I’m Animated!

In my last blog a couple of days ago, I mentioned how returning to school – albeit animation school – has been a real kick in the pants for me!

When I was an undergrad, I used to suss out what classes were really mandatory for me to attend and what classes I could skip. As long as I kept up with my assignments and took (and passed!) the tests, I’d be fine just cruising along.

Not so with animation, I’ve learned. But it’s not because of the course work – which itself is considerable. And it’s not even that I didn’t expect the program to be this involved; I simply didn’t realize how eager I would be to get involved. Weird, I know, and unlike me, but that’s the way it’s turning out. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone can feel unmotivated in this program.

You see, I’m with the same 24 students every class of every day and we’re already getting to know each other’s work. And when you’re working this closely with super-creative people, not only do you want to keep your skills competitive but, more importantly, enthusiasm tends to be catching.

In one short week, we’ve done two short animation exercises to introduce us to the basics. We’ve done several character designs from scratch and compared them publicly. We’ve studied six hours of cartoons (I’m not kidding about this). We’ve started tackling scriptwriting. And we’ve attended ten hours of life drawing.

Every day has been a whirlwind of creativity and imagination. If we’re not in class, then we’re in the studio working on the unending series of next assignments.

It’s been insane, but great, and I’m really looking forward to the rest of my two years in this program…provided it doesn’t kill me first.

[tags]animation school, assignment, cartoon, screenwriting, drawing, studio working[/tags]