 Welcome back to FNA and today I want to talk about how to overcome when you get bored with your shot and how to stay motivated. I had something else planned for the day and I said it's every week I want to do a specific thing but yesterday the official first day of the fall semester has begun. I'm teaching at the Academy of Art as well and even with Animation Mentor a new semester is starting. Kind of everything comes together for a new semester and with that my first class is usually an overview of how I teach, the things I want to look out for, resources, this channel, stuff like that. And at the same time students have to start thinking about what am I going to animate for this semester. It's going to be one shot, two shots, three what's the schedule like and gathering ideas. You have to film reference, find reference, act things out, thumbnail, just the whole process and idea finding is happening and usually most people get really excited about what they want to animate. The tricky thing is, and this is a topic, how do you stay motivated? How do you have that energy to continue and fight through all the tedious process of arcs and pops and polish to get to the final product where it's still fun? And that's pretty normal. When I used, it was a long time ago, when I do stuff at home I have that initial idea like this is going to be great and then you start and then it's kind of like I don't know is it going to be great? I don't know maybe do something else. And I go from this awesome to this is kind of yeah whatever I'm a horrible animator to maybe at the end back to kind of okay but not really that same excitement as the very beginning and then you know weeks and months later you go back to the shot like that's actually not that bad actually it was pretty good hopefully unless it's really bad and I would say that's probably pretty normal that you have that initial excitement and then as you're in the thick of it and you have to work on it you know you're kind of lose sight of what was the first excitement you get bored and potentially you abandon the shot it's tricky in class because you're paying for the classes and then you have an abandoned shot and then you can't continue semester ends you have nothing to show at work it's different you can't just depend on a shot you might get bored of it but you have to continue there's that pressure of the deadline but you also get paid for it it's a whole different environment when you produce a shot for work so when you are a student again this is why I'm doing this today because the masters are starting what can you do to fight that boredom the first thing I would say is to trust your instincts so you have your idea you go oh and you laugh and you maybe you pitch it to someone and it's really good and really fun and it's great just don't lose sight of that I know it gets tedious and it's repetitive and all that work to get it done but why did you start in the first place so what I would potentially do write things down write down this is fun this gets me excited this is a cool idea you can potentially do a mock-up I don't this I don't see that that often but why not it's like in a game thing where you have your idea and that's maybe through Photoshop or something you're like this is what I want my final shot to be maybe even look wise with mods of the character a background and props maybe but something where you go this gets me excited maybe it's a specific moment maybe you have to go into the scene before you start you pose out that one moment the punchline the gag is something that's dramatic that that one thing that where maybe the thing that sparked your idea like oh wouldn't be fun to do this and that moment maybe pose that out or just thumbnail or write it down but have that somewhere maybe pins on your on your monitor or somewhere whenever you are bored or you feel like I don't have that's a good idea you can always go back to yay that was the spark this is what worked for me and if this is something that's only for you maybe pitch it to someone so that when you're bored or you question your shot I don't know if it's going to be okay that person go no no no when you pitched that to me this was really fun I really like this idea that moment's going to be great that reveal is going to be funny stick to that's going to be okay so whatever reminders you need of that initial excitement have that somewhere around you on a practical level keep it short that's what I say to all the students and I know it gets to 10 seconds 20 seconds I'm guilty of this doing something at home it's going to be much longer but if you keep a shot short you will have enough energy to go through the whole thing into polish because if you have a shot that's 10 seconds or 20 seconds there's so much work to do even with just one character imagine you have a creature multiple characters a camera move and edit there's so much that can go into a shot that will make the shot expand into such a huge workload that you won't have the energy to finish it and that's another reason why you might get bored because you look and you go like oh I have all of this to do I gotta do that and do this this gets overwhelming and you're gonna stop so keep it short ideally three to five seconds I understand that it's that fairly short if you have a lip sync there might be seven to ten it really depends on the shot but I would try to keep it as short as possible while maintaining obviously an entertainment value and a dramatic value and just making it you know watchable for people but if you have it short you can finish it you can go through the whole process you always have the angle in reach within reach you can say I'm almost there I can polish this I'm done and then you have a sense of accomplishment you finished it you learned something new you gain more confidence in your skill set oh I can do this and then you can start a new shot and that builds and builds and builds versus 10 second shot 20 second shot so much work you can't get to it at the end you go I don't really like this then you start another shot I don't know if I can do this and it just that never really builds into something that's a bit more you know confidence building so try to keep it short so it's manageable and what I also recommend is to do a second shot at the same time this may sound overwhelming but by that I mean have some short and do another short piece but when you're bored or you are tired you feel like you don't see a difference anymore because after a while just stay at the same shot you can't tell the difference if it's good or not or like that's why you have outside dailies and help and feedback but if you go to a second shot fresh eyes it's a whole different thing so maybe you do a like this frame lip sync and the other shot is full on mechanics and action piece then you go back to the lip sync back to the action piece it's always going to be something else that you have to pay attention to and you come back to the shot with fresh eyes so that might help you keep up that somewhat objective look at your shot and going oh yeah this works this doesn't work let me fix this all of these tips none of that is going to work if you don't love the process and I mentioned that before in FNA as I mentioned again you have to love the process of animating and that includes the tedious parts you might be really excited in finding ideas you might be the story person to pitch ideas and come up with crazy premises and acting choices and shooting reference and filming and all that good stuff but then you got to put that into your scene and it's going to be the character in a t-pose bring it down maybe hopefully do a character pose and then it's in an empty scene and it might just look boring maybe it's not lit and you like the lighting of shots or maybe you prefer something in a set again that's not ready and that process is normal you will go through all those stages and at least as a student maybe you can ask your teacher or your mentor where we are and that work obviously will have dailies and feedback from your peers but as a student you're gonna have to again trust your instinct trust the friends that will tell you this is a good idea trust your teacher who will approve the shot to move forward and then when you are in that slump everything gets boring just know that is part of the process and just concentrate on the mechanics concentrate on things looking right and smooth the weight shifts the inertia the momentum like all the technical things should work and then always think back to what was my initial spark ah this is going to be okay but love that process love going through the blocking the tweaks the polish and then presenting it like all of that is part of making a shot from beginning to the end and if you don't like that if you don't like that process it's going to be really difficult i'm not saying you're not gonna make it as an animator but i think it's going to be much harder to go through a shot over and over and over for weeks and months and years on end with feedback or maybe get feedback that you don't like but you still have to implement those notes you just have to regardless of i don't like the shot i don't like the movie i don't like the tv show i don't like the game whatever it is what i love animating so whatever the end result is doesn't matter to me i love animating and i love that process and that's me now that i don't care about anything else obviously if it's a cool movie and a cool project it's going to be more motivating but i just like animating i like the process of posing things out finding the character and exploring ideas i just love that in of itself even if i know that maybe i'm not going to be a big fan of the movie or whatever i'm working on that's okay i like animating and i like going through that so really that to me is the the big umbrella if you love this all the other things are just steps in between or underneath the umbrella and it's just part of the thing it's going to be okay now if you don't love the process maybe that's a different fna how to find the love but to me that's always so personal i don't know if i don't know if that can be something as an fna where i just bring up a couple points how is that going to work for you because it really depends where you are your situation your age the environment the culture do you have access to learning material or not i think that's going to be very personal on an individual basis i am not sure leave me a comment if you can collect things in the comments and i can come up with something that potentially could help you find that love and maybe find something in a process where you go oh yeah that is cool maybe i will like this actually more than i thought i'm not sure let me know in the comments that could be something interesting to explore speaking of exploring how are you have to laugh at the segments if you feel like this is helpful and you want me to explore your shots and help you make your shots even more awesome you know the drill i have workshops they're open you can sign up at any time there's a link in the description with all the information if a queue feel free to go around and check things out if the workshop is something that is of interest to you and if you have any questions obviously comment or email me let me know i can explain everything about the workshop and as always if this is all helpful and you don't want to miss any of my uploads because i do upload every day except weekends feel free to subscribe hit that bell button so you don't miss any of my uploads that's the usual drill at the end also speaking of the end this is the end of the clip and if you're still watching thank you so much for your patience you know i really appreciate it that you take the time to do that and i will see you in my next clip