 Welcome back to an F&A and today I want to talk about how the animation journey is a marathon and not a sprint. And why this topic? Well, it is the end of the year. It is actually the 31st, so tomorrow is a new year. And it's kind of like my end of the year observation because as I said in the previous clip, all my classes are done. Like the year is done. What am I seeing in terms of student growth that even as a professional for myself and other people. And I think the main thing would have to say is that you have to have patience, which you might go, I don't have patience. I want it now. I want everything right now. I totally get it. You're anxious, you're motivated, you're pumped, you want to get to your shots. I think it's kind of like a observation that is from a teacher's perspective into like an overall thing. Basically, in the classes that I'm teaching, a lot of students want to go from a bouncing ball straight to a lip sync, two character piece, really long clip and going to acting and performance, which I totally understand is really fun to do. But you really have to master the basics and something I talked about before because you can't really skip the basics because you're going to struggle when you want to do something more advanced, which goes back to the title. It's a marathon and not a sprint. You can't just go from I'm opening this whatever blender, my whatever you use and go straight into an acting piece. You have to look at the foundational blocks, master those and go step by step. Because your career as a student and a professional is not going to be just, I mean, it might be one of the ones where it is like that. But it's going to go up. It's going to go steady. It's going to go back down and go back up. You're going to be struggling as a student. Then you're going to graduate. You're going to feel great. You never might be great. And then you go, that's like this. And then you're going to apply for companies and then no one's going to hire you for whatever reason. That might not be your real budget, whatever it is, right? And then you're going to flatten out again. And then you're going to get hired and you're going to learn so much in your first job and you're going to go back up again. It's going to be a constant move like this. It might be steady for a while. And even as a professional, it might go up and down, be great. And you might plateau for quite some time. And then you have to do something dramatic and then that's going to bring you back up. So it's a constant back and forth. So if you zoom out way out, you might feel like, oh, yeah. This is like the second people are successful. They might get a job somewhere or something. If you like that came out of nowhere. But if you kind of zoom in on their path, on the educational path, the job, whatever they do, you're going to see that pretty much everybody has a path that goes up and then steady, maybe even down. But it's definitely going to go up and then steady and up and instead it's not going to be just one dramatic path to success. And this applies, like I said, to the overall job career and journey as an animator, but also all the way down as a student when you start with a bouncing ball, it might feel boring and it might seem like I want to do this instead, but you really got to go step by step. Because I can guarantee you that if you see someone's acting piece, it's not going to be that person that a bouncing ball and then that two character, 20 second acting piece right after. The success that you're seeing or something that you aspire to, that is the tip of the iceberg. And if you go underneath and see all of this, that's a lot of hard work and patience. That being said, if you're going day to day and doing the basics and the principles, you do like step by step, you're going to have good days and bad days, even if you're doing exactly what people say. Again, don't just do what I say, but if you look at what everybody is doing and you kind of model your path based on what other people have done, you're going to go through this assignment, you're going to do this exercise, you do exactly what other people have done, plus minus. That still doesn't mean that every day is going to be awesome. You're going to have some challenging days. And a lot of times those challenges are out of your control. So what I would recommend is just look at what you can and cannot control and then double down on what you can control, try to tweak it, try to make it work for yourself and the things you can control, forget about it. I mean, not completely, you got to still keep a little eye on it like, why is this happening? But don't freak out because of things you can't control. Definitely helps to formulate a plan. I talked about it as well. Maybe you have a five year plan, even a 10 year plan. Again, this is really far out and it's so much again, that can just come your way that you can't control. But I wouldn't just go in blindly as in, I'm going to do this exercise and then we'll see. I would still go step by step, maybe in terms of what's my education and then what's the job after that, hopefully, and what's the job after that, hopefully in what location, city, country and so on. I would still have a wider view of your plan and then you can kind of go small in terms of what are the things you can really control and the actionable steps you can take in terms of the education, hopefully the job and even go down back to that. If you are a student right now, you can still look at, I want to do these exercises and these exercises and so on. But even if you do have a plan and you look at, I can control this or let me focus on that. I can't control this. It's on my side. I kind of keep an eye on it, but not really. Even if you do all of this, you still need to be patient. Some things will happen fast and other things won't because you're still trying to get into an industry that is constantly changing. So even if you're looking at this is what someone has done to get there. That means that what they have done is years old and your approach to learning might be totally different. Maybe because obviously you will learn in a different way than the other person, but also the learning landscape has changed, industry has changed. So this is in combination with you making plans and taking steps and learnings. You still have to adapt and be patient and look at what the changes are in your industry and the learning field, what I said. So be mindful of those changes, observe, adapt and just keep going. That being said, it is, of course, all easier said than done. It's super easy for me to say, be patient. It's marathon, another sprint. And it's not like, oh, this isn't a tutorial video where I can do step one, two, three. It's not, but it's still such a huge mindset behind all the work you're going to do. And I've talked about this, how much I love animation. I do love it and I still love it. That doesn't mean I don't have difficult days where I love it less, where some things are really frustrating and feel like really, but it's dangerous to then fall into trap and really discourage and potentially stop momentum or just the energy that you have towards your goal. So yes, it's easy to say, keep going and it's a marathon because all the work is on you. I'm just saying it. But the reason why I'm saying is because it has worked for me and I have seen it with other people. I've had experiences with my students who've taken my workshops multiple times and are now having their dream jobs. I've seen it so many times that I feel confident enough to make this video and say, be patient. Because again, it's like, whatever, this guy just said something. And there are even moments in class when I see a student struggle week after week and you feel like that's going to take a long time for that student to catch up. And I don't know how many times I've seen this where a student just suddenly, the next week on the next submission, the work is so good. And I ask, what happened? What did you differently? And I still don't know a trick to that change. You always go, I don't know. It's suddenly clicked. So you just keep at it. You keep studying, you keep asking questions. You look around, be inspired, try new things, push yourself. There's always going to be that breakthrough moment. Keeni. Yeah, he's tired of 21 too as well. Are you ready for 22? Okay. You want to go down? Well, it's a fitting in for 21, the cameo from Indy. So thank you for watching. Happy New Year. I hope 22, he's settling in for a little... He always likes to sleep there anyway. It's a little companion. Anyway, that's the end of 21. That's the end of my clip. That's the end of not everything. Tomorrow is the new year 22. I wish you all the best. Good luck with everything. I will be back next year with my regular uploads as always. So good luck. Happy New Year. All the best. Anything that I can say to encourage you. Keep going. Like I said, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint and I'll see you in my next upload.