Wow, it's DONE. Time to spill EVERYTHING.
SO when I first started working on this August last year, I neeeever thought it would have taken this long. I’d just finished a 40 second Steven Universe animation, and I LOVED the experience of seeing my drawings come to life, so I jumped right into this project, not knowing how much commitment it would take. It was hard working on this, I was really ambitious and wanted to do all these cool shots and have super smooth animation, and so a lot of hours were spent just figuring out how to pull it off - rearranging frames, adding new ones, getting the timing and consistency right, and about a bajillion undo buttons. I really zoned in on working on this over the summer, and no joke, I spent like 8 hours every weekday. Yea I know, could have done something more useful like a job or something. I started feeling really bad about wasting so much time with this slow work, when I could be improving so much more quickly in other aspects of art.
But now that it’s finished, I can look back and see that I did learn some pretty useful skills. Now, I’m way more confident and efficient with animating, I can squash and stretch and smear, I understand perspective a lot more (which is really fun to incorporate into my daily drawings!), and I’ve learned a lot about timing frames. But I think my most important takeaway from this project is that I know I can finish something. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jake Parker’s videos (he’s a successful freelance artist), and he talked about how the world needs more people who finish stuff. I think at my age, not a lot of people can say that they worked on an animation project for a year and followed through. Even though, looking at this video, I cringe my butt off at all the old animations and laugh at how seriously I was taking this, I’m very proud of myself! Another thing from Jake Parker: finished, not perfect!
Also, I know I don’t have a huge following, but for those that have anticipated this animation, thanks for sticking around. This was a very self-motivated project, but all the awesome comments I kept getting on my progress videos gave me an extra boost and always brought a smile to my face. Thanks to my VA’s for their amazing voice-acting chops and for putting up with me when I asked them to redo all their lines haha. Finally, thank you Scott Benson, Alec Holowka, and Bethany Hockenberry for creating this amazing, beautiful, inspirational game that I still love so much :3
So that’s my story, thanks for coming. I think from now on, I’m ready to move on to creating my own ideas. I wanna make a film to enter into the Teen Animation Festival International, and I’m really excited to start working!
Thanks again for watching :)
Instagram: professiona...
Tumblr: / whatchyagonnado2day
Music: "Shapes" and "Trailer II" by Alec Holowka
All sound effects downloaded from Freesound.org
Programs: Flash CS6, Manga Studio 5.0, Sony Vegas Pro 13