I Finished Haunting Melody. Here’s What I Learned in the Process.
Whenever I finish an animation process, I’m always stunned by how much I gain in terms of new skills and discoveries. This time is no different, and today I wanted to share a couple lessons I learned along the way to completing Haunting Melody. This animation was easier than Is All of It in Vain? in many ways, but in other ways somewhat more difficult, and it is the fact of it being so different that lent it to new discoveries.
1.) Go big or go home.
The biggest lesson I learned, (and the one that is most likely to stick with me,) is that you have to go all out with an animation such as this, otherwise it’s nothing special. My biggest struggle with this was when I was working on the claymation sequences. The whole process was tedious and time consuming, and it required endless amounts of concentration, so when I completed the first three sequences, I was strongly considering not doing any more claymation. (My plan was originally to have seven sequences total, but then I thought maybe I could get away with changing the colors and dimensions on two of them, and then using different processes entirely for the remaining two.)
But then a friend took me aside and said, “I really like your claymations! If you cop out on that, your animation might not be nearly as good.” And I figured she was right, so the following week, I went back to the claymation grindstone, and I’m so glad I did!
So I’ll remember this next time I work on an animation. I have to go all out if I want to stand out!
2.) Naming layers isn’t enough. You have to be more organized.
When I was about six or seven, I remember my mom having a burst of energy and going around the house labeling boxes, separating clothes and other such items, and making sure everything had a place. With a gleam in her eye, she said “we have to get organized!” Maybe I should have taken the hint, because the biggest struggle I had with Haunting Melody was not being organized enough! I thought, “if I’m labeling my layers, I should be fine,” but as the project wore on, I realized how badly jumbled up everything was. Some things weren’t in their proper folders, there were folders, comps, and precomps strewn everywhere with no consistency. Some project files were even taken from folders that were completely outside the main directory I created especially for Haunting Melody.
There’s some debate among other people I’ve talked to, but I did read somewhere that this tends to slow down the process because everything is so bogged down by the chaos. After Effects even crashed a few times. No biggie, because I had several backups, but it was still disconcerting. More disconcerting yet was the couple of times I got a “Not Responding” dialog box, and thought I had to force quit without having saved my work! (Luckily, it responded, so it didn’t come down to that. Big relief!)
Lesson learned: streamline the process as much as you can, because it will (probably) help it go much smoother.
In conclusion…
You don’t have to have everything figured out when you first start, but only as long as you are willing to adapt and to learn things along the way. This is how I have approached everything in life, and animation is no different. Although I have been animating since 2016, I still am amazed at how much I can improve by picking up little lessons learned along the way, and figuring out how to do things better. This animation was just the challenge I needed to improve my skill set, and I’m glad I undertook it.