Animating from the heart

This was posted on the 11secondclub blog and I just have to share it. I can relate to this on several levels and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Synopsis:
Limitations vs possibilities (or inspiration). That is one of the things Ryan Woodward talks about. The work setting influences the outcome. Once you work in one place for a while, you know what the company expects from you. The art you produce, you narrow it down to their expectations, they basically have standard limits to which you conform. This is great for the company, but as an artist you need an outlet of your own taste too!

In the meantime he tells about his journey and shows really nice drawings, animated storyboards and FX animations. Great inspiration!

Animating from the heart - logic vs inspiration - Ryan Woodward




Personal take (for those interested): I wish I had seen this before I had started to work on my graduation project. Or maybe not, maybe it just makes more sense in hindsight. In any case, I now see why I got frustrated with my own project. I went into this really for the sake of doing what I love doing. A graduation project, on the other hand is not the right setting for doing so. School sets limits. Supervisors are there to ground you. Rules and limitations are stipulated at every turn. I had to narrow things down. I was being limited, and I'm not blaming anyone for this, it's just the way things had to be done. The way I had envisioned doing this project could not be done in this setting, I had wrong expectations.
Because I was being limited, I lost sight of possibilities, which is one of the things I was essentially marked down on at project assessment. Part of this was pretty much my own fault of course, but school just wasn't equipped to deal with a project such as mine. Or maybe I should look at it the other way around, my project wasn't tailored to the school settings well enough. In any case, lesson learned, post mortem closed.

The thing you might take away from this is be aware of the kind of project you're getting yourself into if it's for school. If it needs to be a free, personal project, make sure that school allows you to do that. In the case that school isn't equipped to deal with such a project, then put this project on hold and conform to what school wants to see you do. This will spare you (and your supervisor) some headaches.