CHALLENGES
Breaking Them And making Progress
Essential to learn fundamentals of animation
Learning 3D animation is not as easy and fun as it looks on screen. The moment we think about animation we start imagining about all movies, short films, Tv series and videos we grew up watching on television and on net, like "Frozen" "Avatar" "Moana" etc. and our expectation goes to extreme level. Initially, it was a biggest challenge for me to accept the fact and start with basics of animation, which may not sound so interesting to anyone but it is very essential to learn. Yes, those movies could be our research and reference material but I believe before aiming that high technical level, first we have to understand fundamentals of animation.
Switching "Self Learning" to "Methodological Learning"
Self learning is time taking process and also we have to suffer failure alone if you fail to understand or learn. May be that's why eventually, I have discovered my own way to animate objects and characters. Now, I have to go through the step by step procedure and maintain technical boundaries.
Maya, a completely new software
As a self taught artist, I faced many difficulty learning the animation without having any guidance. I used internet to find software and research material to develop my skills. I learnt Flash and now also using adobe Animate CC to create 2D animation. I never used "Maya" before. It was literally giving me technical challenges. I gone through the "MAYA Learning Channel" on YouTube is introduced in class, there are many tutorials to learn fundamentals stuff. I took more time but eventually, I am improving my technical skills.
Creating emotions and making it Alive Was a Great Challenge
Handling poses and expressions on screen is not at all a easy job. Many times, I broke body parts of the Rigg and when I realized that I broke something it was very late and difficult to undo all the steps. Because I have already reached to a certain level after investing lot of time and hard work I don't like to undo and go back to fix the broken part because I don't like to loose my Ideal key pose by doing it.
Technical Challenges
I am working on completely new software so every day is a new challenge. I was not at all familiar with the basic keys. I am working on workshops used to be a long process. Downloading different plug ins helped.
I was surprised to see the output of playblast. In Maya the animation speed is normal, exactly what I want but unfortunately, I don't understand why playblast output is faster which makes our movie as it is fast forwarded. Later I learnt how to set a project and setting properties. I learnt some basic "hot keys" which saved a lot of time.
"Animation" is Time Consuming Process
Many times Maya hanged and I lost all the effort taken before I could save. That I have faced many times working with other software as well. I developed a habit saving my files frequently. Surprisingly, good thing about Maya is It automatically generates in-between-key poses for us. These feature saves lot of time and also we get an brief histogram of progression of different key poses. Also, there are many plug-ins which we can use to save time for example: Tween machine, ZvParentMaster and many more.
"Animation" is Sometime frustrating
Specially when Maya crashes frequently and we forget to save and loose all efforts. I have developed a habit to save after every changes I make. Its scary if you are working on complex project.
Time Management
As a master student we should focus on research based study, where we have to invest enough time to do our own research apart from attending virtual classes. Animation is the subject where we need to have both "Theoretical" and "Technical" knowledge. But It was great challenge for me as I was not able to manage enough time for that, due to personal circumstances.
As a solution, I decided to make a time table. I ignored my circumstances a bit and found little extra time to do assignments, read a book while cooking, gone through external tutorials while sitting in a bus while going to the grocery shop. It may sound funny but it helped me coming back on track.
Finally, for me learning is always fun and accepting challenges and breaking them to make progress is my way to gain strength. There are many more challenges on the way as I am still studying and going ahead step by step to the final project. At the end of this module I can say, It was an exciting journey. I have learnt a lot. I have improved my skills and acquired a certain level of expertise which boosted my energy to enter in 'Animation Industry" with confidence. learning about 12 principles of Animation strengthened my idea and I finally started my animation journey with a positive approach.