Recap Week 07

The last week has been a break from work, so I don't really have a lot to report. So, I'll discuss the lessons learned from the last two weeks and how I will continue to use them.

My first issue to overcome was communicating with the sound designer. None of us had really worked with each other's roles before, so the first interactions were a bit awkward.

Troels had us do an exercise within each department (sound/music, animation, programming, etc) where we had to imagine performing a job for a client who had no clue how to do anything. As an animator, I need a certain amount of information to know if I can make the deadline, or even make the animation at all. And if my client don't know what information to give me, it's handy if I have a number of questions written down somewhere that will give me what I need.

And that's exactly what me and my fellow animator Valeria did! We put together a document with five different categories, and 3-4 questions for each category. The questions included stuff as "How many characters are there in the shot?", "What are the key events?" and "How does the characters relate to each other?"

As it turns out, these questions aren't only good for clients who don't have a clue about anything. They are good questions to have in the back of your mind for any type of animation you do. Say the director forgets to tell you that the shot is only going to show the face of the character, and you start animating the whole body. That's a lot of wasted work that could have been avoided with just one simple question.

So, to come back to the issue I mentioned in the beginning. Our first communications were a bit slow because none of us really knew what we needed to know from each other. But since we've both sat down and written these questions, we have a much better idea of what we need to perform our work. And thus, our communication flows a lot better.

This will hopefully help me in future work as well, whether I work at a studio or as a freelancer. If I can solve issues before they even appear, life will be easier for everyone around me!

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