Kung Fu Fighting WIP + Life Lessons

What do you do when you can't go to the sleep? Start a new animation of course!

1am today I got up in a state of distress and just started animating. I won't go into it much here. But life's been getting me down lately and I've been in a weird state of mind struggling to get back up again.

But when I started animating last night, I felt so much better and more at peace with myself. I was doing something that I enjoy doing and that's all it took.

All the self-doubt I've had went away and I felt reassured again that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Since the class I'm taking currently is an introductory class, I shouldn't limit myself to only that class to get the animation juices flowing.

As I've been learning lately, it's best for where I'm at right now on my "journey" that I just keep practicing and work on things that I enjoy and feel excited about when it comes to doing my outside-of-class work. If it gets me animating, that's kind of all that matters. Once I start getting better, then I can begin to focus in on what's necessary career-wise. But right now, it's all just practice. And once I finally let go of the feeling of everything I make is FOR a reel, it becomes more enjoyable. An important piece of advice I've taken was to stop thinking about the reel. Because, again, where I'm at in terms of skill, I'm not really in a place to be thinking about a professional reel. Reels come out of projects that you work on and specific shots from those projects. But generally, the "practice" you do isn't obligated to be on the reel. You wouldn't rip out pages from your sketchbook to put in a portfolio. Really, a portfolio is just finished, polished pieces. Your sketchbook is merely practice.

It's about the application of what you get from the practice.

This was an idea that took me too long to truly grasp.

Sometimes it's disheartening to think about how far I am from the real-world, but at the same time how close I am to finishing school. It's scary and it's stressful. But instead of thinking so much, I just have to do it.

Getting better at animating (or any art form) is a lot like losing weight. If you make your focus to just be healthier and feel better rather than focusing on getting to a certain number on the scale, you have a much better time. You're focus on being healthy is more enjoyable and easier. And then the weight loss just kind of becomes a bonus. It'll happen automatically without needing to think about it because that's what goes with starting a healthier lifestyle.

Animation is the same. Instead of focusing so hard the destination, just focus on the journey and enjoying the practice. Because if you keep doing just that you'll end up at the destination you want purely because you practiced. So there's no need to worry about whether you'll make it to that skill level or not because it'll just happen when you just focus on doing the work.

As for the animation, this is actually my first real time using the Stewart rig from Animation Mentor. I've had it for forever, and pulled it out a couple times in an attempt to start an animation back when I was first getting to know Maya, but this is the first time I'm really applying it. And honestly, I really REALLY like this rig. He's simple enough, yet he has so many features I like such as the toe bend, foot roll, and other such features.

I want to try to create a kung fu, action sequence. I got some reference on YouTube of a kung fu sequence and cut it down. I'd like to eventually try animating two characters in combat, working off of each other.

I've found that I really like doing this big action animations. I haven't done much dialogue so far, so I still need to test the waters a bit, but I think doing more action is what I have the most fun with. It's a lot like gesture drawing and I think that's what I like about it.

I like doing exaggerated facial expressions too.

Despite how bad my ballet animation from the summer turned out, I really did enjoy doing that one. Posing the character was a lot of fun for me.

Time to get back to work.