to either find a good way to compensate for this rig or just have chosen a better made rig that would cause me less headaches.
So, whenever you’re starting a new shot, I would really put your actors through the ringer and see if they’re up for the role before you rush into casting and production.
2. Accept Failure
This is probably the most important lesson I’ve learned throughout my entire animation career so far. It was during about the 9th week, where I finally put my animation into spline, and guys, it was kind of a mess. My arcs we’re all over the place, my IK controls were all in the wrong world space, and everything either looked mechanical or broken. I have never felt more lost and upset at a shot before in my life.
All I could really think about during this time is that “I’m going to fail this class and I don’t have what it takes to be an animator.” I was questioning my whole career and wondering what the hell I was going to do with myself if this animation thing didn’t work out. I was pretty hard on myself to say the least.
However, this existential crisis melodrama that I was going through helped me realize an important lesson that I think every animator, and really any person, needs to learn at some point in their life.
After I mulled through all my self-pity, I came to accept that if I did end up failing this class that it wasn’t the end of the world. My self-worth or my ability as an animator wasn’t determined if I passed or failed a class. In fact, the ability to face failure and being ok with it was helpful for me to push forward. I told myself, if I fail, I fail and if I pass, I pass.
My perspective shifted from passing a class to doing the best I could possibly do for my shot with the time I had left. I ended up passing the class, but even if I failed I would’ve been ok with it because sometimes that's just how it goes. Sometimes you try a shot that you think is great in the beginning but realize later down the road that you missed something or it turns out to be more difficult than you anticipated.
But, I think the important thing here is that even if you do fail at a shot or really anything in life, it’s not definite. If I failed this class, it wouldn’t have meant that I was doomed as an animator or anything like that. It just simply means I would’ve needed to go another round in that class and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I think accepting that failure is a part of the animator’s journey helps take some of the pressure off to get it right the first time around and, in a way, let’s me enjoy the medium more because I know that even I fail 50 times all those failures are just learning opportunities that are setting me up for success later on down the road.
3. Get that Feedback
I don’t know if you guys are like this, but I’m the kind of person who always feels like my shots need to be finished before I show them to anybody. I need to complete a full blocking pass, get my poses down right, fix anything that’s broken and make it all nice and pretty before I get a critique from someone that tells me to redo it all.
When I submit my shots for review, I want it to look the best it possibly can because I don’t want to be showing off uncompleted work. So, I tend to fall into the trap where I work on a shot for long periods of time without having anyone look at it until it’s “right”.
However, when I do this, I’m missing out on all the advice and feedback from others that can only help me flesh out my shot. Also, I end up making things harder for myself if I’m struggling with a certain part of my shot by trying to power through an action or acting choice that could be solved if I just showed off my shot on the AM site or in dailies.
Plus, when I do this, my shot sometimes doesn’t end up being “done” enough to show until the end of the week, so I have a very limited window to get feedback. And then when I do get notes, I have to decide how much I can get done before the week’s deadline.
The point of all of this is that you should always be looking for feedback on your shots whether it’s in a rough blocking stage or is super polished. Getting feedback and critiques can only help you become a better animator, which requires you to detach yourself from your work and set up dedicated times to stop what you’re doing and get someone to look at your stuff.
Because at the end of the day, being an animator isn’t a solo journey. It requires you to be involved in a passionate community that will build you up and give you the notes you need to set you up for success.
Overall, this semester was one of the most challenging and eye opening experiences for me as an animator. And honestly, I’m still surprised that I worked on a shot for 3 months straight. I definitely took some much needed R&R after that final submission.
But, now I’m in class 6 in the final stretch of Animation Mentor's program and I feel revved up to get my demo reel polished up and ready for employers to look at!
What are some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome in your animation career? Comment below and I’ll see you next time for the final conclusion of the AM Memoir Series!
P.S. Here's my shot from last semester!
Dean Willms
~Gamer. Designer. Friend.
