End of Year Reflection

This year of animation has challenged me to create a variety of works. From a stop-motion collaboration to a series of 24-frame drawings done alone, all of these projects have helped me improve my animation skills greatly. This class has engendered my success in these areas:

Technology
I became much more familiar with Maya this year. I learned how to extrude along a CV Curve, how to create foliage with the brush tool, and many more useful tools that I now have at my disposal. The biggest technological takeaway from this year would be the importance of saving Maya files as .ma instead of .mb and having multiple saves of the same project, otherwise your entire project could be lost due to a single corrupted file. This happened to me early in the year. I was modeling a Tiger Tank. I had spent over 100 hours working on it, but one day, the file stopped opening. It's unfortunate, but at least I can try to avoid this event in the future.

Collaboration
As an animator, it is extremely important to work with others, because it would be overly difficult and would take forever for one person to complete a project that multiple people could easily finish together. I had the privilege of working with 5 other students on a stop-motion animation. Having 6 people in our group gave each of us more time and options to make the project better than if there were less of us.

Communication
Along with collaboration comes a need for communication. During the stop-motion project, every member had a certain role. These roles were all determined and agreed upon by everyone. This communication allowed our whole team to work on something different, making us more efficient overall.

Project Management
Without adequate project organization, it's difficult to keep track of every file used in every individual  assignment. In order to manage everything, I created folders and named them all so I could put files pertaining to a certain project together. This system allowed me to keep track of all my projects, work on them using the correct files, and turn them in on time.

Leadership
Throughout the year, I was able to take charge multiple times, helping other students and answering questions about Maya or After Effects. A few times, I was able to resolve some issues with other people's projects. These interactions allowed me to learn how to be a leader when needed, making sure the whole team is where they need to be in terms of information attainment or simple progress.

This class has been in my schedule for all 3 years of my high school experience, and will be in my upcoming 4th year at Northwest. I'm grateful for this program, because it allowed meet to meet amazing students and teachers, while improving my craft as an animator. I've put forth great effort to get to where I am now, and I'll be back doing exactly the same for next year.