Year Two Animation - Final Year Evaluation
As a final review and look back of this academic year
i feel that this year has been a huge step forward to me as a
studying student learning animation skills but also as an artist
myself working for personal progression outside of academic learning.
this year i have further progressed my skills as a traditional
artist, learning how to draw anatomy more accurately, also as a
digital artist and animator. i have done this by using programs I'm
more unfamiliar with and taking a step back from programs i use a lot
such as Photoshop.
I would say my furthest advancement program wise this
year was adobe after effects. Its the program i most get frustrated
at because i find it's interface to be very cumbersome and cluttered
unlike its partners Photoshop and illustrator. i knew that i couldn't
just ignore the program as it would be a huge weakness in my skill
set and that problems would arise later when given potential work
that required knowledge in use of that program.
At the end of this academic year i can say that i
defiantly feel more confident in using after effects because i was
able to experiment and develop my skills using the program in several
of my modules this year. in each separate use of the program i
learned different skills in different uses of the feature. i learned
how to deform visuals using puppet point, i learned how to stabilise
footage using the stabilisation features and i also learned how to
create overlay and filter features that i would be used to using in
Photoshop. all of the skills i got to learn this year and from
knowing very little to begin with i feel that these advancements have
changed my attitude towards the use of the program. usually i would
avoid it at all costs and rather use cinema 4D to animate scenes i
now feel confident enough to create an animation in adobe after
effects and knew enough to great a successful animation to meet a
task or brief set to me.
I feel that it has been very important to me that I
have been able to develop my skills in adobe after effects. I feel
that if I had not learned as much as I have now that I would have
failed multiple modules or gotten a lot lower marks. Three of my
modules this year were after effects based and these were bigger
module of the year such as our animated short and two live briefs for
Loop de Loop and DCM pictures. Two of these project being live briefs
means I also had a time plan to work in and a dead set deadline that
would not have any leeway. I know from my own observations in the
past academic year that I highly got frustrated by after effects
because i did not understand the tool and interface. Knowing this
and that these projects would happen sooner or later I made sure that
in my personal animation project based on my own characters would be
the best opportunity to create a stage where I could learn as much as
I can about the project before the live brief based projects came
about.
During my animated short creation I used as many
different effects and set up that I could. I created scenes that were
made from one image but the character seem to travel from one place
to another. I developed and imported in hand drawn pose to pose run
cycles which taught me the base knowledge of the after effects time
line and how that was composed together and how it functioned. After
this I created a different type of setting that was built up from
different layers to show background depth and had my character
interactions happen on different layers so they were able to interact
with the environment. I further supplemented my knowledge of the
different capabilities of the program by trying various filters and
variations on asset setting such as different blurs, opacity and
movement key frames.
All of these skills and advancement in knowledge
greatly helped my future module. I feel that if I had not learned
this before hand that I would have been stuck learning this half way
through my live brief and I would have lost valuable production time
and quality of work. This also let me focus in learning from my live
briefs and gaining experience as a professional artist. If I had to
learn after effects during this time i don’t think I would have
gotten the working experience that I did during this time.
Live briefs and competitions allowed me to experience
and understand what the artist working community will be like and
what I will be expected to do and achieve when handling a brief from
a client. I understand now how to stick to guidelines and what the
entail and what will happen if I do not follow them. Also how to plan
out my time and where I should focus and dedicate the most time to. I
know where my skills in these tasks lye and how I can apply this to
generate my work in a more effective manner that will improve my
quality of work for not only myself and the client.
Although my greatest advancement this year has been
improving my mindset and preparing me for freelance artist work it
has made me realise some important this for myself and let me realise
what I really want to do and how i want to progress. During this time
I have seen how competitive the artist world is and for me there is a
greater need for a more stable and definite working environment. Due
to this I had the self realisation that I want to teach art. Im glad
that I have thought of this now and I can start preparing to apply
for teacher training and a student teacher placement. Whilst I have
learned a lot skills based wise this year this is the greatest thing
for me to have realised and learned because before hand I didn't know
exactly where I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be involved with art
but I didn’t know exactly how. Now that I know where I wanted to be
I can say in this evaluation that the most important part of my
personal and professional development this year was my own personal
realisation of career choice.
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