During my sophomore year in Animation, I learned a lot of
new skills that I can continue to use later in high school and after I graduate
and move on. I became more familiar with
programs like Maya and After Effects, and made new friends that I completed
projects with. I learned to work hard and meet deadlines for the most part, and
when I was gone I forced myself to get caught up. My technical improvements
included extruding shapes in Maya, adding a glow effect, or animating a 3D
object, none of which I knew how to do before the class.
In order to learn and practice these skills, I listened at
the beginning of class, referred to Google Classroom documents, and asked
friends or looked for tutorials online. For my final project, I worked with
some awesome, hard-working guys. We all
contributed to the project, and the final project turned out even better than
we thought because of all the time and effort we put forth. My group members
pushed me to do my part and learn how to create a realistic hologram.
The ability to cooperate and create high-quality products is
vital to being an animator, because those things are used on a daily basis in
the workplace. The things I’ve learned in my animation class are things that I
will take out into the animation industry, so it makes sense to perfect them
now instead of in the future.
As a fairly
inexperienced animator, I still make simple mistakes in my projects, like an
object going through the floor, or adding an object into a scene without
working on color correction. I still turn things in on time and correctly add
textures, mattes, and special effects.
I would change the communication between teacher and
student, because sometimes the students are not aware of certain assignments or
do not have adequate instructions on the location of files or due dates. This
could be corrected very easily but many times is not. Then, students will have
NHIs or assignments that “need improvement” and the teacher will not always
bring it to their attention.
Animation has been very beneficial and has taught me many
things that I may use later if I decide to pursue a career as an animator.
There are just a few things about the process and communication within
e-Communication that are tedious and badly set up.
