Animation Hell – How you can avoid it (or escape)

We’ve all pulled an ‘all nighter’ at least once in our lives, but is this a wise career move for our animation? How does over working ourselves, especially in animation, affect us long term?

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Here is the video where I explain the effects of over animating in detail , and also some guidelines to help you avoid it in the future:
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All 4 minutes of this animation tutorial are jam-packed with terrific animation tips and general pointers, so watch it all the way through!

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If you want a course that will help you balance your Education with your Experience, and your Speed with your Quality, check out The Guardian Training Program. It will help you make continual self improvement into a habit!

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NOW! Let’s review what was covered about your Capacity for Animation Production, or your CAP.

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  • Every animator has a CAP, and the value of an animator is directly tied to their CAP.
    • Broadly, it is the amount of animation you are able to produce to the required quality standards within a specific amount of time.
    • So, if you had to produce Pixar quality animation you might only be able to produce 1 second per week.
    • Yet if you had to produce low-budget tv quality animation you might be able to produce 30 seconds in a week.
    • This is your CAP.

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  • At some point, every animator will need to produce beyond their personal CAP.
  • When we attempt this we usually use artificial means:
    • Sleeping less or pulling ‘all nighters’
    • Taking fewer or shorter breaks
    • Ignoring the fundamental Principles of Animation or ‘cutting corners’

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  • These methods may work short term but have long term consequences.
    • Bad Animation Habits
    • Burnout
  • Burnout literally is the result of working beyond your capacity for too long. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will!

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  • For long term benefit we need to increase our Ability.
    • This is because: We will never get more Time.
    • But we can gain more Education
    • And more Experience
  • This is called the Ability Spectrum

    • The Animation Ability Spectrum

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  • We learn from the Ability Spectrum that we must balance our Education with our Experience.
  • Having a new experience means we should Educate ourselves about that experience.
  • More education means we should apply that and gain Experience.

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  • What this will help us do is increase our Capacity.
    • Greater Speed.
    • Higher Quality.
    • More done in the same amount of time.
  • This is called the Capacity Spectrum

    • The Animation Ability Spectrum

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  • If you are very fast at animating, maybe you should work on your Quality a bit more, and vice-versa.
  • Always keep your Speed and Quality in balance.

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  • But what is Capacity?
    • Energy = Capacity to do work.
  • Our goal then, is to increase our energy.
  • Energy in the human sense has 4 components:
    1. Physical Energy
    2. Emotional Energy
    3. Mental Energy
    4. Spiritual Energy
  • We will cover this in more detail next time

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    Well, I hope you found this tutorial informative and inspirational! Thanks for visiting my Animation Tips Blog. While you’re here, sign up to be notified when I post more videos like this one.


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    Posted on September 25th, 2009 by DJ Nicke

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