This is the latest draft of the animation for the promotional video for the portfolio show for Seattle Central Creative Academy, class of 2013. It has been a very difficult challenge for these these reasons. 1) I’ve never had any formal training in motion graphics or animation. 2) No one on my team has. 3) We haven’t established any procedure, mood board, style tile or concrete concept. 4) There’s no director. 5) I’m not even that good at animating, but since it’s been my special topic, people assume I must be good at it. 6) We agreed to approach it individualistically, but a lot of the critiques are about how it’s not consistent with the other animator’s more developed piece. 7) The concept, the animation is a visualization of an idea, is so abstract I thought I couldn’t be wrong in my interpretation, but I am. 8) We are a committee answering to another committee trying to steer everyone as we approach a looming deadline where we all hope to get jobs and be prosperous and find validation. 9) Every step of the way, I try to articulate how I see the process working more efficiently, but I often have to explain myself several times and they don’t agree with me. It’s like spitting into an ocean. 10) I want the project to be a success. I want to be a team player but I don’t want to be continually stepped upon. Everyone had to be a part of a committee and I chose mine, but there’s a point where it seems like I’m doing a lot of work for little to no benefit to myself and what’s the point in that?

 

Reasons to be thankful for this hardship: 1) understanding how not to run an animation studio 2) dealing with different expectations and people who are trying to work with what they have 3) doing the same 57 seconds of animation five different times and getting better and better at it. 4) having the experience of doing work and having it been thrown away– that happens a lot in design firms, but they don’t talk about it. I don’t want to complain, but I want to document my experiences to make sure it never happens like this again.

 

Friday, we had a showing/critique where people of the steering committee and the video editing committee were present and everyone looked at this piece and said that we weren’t going to make our Monday deadline. It wasn’t good enough. After the higher-ups left. I confessed to my team that this piece isn’t my best work and won’t be. It’s been a struggle being a cog in a video project led by committee. We put together this monster, something where no one visionary led the way, but a series of decisions made by the group. I think it is fine, but it’s not something I feel like I can really be proud of. It’s far away from what I would have done or wanted to do. But, I’m glad to be part of such a large production. I have such mixed feelings about it and I imagine I will work on a lot of projects where they are bittersweet.

 

I’m getting more help on refining the animation and I’m presenting another draft on Monday. The group asks that it acts like a bug in the beginning and an “idea” towards the end of the section.