Intro
Hello readers! Welcome to the final blog of 2019. Thank you so much to those reading, both new and old. I’ve found a new passion for writing these blogs due to you, so thank you. This blog is going to be a review of 2019 as it relates to my art and animation. My personal life was all over the place, and I’ll write more about it at another time, but for now I want to focus exclusively on my progress and where I landed as an artist. Let’s get started.
The Review
I’ll start by saying that I’ll be separating this blog into 3 sections: the good, the bad, and points of improvement. I’ve been doing my reviews this way for many years and it helps give you a solid ground for your progress, without focusing on the negative aspects. You have to appreciate what you’ve done to get where you are, and simultaneously be critical of your actions where appropriate to grow. This is about being fair, and as objective as possible to ensure your continued growth in the future.
The Good
Higher quality shorts
I think one of my strongest abilities this year was the ability to create multiple shorts at a higher quality, in a fraction of the time that I used to. This is a huge achievement for me (and while it’s not where I want it to be right now, I am quite honestly surprised that it got to this point). To be able to tell all of these stories, watch them in sequence and see them increase in complexity and quality felt very gratifying to me.
Better understanding of toonboom
Toonboom is a gamechanger. I’ve wrote about it before, and I will still sing its praises. My progress would not be as efficient if I had not invested in the program. Is it perfect? No. But it does a lot of things exceptionally well, and while it’s a little bloated (and can be sluggish), it is such a ridiculously powerful tool, that you barely notice. My challenge has been in making the most of the tools to create animation to the best that I can. It’s been a difficult road, but I think I’m grasping the program on a level that is between intermediate and expert. It’s so dense of a program that I’ve been slow to progress, but it’s honestly been worth it.
Got out of my creative comfort zone/ opening up to alternative forms of media
This is an interesting one. I’ve always used a variety of media for social platforms: Gifs, stills, video, etc., but with the production of the “Frame of Mind” style shorts, I’ve (intentionally) stuck with video. This year I was able to break out of that mindset (heh), and into something that I think will be more creatively satisfying in the long run. I had to come to terms with the fact that not everything had to be a video, for multiple reasons: time, effort, and simply there being a better format for certain things. A lot of what I’m talking about isn’t quite present on my feed yet, but it will be starting next year. Lastly, accepting these different forms of media free me both creatively, and time wise. No longer do I feel the need to spend months putting together a video for every thought I have when I can sort out something just as concise, but in a series of images, and in a fraction of the time.
Parallel workflow/ freedom to create anywhere
This is my personal gamechanger of the year for me. Earlier this year I invested in an iPad Pro. It has without a doubt, been the best investment I’ve made into myself in the past few years. This machine is a workhorse and has shown me that I could live a healthier, more active life while still creating. A large chunk of my production is made on this computer, and a fair bit of my production (and for some types of media, all of it) are done on the pro. The computer is a joy to use, and when I pick it up, I feel inspired to create. Divorcing much of my pipeline from a stationary computer was the best choice I’ve made creatively, and personally in a long time. I’m starting to feel the impact of this choice now, but I think when I look back at this year, and point a finger at where things all changed, it would be the day I walked into Best Buy, and dropped the money for my iPad.
The Bad
Social media performance
This one’s self explanatory and I’ve talked about it earlier this year. Put simply, the performance my shorts have had online have not been anywhere to where I wanted it to be. Due to this, I practically had to overhaul my entire plan as it relates to my relationship with social media. Ultimately it was a more or less a grand failure. I’m not afraid to admit it, and upon this realization, it’s been liberating stepping away from social media to focus on what’s important.
Burnout
This is tied to the previous point. Due to pushing myself so hard to make content, I burned myself out BAD. This is something I’ve also written about. It was so severe I was going to walk away from animating my own stuff permanently. This was a crossroads for me, because I’ve been making shorts nonstop for years now, and it finally came to an unsustainable point over the summer when I realized I wasn’t happy with what I was producing, and why I was producing this type of content. It sucks to feel burned out by something you’re passionate about, but that was a difficult, albeit important lesson for me to learn.
Update mania
This is an interesting one. Over the summer I decided to do a large update of my assets so I can move into production quicker. I had made this call because I had a bad experience with my workflow last winter in which I had to update assets mid production, which was a nightmare. Once I finished that update, I thought it would be a good idea to completely overhaul the puppets which took about an extra month, and added to my burnout. While I was happy with this update, it was too little too late. Suffice to say, I spent a large part of this year updating, or overhauling things that I found unsatisfactorily until I got burned out by other aspects of my life and lost the desire to even use these new updates.
Stories limited by production capabilities
This is something I was only able to see with the gift of hindsight. Originally when I started making these shorts, they were supposed to be tiny and quick to make. While they were definitely easy to push out, it came to a point where I felt it was time to grow, but my current pipeline simply wasn’t designed to scale in that way. To be fair, there is a lot of groundwork laid out, but it simply isn’t enough to move into the next phase of my growth for these shorts.
Points of improvement
Create deeper more meaningful stories
This was the biggest thing I want to improve on in the future. I think it’s time to tell deeper and more personal stories that I enjoy over smaller bits and highlights that are reliant on the performance of social media. Regardless of if it nets an audience or not, I want to make real shorts again.
Create often, but without commitment to a schedule. Work on what excites me most
I think this is a bit of a game changer. I’ve had a very strict schedule the last decade or so, and it was difficult. Don’t get me wrong, maintaining a strict schedule is a great way to get experience in and finesse your abilities, but after being at a place where I feel sufficient, I don’t really get the same benefits from a strict schedule anymore. Now more than ever, I find that scheduling is more limiting and forces me into a box that competes with my happiness in other areas of life. By pursuing what interests me the most, I can spend less time doing something, but get more done, due to being more attentive during that short amount of time. It’s also a lot more satisfying in the long run because I can better walk away and think if I come across a problem, instead of beating myself over it to get it done within a limited timeframe.
Devote more time to pre-production to make sure production flows smoother
Making short films is a very complicated and multi-faceted task. It’s a delicate and time consuming process that, if something goes wrong, can easily spiral a production out of order. I’ve learned that lesson repeatedly with “Frame of Mind”, so I want to take it to heart and begin incorporating a more thought out pre-production process. Taking it slow and making sure things are done right should lead to a more pleasurable production cycle where I can do my best at every point without burning myself out, or letting the production suffer.
Create much smaller content tailored for social media
I spent the last 5-8 years putting out content on social media that hasn’t been successful. It’s a harsh reality, but it’s time to do things differently. I don’t have an intention to cut out social media completely, but I just cannot commit to the time and maintenance that is required to benefit from it. The market is too saturated, the platforms keep changing and the bar for success keeps increasing. My remedy is to still make good content, but to do it within a much smaller scope. Personally, for me, shorts will be my priority, but that’s not really what these social media platforms want, so if I’m to stay active on the likes of instagram or whatever, I have to adjust my content accordingly to what works for the platform.
Have healthy work/life balance
Finally, this is the culmination of this years experiences. I have had a terrible history of finding a healthy work/life balance. It was something I was never good at so over time I would swing to one extreme or the other. This year really forced me to re-think what was healthy for me as an artist and an individual, and this lesson in particular is one that, if all else fails, if I still follow this, I’ll have succeeded. I don’t want to associate all of my free time with doing work in an attempt to find success or money. Life is more than that. I will still do my projects, but on a timeline that won’t adversely effect me and takes into consideration all the other stuff in my life that’s going on. I think the mastery of this goal will start a new chapter in my life. One in which I feel more in control of my life, present and happy.
Outro
This has been an important year for me. Perhaps it's my aging (going to be 30 soon!) Or perhaps I've just had to deal with a lot, but this year feels like I'm at a crossroads with how art and animation relate to my life. The interplay with social media, success and art have made me very jaded and cynical. Some of it is on me and some of it isn't, but the whole dichotomy just doesn't work for me anymore with. I think my new challenge for the coming years will be to find another path for self reliance.
I also think it's important to divorce the success of my content with my value as an artist. I really want to live a more passionate and lively life, and that has started reflecting on how I do my projects. If an idea doesn't fire me up, I just can't see myself working on it anymore. I am at the point now where if I'm not challenged and interested in a project, I'll just walk away from it.
This sounds dramatic but in actuality it isn't. I'm simply trying to reignite the creative spark that I've lost over the years. I want to give my work more dimensionality, effort and care. It's a slow process, but with time I will get there. It's an exciting prospect for me, and going into next year I find myself far more excited about my work and the changes in my life that I'm making. I'll talk more about it in future blogs, but I think the passion in my work that I've lost is starting to come back, little by little.
So that wraps up 2019, and this decade actually (maybe I'll do a lookback blog on the last decade next year)! It's been real and I hope you all have a happy holiday and safe new year! I'll see you in the next one!
