It's been over a month, so another post was overdue! I graduated and felt I needed a bit of a break from, well, everything! I'd spent a whole year working on a project that I'd meant to finish at the end of June, but it's not finished. Bit of a downer, but it's impossible for me to sit still, so I'll be at it ('it' meaning, well, everything) soon enough again!
Anyway here's something that partly is very relevant to me right now. It addresses some of the things that keep me from being motivated at the moment that I need to overcome. I think we've all felt these things at some point. It really is a "What I wish I knew before" list, always helpful those!
Written by Guillermo Careaga
Quoted from Rhymes with "Red Van" blog
1) Everyone is better than you, and that's OK.
I felt very intimidated and inadequate on my first weeks here. I was now working with animation "legends" who had animated movies that I had loved as a kid. Everyone's shots blew me away and I remember thinking I would never get to that level. For this reason, it was hard to ask for feedback or comment on people's work. I felt like I didn't belong in the team and that I was hired by mistake! It didn't take me long to realize that these feelings were unfounded. Why did I expect to start out my career on the same level as animators who had been in it for years? The sooner I stopped comparing myself to others and accepted my inexperience, the easier it was to stop being intimidated and start learning.
2) You will catch up eventually.
I also remember feeling that I was in a perpetual state of "being behind". Everyone else was cranking out shots while I was still struggling to learn the new software. I was very slow and not productive at all, which was frustrating. I came to understand that training simply takes time. Developing muscle memory takes time. Learning and experimenting with different workflows takes time. I just needed to be patient and allow myself to learn. All that time I spent struggling and failing and starting over -what seemed like a waste of time- ended up paying off because eventually I did catch up. The less I worried about being behind, the more I could focus on becoming productive. It just takes time.
3) Ask for help.
I had a lot of questions and concerns while getting acquainted with the new software. Instead of asking for help, I was trying to figure things out on my own. Part of it was because I didn't want to bother people. Part of it was because I didn't want to give the impression that I didn't know much. This backfired on me. I was missing out on some super valuable help that was readily available, and I was also wasting time by not getting answers quickly. I soon discovered that my co-workers were more than willing to answer all my thousand questions and, to my surprise, also shared some of my frustrations. Don't suffer in silence -ask for help.
4) Get to know other departments.
When you first start out, the tendency is to only want to be with the animation department crew. This is understandable, since they're the ones you'll work most closely with. However, one must be careful of creating a clique and staying in that social bubble. Make an intentional effort to branch out and meet people from other departments. Having a diversity of friends will make your transition easier, of course, but you will also create and strengthen professional ties with other artists whom you'll be collaborating with down the road. Better to start building those relationships early on when you're not too busy, rather than being thrust into them in the middle of production.
5) Keep it fun.
When animation gets overly stressful or burdensome, remind yourself what it is you're working on: a cartoon. Animation is important, but it's not the most important thing in life. The moment you allow it to define you; the moment you start deriving your self-worth and identity from it, it stops being fun and it becomes a pain. It's kind of a paradox. The less important you make it, the more enjoyable and fun it becomes. Along those same lines, avoid developing an attitude that is overly critical, cynical or jaded. As a recent graduate, I had unrealistic and idealized notions of what it was like to work in the animation industry. The pressures of deadlines and quotas soon burst my bubble and left me with a choice: do I become cynical or do I embrace these pressures as part of the process? Not that I'm never cynical, but I try to accept all the notes, last-minute-changes, looming deadlines and overtime as integral parts of making a movie. Avoid being too negative about these things. And when (not "if"), but when you find parts of the process that could be improved, be proactive and do something about it. Don't just complain for the sake of complaining. It's just a cartoon!
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