Coming into the course, I was quite nervous about both the level of skill required and the learning curve that may come with a masters degree rather than a bachelors. I had only started drawing in 2020 and had never animated before, so coming in cold was quite a daunting.
Initially I found the first few weeks quite difficult because as I have learnt over the past two terms, you can’t exactly teach animation but can only pass on techniques and concepts. Looking back now those base concepts come a little more naturally but it really was quite a task to grasp them early on whilst simultaneously outputting work. I think the last few weeks before Christmas and this most recent term is when I really started to notice an improvement in my understanding of animation and in the work I was creating. Although I did struggle in the first few weeks after the Christmas break which really hammered home how important it is to keep on top of your craft.
I think my theatre background has really influenced and supported my processes. There are obvious examples such as the acting exercises and my understanding of movement, but I also think it will help toward my overall understanding of pacing and story and what makes something entertaining. The other side of this, however, is I must be careful not to assume I already know something, as often the applications of these ideas are very different in animation than in live theatre and Its very easy to rest on my laurels whilst simultaneously getting in the way of my own progress. I must remember to be humble in my own knowledge and inexperience.
The areas I feel I have grown the most in are essentially the basic animation principles, that is understanding the building blocks of how to create a successful piece. It was only once I was able to get a handle on this that I was able to even begin thinking about performance. Something I think I need to work on more is timing in the movement, I have a tendency to evenly space my drawings and this doesn’t create the most dynamic animation. I think will come with practice though and as long as I keep trying and experimenting, my work will naturally progress and improve and I will become more confident in my motion. I also need to spend time working on my base drawing skills and make sure I don’t let those slide, especially in terms of proportion and perspective. I would like to spend some timing working on clean up and incorporation of character design into animations as this is something I haven’t been able to do successfully yet.
Something else I would like to investigate further is stop motion. Whilst I don’t necessarily see myself creating my final film in Stop Motion, I am very interested in exploring the techniques involved and really want to use it to inform my practise. I am really glad I took the pathway and thoroughly enjoyed the creation workshops for each medium. I do think I need to spend sometime perfecting and experimenting with both shooting and editing a film, but hope to do this alongside my studies if i’m able to find the time. I would like to try working collaboratively with other people as I think that this would really benefit the stop motion process for me. This was really evident in our final class when we looked at Pixelation, we were really able to spread our skill set across the different parts of the film and not having to worry about set or lighting or any sort of physical making meant that we could really enjoy the process. I’d love to be able to apply these approaches to other forms of stop motion.