The simulated work experience with the second years went well, although I didn’t get a great deal of work to complete as my second year was still in the early stages of their animation.
They initially sent me their main character’s turnaround, construction sheet, character design development ideas, and their animatic, with the note that there are elements they’re in the process of changing (in the animatic). They asked for my feedback and I told them I really liked their animatic as it is and think it’s more powerful with the character development points it has at the moment, but obviously they know their character’s better, and they know what story they want to tell so I understand if they want to change it. I fell a little bit in love with their characters to be honest!!
When I reached out to my second year they very kindly asked what roles I felt most comfortable and confident about undertaking. Honestly I don’t feel confident about most of the roles in making an animation yet, and I don’t think I’ve done enough of it to work out which part of the process I enjoy the most, so I told them I was happy with anything. I was eventually tasked with drawing front and side profiles of their two secondary characters for their character designs, and later two more characters.
I completed the tasks pretty quickly as mostly all it involved was tracing their sketch with slight adjustments to make the proportions more even and accurate, and then looking at their main character’s turnaround sheet to see their style for drawing people sideways on. They also gave me the colour palettes for each character.
There were a couple of things that weren’t initially clear when the task was set, for example, elements of clothing that might only be seen from the side, but we easily cleared them up in follow up emails.
There were some things I didn’t touch on though, for example, I remember from the character design class last term, Bianca kept stressing that it was important to draw the feet flat in a turnaround, and in the main character’s turnaround sheet that I was sent, the feet aren’t flat from the front angles. Similarly in the sketches sent through for the tasks I had to do, the feet in the front angles aren’t flat. Because of this I didn’t draw the feet flat, because maybe I’m wrong and it’s just a stylistic choice? But I think I will email them to ask later on.
Truthfully, I find most collaboration projects difficult because I’m a bit of a control freak and like to know exactly when I am expected to be doing work so I can plan my other work and free time around that, therefore waiting on someone to send me work to do, not know how much or how long it might take me was difficult and stressed me out more than it should. I am going to work on this as its something unavoidable in the animation industry and most workplaces!
As tricky as I found this to be in the beginning though, I definitely think this experience warmed me up to collaborative projects a bit more, as my second year was very considerate and friendly, and considering we’re apparently going to be collaborating more next term this is great!
I also found it quite freeing to work in something that isn’t my own style. These days I kind of feel like I’m putting myself at a disadvantage by sticking so constantly to a drawing style, so it was great to be forced out of that and work on replicating someone else’s style.