 Welcome back to an FNA and today I want to talk about how to grow as an animator and specifically how that relates to receiving notes and what you take from those notes and how you'll learn looking at those notes and beyond. And why? Because semesters have started, I'm teaching animation mentor and academy, workshops are coming in, there's always something where someone is sending me work and I am giving notes and this could be in a professional setting, this is kind of an FNA slash prototype because it also applies to you when you're a lead or a supervisor and how you navigate those waters when you receive and when you give out notes. So the main point right off the bat is that as a student, when you get notes, you're in a school environment where you get weekly feedback, maybe more, maybe less, but you get feedback from one specific person, could be a mentor, a teacher, however that relationship is. The big trick is that when you see the notes and the notes are always the same, that should make something click in your brain where you go, oh these are repeated notes or something I'm always doing, I need to address this first and really understand that so that it doesn't happen again. Because you're always going to get different kinds of notes because a lot of stuff is also subjective, especially when you do some acting performances or something with, you know, acting choices in humor or whatever, it gets a bit subjective. And then the notes can vary a lot each week and sometimes even you get a couple of weeks, you get different notes and then I don't know week five you get a note that's kind of similar to week one like there's a bunch of scenarios that can happen. So it's super important that as an animator when you see repeated notes that you figure out why that is and if you don't know it then you have to ask and you have to understand what's going on and that's what the teacher mentor is there for. You have to ask what is the problem and why do I keep getting these notes. What you can't do is just rely on the notes like a drone where you just get the bullet points and you just look at the notes fix this, fix that and move on because you have to understand those patterns so that you don't do that again because otherwise you start wasting everybody's time because it's your time because you got to keep doing the same fixes and over and the teacher mentor has to give the same notes over and over and over. Now fast forward if you are a leader supervisor and you're getting notes let's say from the client and the client keeps giving you the same notes. If you're the leader of the soup you have to understand and see that pattern and then relay that to your team of animators and explain listen this has come up all the time we can't have that anymore. Now when you are in a client vendor type of relationship you might also get notes from the client that you don't like or you don't understand or you just like completely disagree with but that doesn't matter because the client wants what the client wants. Even then you have to see through the notes understand the pattern and the likes and the dislikes and then let the team know we can't do that again and this can also apply to acting notes again even before when I said it can be subjective there comes a point where you work for someone that person is going to have a specific point of view in terms of acting in humor as well it's been of acting choices and gestures and stuff like that and even then you will see patterns and likes and dislikes you got to make sure you understand and see that. As an animator seeing those patterns and understanding that and avoiding a repetition of notes and fixes helps you grow because you won't depend you won't depend on the teacher the mentor the friend whatever and you can start working on your own shots without relying on heavy feedback and you can advance further because it's really important to that after a while you are self-sufficient you will always need notes it always helps to show you work to someone if you just do everything in a vacuum we don't show anybody it might be good it might even be really good but it's going to be even better when you get outside notes in fresh eyes and you know get input from different perspectives for sure but as the students again this is now the semesters are starting something I really really really push is that you need to see the patterns and understand why are these notes coming this again could be technical is spacing and arcs and stuff like that and then start ingesting that and going okay maybe maybe write down a list make a list of things that you always hear in terms of notes and then check that before you submit for review you will save yourself time you will save your teacher and mentor time and after a while you know you there's a certain block that you're now self-sufficient in if that's English and you can do that with no problem and of course you need to get more notes but there might be more advanced notes and more nuanced notes and that's really important part where you can explore creativity and just different ideas and you're not stuck on technical things because if you give a student constant technical notes about one frame direction changes bad spacing or stuff like that where after a while it's just it's a technical thing it shouldn't be happening anymore then that becomes a problem on both sides again it's a lot of time wasted but also you as an animator just won't grow as fast and of course if you're professional you're in charge of a team then that's going to save the team time you can address other more important notes and the client doesn't have to give the same notes over and over addressing things that shouldn't be addressed anymore after a couple weeks months or even longer so when you take notes always pay attention to a similar and especially identical notes that come up over and over it's a good sign that you're gonna have to work on that specifically now if you're new to animation of course those repeated notes will probably be a list of animation principles or principles plus some extra weak points maybe just not that good at weight or not just good at weight shifts or direction changes or stuff like that and as you get more advanced and as you work for someone it might be a list of specific preferences based on what the client wants again this could be technical and subjective technical acting things whatever it is the benefit of knowing what comes up all the time and making a list and checking that for yourself is that a you'll get faster but also you can start incorporating more things into your first pass so your first rough blocking pass will actually look like a very solid blocking pass to a point where your first blocking pass is actually blocking plus so the further you can go the more you can corporate ideas the more you can sell the shot because at work it's not always about this is the first blocking pass would you think that's it sometimes you're just you just don't have time and you want to sell the shot as much as you can and you almost go for final you just put in as much as you can into the shop presents and maybe they even go this is great just polish it up and you're done versus okay this is okay for first pass but make sure you put this this this in the shot and then it just adds again more passes more discussions more time wasted so the more you're aware of what you need to put in and you put that in early the more time you have for other things and the more fleshed out your first passes are going to be of course that doesn't mean you should go into a super crazy detail and super polish at the very beginning focused on the main structure is the story clear are the poses clear like the main thing the communication and the acting choices the timing all of that of course needs to be super clear but after a while as you get better and faster you will have that for sure and the extra detail to maybe sell a certain point even more or to address certain subtle parts even better and the more you present the more the client or whoever is going to look at this can decide yes no or yes and and then start exploring things and again that way the shot gets better and better because it will go through more creative revisions and exploration and in an ideal scenario the shot might get approved really early on and they go I polish it up and this schedule will allow for you to really dive into polish mode for a week or two and just polish the crap out of it and make it super awesome because you don't always have time for that either sometimes you just submit and you think it's super great and it's approved but then it's out of your hands like hey this is approved by client it's gone and you don't have time to go one more time in there and fix things so again as a student it's different there's a certain schedule and then you have time to put that in the difference between that and in the professional field where the schedules can be really different and you don't always have time to just sit down relax and polish for a couple weeks so there is that transition but even as a student early on I wouldn't go into an assignment where it says blocking paths and really do the bare minimum where a lot of times it looks like layout there I say a lot of the blocking passes by students are layout passes maybe a bit more than layout with really rough animation rough posing maybe some okay staging but all the information isn't there the timing isn't there the acting isn't quite there like stuff that always mentions a character is sitting and then suddenly the character is standing well how does that character stand up and is it a tyron is it the lean is it the look is suspicious there's so many things that go from a sitting pose to a standing pose and that to me all that stuff should be incorporated into your first blocking pass so we understand the character's feelings emotions motivations personality and so on and so on so recapping don't be a drone don't just get the list from whoever teacher mentor client friend whatever it is right and just go okay point one fix this okay done point two fixed okay submit without understanding okay what is this point why am I doing this and if as a student you should absolutely ask why if you don't understand a note you have to ask because if you don't understand it then what's the point then you might as well have the teacher animate the shop for you understand the note so that you can apply that the next step you don't get that note again especially when it comes to technical aspects and like I said this is for students and for professionals lead supervised positions it just goes the other way right just when you are in charge of a team make sure your team has all the information and it's your job as a leader soup to understand the pattern see it identify repeated notes even if you disagree with them where it's something that you wouldn't expect but see what comes back all the time so that you avoid that it avoids frustration on the client side it avoids frustration on your team because they got to keep doing the things over and over she's not very motivating so just benefits everyone sure has benefited me and that's just something I try to do in towards the the the later years that I live it has really helped me to just get the shot and always go for final it doesn't always work sometimes it's very complicated and you have to go step by step and you know it's going to take a couple passes but on some of the quote-unquote easier shots you can go for final and you just also have to get away of that thinking of well I don't want to put in too much work because what's the point it's going to get notes and they're going to change it anyway that's a mindset that should be an FNA for a different FNA but you got to get out of that mindset and kind of hold on to your animation or hold on to something where you feel like I'm going to put that in later no no no put in the best you can right away sell the shot as much as you can of course within context of schedules another shots nothing else should suffer but I would not hold back and wait for the next pass to put something in you could have put in already and even if it doesn't get you know it doesn't stake in the decline doesn't want and you have to redo it for yourself you've already animated it which means that you've gone through the process already which means that when you do it again later you're going to be faster that's for me my my end all be all advised for everything that I just said is that you do things and you push yourself all that is going to help you in your workflow and your skills to become faster and faster and faster because it's all after a while repetition so you can think about the creative process and not worry about the technical things because you've done it already yes there will be something you've never done before but as a whole as time goes by you'll get a lot more confident in a shot where you go oh okay this is the turnover what do I need to do no problem as in technically I know what to do creatively I have no idea I don't know how to come up with the best shot ever but I know that from a technical point of view I'm going to be okay and once you're in that mindset it's super free because then you also don't worry about redoing things 10,000 times because you just it just you get better if I do this 10 times over versus one time I'm going to be a better animator after 10 times that's kind of how I look at it kind of getting mentally over the frustration of redoing things over and over because you're going to have a show a project or something well that will happen eventually you might as well get used to getting it over it and take the benefit from that and kind of change your negative outlook into something more positive anyway I'm gonna keep it at that I hope that was helpful as always comments are open let me know is this something you're doing already is this something you've never done do you do this with tweaks I'm super curious if that helps what you've done that helps you in terms of growing and understanding patterns of feedback and how you got better and how you leveled up and if you have any questions for me if you want to know more about something I didn't mention that's a part two let me know the comments we can do a part two and what that is that for me if you're still watching thank you for watching I appreciate your time you can always like and subscribe helps my channel grow thank you for watching maybe I'll see you again and if not thanks for watching once and have a nice day okay thank you