Change is coming.   That is literally my attitude right now with my work.  After animating my latest test animation “Eat”, I was felt burned out and unsatisfied.  I learned a lot on the shot, but I learned something more from the frustration.  I want to share this little story because maybe you share a similar situation to mine and this posting can let you know that you aren’t the only one.

Anyone close to me knows my love for animation and the arts in general.  I am obsessed.  My wife knows this better than anyone.  I have been working after hours to try to build a portfolio to land myself a staff job at a studio where I can animate high quality shots all the time.  Commercials rarely allow that kind of schedule, so in order to improve, I animate after hours.  What does “after hours” mean?  Well, I get out of work on average at 8pm – 10pm.  I get home an hour later, and spend at least an hour with my family until they go to sleep.  This is my “after hours” time.  When its about 11pm or later I try to do some sort of work.  Either animation, illustration or just learn something new to help at work.  I can only put in two hours or so because I have to wake up at 7am or so.  My weekends end up becoming work days.   I have basically given up my social life for a long time to pursue this desire I have for visual storytelling.

Back to the story…My wife, being the amazing person that she is, noticed that I was feeling particularly down after finishing the test shot.  We spoke about it and tackled the root of the problem.  (Enter moment of clarity).  For years now, I have been making work that is geared to appeal to a very specific audience.  I spent my entire time trying to figure out the perfect performance, the perfect audio, the perfect design, etc to appeal to some unknown artists who decides my fate.  Take it from me, this is the wrong way to go about it.  I realize this now, and I wish I would have seen this earlier.  I watch schools like Goeblins and I am blown away by their ability to create such fresh and new styles year to year.  Nothing that looks even close in style to the cg style we have come to see from each feature film studio.   This animation business is competitive and the pressure to produce constantly is overwhelming.  This is multiplied in commercials, where the expectations are extremely high but the deadlines are unbelievably short (this is another posting all together).  It was only natural that trying to appeal to others would leave me unsatisfied and not confident in my work.

This lead me to my new outlook.  Last week, I decided to start from scratch.  I started doing the work I like to do.  Trusting my perspective on what I find entertaining and interesting.  If the people respond to it, awesome!   If they don’t, that’s ok too!  How many times have you LOVED something you saw and yet your best friend HATED it?  That’s what makes art so great!   Your experience and interpretation is unique.  It’s yours.  So this is the beginning of something new for me.  I have literally started with animating a bouncing ball in 2D.  I am also going back to learning about values in the traditional 2D, so I can take my illustrations to a new level.  Back to basics.  I hope this new attitude and perspective will shine through on what I work on from now on.   I already feel liberated and my obsession has hit a new high.

Peace

-Rick