Mitch's Animation Anxiety Attacks

I started this course with a clean slate. I thought I knew what it was about... and with a good 4 months of Ian drilling it into my mind I eventually figured it out. I didn't know how to use flash, I didn't know how to use maya, I didn't know how to traditionally animate. I never really thought about how something moved, I was just more impressed with how cool they looked with their spikey blonde hair and kamehameha waves. from day dot at tafe, I was learning something completely new. I didn't want to own up to the fact that I knew nothing about it, mainly I guess because it scared me a little. I decided I was going to do animation for the rest of my life... and then to find out that I knew nothing about it, it made me feel very VERY small in comparison to everything else.

So the first year was all about me learning these bizzar and specifically non-idiot proof pieces of software. So I'd been thinking to myself, "ok, I'm a big bad 2nd year now, watch me roar" and then it dawns on me like an ice cube down your coin slot. I'm back to square one. So when setting my goals I think of what kind of job I want as an animator. The games industy is big in brisbane, but I don't want to keep closed minded. I've decided to work on a narrative for end of year, working with the main focus being a 3D character with simple props to play around with, but I want 2.5D flash characters occasionally interacting with him to show both sides of my skills, one as an animator, and one as an illustrator.
So with my narrative, I'll not only be able to show this to a games studio saying "look at my awsum three-dee skillz"
but I could wander into somewhere like liquid, and say, I can draw, I can animate, I can create a story structure and use more than one piece of animation software.


what I need to do now "because I've realised how complicated these processes can be" is polish up the script and animatic as promptly as possible so I can get to work early in the game on animating my narrative piece. once I finish writing it up

I need to learn how to use the graph editor in maya properly because that will surely be my achilies heel in all of this.

I'll need to install maya "somehow" on my computer so I can work on it at home.

look after Bill "my EAT"

Also I really think its important that I work more on animation with emotion and dialogue. Its something I personally believe I wont be perfecting any time soon, so the more I work on it the better I can be at it. "me thinks the 11second club is the place to be for that"

Ontop of that, I've got my 30 seconds worth of animation to your dialogue thing going on, on my deviant art website
I'm working on a strange UNO joke that a friend sent me... things like this could keep me animating and not playing around with games and watching cartoons.
not sure if its a good idea doing this and my narrative piece at the same time.

after all of that, I'd like to get a little better at my illustrations, but I'm aware animation comes first.

So without talking about other goals to do with outside my life as an animator, it sounds like I've got a long year ahead of me.