It's All Random To Me

crispy-ghee:

coelasquid:

adriofthedead:

tanatot:

aspidelaps:

bronzebasilisk:

doublemaximusart:

I want to explain something here. These two .gifs are the first flash animations that I had ever made. I did these during my first semester in college in a computer animation class back in 2010. I had no idea what Flash even was.

Now let me just ask you something: Which one looks like it took the most time?

Our assignment was to experiment with Flash on our own, get used to the tools and settings and that sort of thing. I decided to go frame by frame and observed a gif taken from Treasure Planet. The result was that first gif you see up there.

I turned that first gif in to class the next day…and got a failing grade.

“This is not the proper way to use Flash” my teacher said. “Too complicated. This is not what people want to see. No use of tweens. Zero points.”

I was heartbroken to get a zero on my first assignment, so my teacher decided to give me a second chance. “Animate a running stick figure with tweens” the teacher said. So I did. I turned in that 2nd gif you see, and got an A.

To this day I am appalled by the way I was treated. To all of you animators out there, I recommend learning on your own. It could save you time and money. If you still choose to go to college, then that is fine too. You do what you want, just don’t let ANYONE try to downgrade your creative capability.

Okay just reblogging this because I’m seeing all these responses from students who didn’t follow their teachers instructions for their assignments and then got poor grade, and seem to think it was because their teacher was some sort of an ass or something.

No.

I’m sorry no. You didn’t do what they asked, you didn’t follow the assignment, you got an F.

Yes it sucks that you put a lot of work into tracing that gif, but that wasn’t what you’re teacher asked you to do.

And I’m sorry but your teacher’s right. If you’re trying to get a job for flash animation, damn straight a company is going to want to see that you know how to use the program and it’s tools. That means understanding how to use the specific animation tools in flash, like tweening. That doesn’t automatically mean making shitty stiff animation. If you really want to amaze you’re teacher, make amazing animation while fallowing his assignment.

From the sounds of it the teacher wanted to see you practice and experiment with tweens, and you didn’t, so you didn’t get points. That’s it. That’s literately all that has happened here. There is no personal assault on you or creativity as a whole. The fact you think that getting an F for handing in a traced copy written animation means he’s trying to stomp out creativity is… kind of telling in of itself.

Also you’re incredibly lucky you didn’t get a warning for handing in that copy written trace. If I had done that in my school I would have gotten in deep shit. I would be happy he let you re-do the assignment and then move on and continue to do creative stuff on your own time. You’re teacher is there to teach you how to use the program, not to personally support or ”downgrade your creative capability.”

Tell ‘em like it is, Chronidu. I do not think OP is being truthful, in the fact that it is fairly obvious they’re not sharing the whole truth, ferreting away important key parts like, oh idk.. the fact that they were supposed to be LEARNING FLASH and not LEARNING TO TRACE GIFS.

This comparison is apples to oranges, and depending on the lighting. That second animation is crap if you’re trying to think of it as remotely comparable to even the copied skill of a disney animator, its true! If someone were to be grading it based on animation quality, it would certainly fail. However it is composed entirely of tweens, and if you’re grading if the person understands how to use tweens, then of course it is A material. Congrats! Gif #2 conveyed that you understood the material being taught and so it got you a passing grade! I agree that you should be thankful you even got a second go.

Art school has a technical side and is not devoted entirely to “make this picture look super pretty with methods you already know.” Your assignment was a technical one, not an artistic one. Why would you expect anything BUT an F when you did the exact opposite of what you were supposed to do?

Art school is as much about building experience and connections as it is about learning skills. You can technically learn anything you want on your own, but you will have 0 credibility and you will be flying blind in to an industry that you absolutely do not understand. Art schools don’t just teach you how to be a better artist, but a better worker. Good work habits, team cooperation, understanding what employers want, and making sure you have the technical skills you need because SURPRISE, raw talent won’t get you by.

Please don’t give the toxic advice of “fuck schools do it on your own!” What if your foolish ass actually IMPRESSES upon someone?? You’d be costing them an actual opportunity by whining about your ego getting chipped at 3 years ago. People could learn to be an incredible animator on your own, but if they don’t have the developed work habits to fit in to a studio environment, nobody is going to want them in their studio. If they even give you the time of day! After all, you’re not really going to have anyone to speak for you that is mildly relevant to your interests, or even know the people who let word out that there is a job opening to apply for.

Ways to be successful in art school:

Make sure you actually do the assignment when you do the assignment.

Pay attention to the details of what is wanted from you. This isn’t artwork for you, after all! It is artwork for your education!

Time spent means nothing when it comes to turned in assignments, only outcome and how it compares (and preferably exceeds) with what was asked of it.

Check your ego at the door, because if you’re so attached to your work that you’ll let something like this fester for 3 years, it is going to get very battered and bruised (and you are not going to thrive in a professional environment, so best learn now.)

Remember you are there to learn how to be a Professional Artist. Not a better artist.

Ways to do terribly in art school:

Think time spent should mean anything for your eventual grade.

Ignore the assignment and just make something that you like to turn in.

Hold on to failed assignments like battle wounds and thinking you must have been treated terrible instead of learning from it and moving on.

Expect that any amount of request or constraint on the technical side of how you produce a piece means the end of creativity in said piece.

Treat artwork you make for school like personal projects and not demonstrations of learned skill.

Think that because you were “being creative” you are infallible

There you go guys now you ACTUALLY learned something today.

fucking all of this thank you

thank

you

everyone needs to read this ^

I wish I could print this out and staple it to the forehead of every person I’ve met who’s ever been “ABLOO BLOO BLOO ART SCHOOL STIFLES CREATIVITY”. You go to art school to learn shit, not to play the tortured artistic genius act

I may be self-taught but even I know the benefits of attending an art school. I wish I could have had the opportunity to do so when I was younger, but that’s a whole other story

There’s this insufferable cocky period that almost all art school kids go through before the real world deprograms them (And sure, I’ll include myself in this) where they hold onto the fundamentals that teachers handed down to them on subjects like “what makes a textbook-good character design” or “what makes a textbook-good piece of acting” and that sort of thing, and get hypersensitive about criticizing things that are not technically perfect to the specifications that they have been convinced by a trusted mentor are “the way it’s supposed to be”, offering unsolicited advice to anyone who will listen.

Sometimes they enter the workforce with this attitude and believe the project they are working on is not up to par with The Way It’s Supposed To Be, and take it upon themselves to improve the show and bring it up to their lofty, narrow standards for what makes cartoons “good”.

And then they get fired for not following directions.

On the subject of Flash, though, as much as people talk shit about it, it is a remarkably accessible tool that you can learn to do professional quality work in after a day or so of actively familiarizing yourself with the tools it provides and how to exploit them. Once you understand how tweens and symbols work, you can start using them to efficiently make some impressively traditional looking stuff in a pretty remarkable timeframe.

It’s all about learning how to pick your battles.

Things I wish I could have had the ability to tell some of the people I went to school with.

Ugh I still kind of get enraged feelings towards this one girl in particular, who, after all of the above mentioned stuff happened to her, ended up actually going to rate our animation professor very badly online and said horrible things about her in the review that basically revolved around “Nothing I ever did was good enough for her.”

Which was…just…uggghhhhhhhghghghghhh

I mean, on one hand with that sort of attitude they have pretty much slimmed down their chances of ever getting a job or being too successful in the field they went to school for, so I guess they are sort of shooting themselves in the foot and they’ll end up having to live with that for a while, but all the same. Made some moments out of that four years insanely frustrating.

And this is why I will simply be writing, acting, or voice acting for films. This is why I didn’t go into animation… That and I lack any drawing skills besides making a few amusing faces here and there… Geeze being an animator sounds like even more tough shit than I thought 0_o

REBLOG

1 day ago