Right, I haven’t been posting in such a while. Between the end of the Gobelins master year, plus the small comic adaptation of the graphic novel Le Jardin, with also that covid shit having its best life, I’ve kind of been away from tumblr.
And I probably will be -still- for a moment as I’ve started working as a freelancer for Pencilmation and, today, as an intern for Cartoon Saloon, the greatest opportunity of my small career so far. And I’ve got to make it my priority, obviously ! I feel like a little kid among all these amazing people...
Then you could say I’ll be back as soon as I’ll have new interesting content to post or the energy to finally post that pile of ocs and Dnd stuff.
Thanks for sticking around, you’re so many here ! And check out my -instagram- also, if you wish, sometimes I post wip and stuff in the stories. Take care, wear a mask, get vaccinated, stay healthy !
Hello! I really want to be an animator but I'm not really good at it since I started to it just recently, and since you're an animation student I have a few questions I wanted to ask:
First is, how do you improve your skills as a growing animator? I know the answer is lots of practice, but what do you exactly practice? How many hours do I at least have to practice to actually improve at it? And What do you suggest practicing for beginners?
Second is, what do I have to include in my portfolio to be allowed in an animation school that is decent and can get me in good places?
And the last is, what do I need to know about animating to be actually allowed in anywhere? Some say programming skill, some say video editing skills and I'm not really sure what to do. :(
If you can answer, I'd be grateful. If you can't, that is also okay! Regardless, I hope you're having a nice day and hope you're being safe! Love you!
First of, I’m very sorry for taking so long to answer, I hope my answer will help you somehow ! More under the cut-
Based on my little experience, everyone is progressing at a different rhythm, no matter if they all have the same amount of hours, of work, etc. This applies to every job, tho, then I could only recommend you to find a rhythm that you like, which won’t make you overwork yourself and still will let you see your progress. Either way, you may end up loosing your interest in animation, which would be a shame after all your efforts, truly.
Practice is obviously the way, but you’ve got to practice well ! And as a self-taught animator, I can tell that it’s difficult to figure it out alone. I didn’t know what to do, neither how to do it, I wanted to learn and try, but without the knowledge, it was just the more frustrating. My advice for that : read, watch, listen to animation courses, in my case it was Richard Williams’ book and conferences called “The Animator’s Survival Kit”. This man was a very good teacher and once I could understand the basics, all I needed to do was trying. And then, comes the next step : Feedbacks.
If practice is important, getting feedbacks from your work is just as important, truly. For that, put your ego aside and listen to people’s reaction, opinion, criticism. Their feedbacks, not only from animators, but also from people outside of the field, they will help you improve your work a hundred times better. After seeing your animation so many times, you may not see this little thing or that one that could bother at the end, then the solution is to ask someone else to help.
In a production, an animator will always have to show their work in progress to their supervisor, to know if they’re going to the right direction, it’s extremely important to be able to share your work and put the “Huh, yes, I mean, it’s like this because.. Yes, I was planning to do a.. I’m not sure about..” aside and just show the work and listen to their opinion. Your work will be reviewed countless of times in the future, only to make it better, then truly, getting feedbacks is important. You’ll learn from them and only improve !
As for the portfolio part, I invite you to read THIS ANSWER I’ve written back then. Again, it’s only based on my little experience.
Regarding the skills to have on the side, well, I haven’t used programming a single time and that’s a good thing, i despice it ! Tho, right, editing is a nice skill to have, as you’ll have to compose your animation, add sounds and maybe some visual effects. It’s more about the softwares I’d say, like knowing Adobe After Effects. But it depends of the school, at least this is how it goes in France, i won’t talk about the rest of the World as I have no idea.
I hope all of this will be useful to you and I wish you to get into a good animation school !
October is tomorrow and I can finally do a challenge this year, but man, I just heard about the whole drama around the Inktober’s creator so... what would you guys want to see ? Let me know about your alternative prompt lists !
Gobelins and commissions are taking most of my time and the rest of it, I prefer to share it with my partner and my friends, theeeen of course tumblr hasn’t been much of a priority lately. Tho, right, I’ll try to go back to a little routine around here !
