 Welcome back to our FNA and today I'm going to talk about a very simple yet heavily underused trick to speed up your workflow that is taking notes. Taking notes, but I do take notes. I know you might, but maybe not in that specific way. And that's what I'm going to talk about. And before I do, welcome to the channel. My name is JD and if you're here for the first time, I do lectures like these. I do acting analysis clips. I do animation analysis clips. I do reviews, product reviews, animation news, all kinds of things. You can just feel free to browse around. If that is something that you like, feel free to also subscribe so you don't miss any of my uploads. All right. So there are many ways to increase your workflow in terms of speed. You can do what I talked about before, where you break up your play blast into beats and chunks and kind of attack certain sections. But there's one simple thing that you can do that will absolutely speed up your workflow and will keep you on track. And it's very organized, but I don't see many students do it. And it's super simple. It's super fast. So hopefully it's going to be simple enough for you to incorporate and you're going to see your schedule shrink because it's going to be so much better for you. Speaking of better, I'm going to show this on my walk-in one because this is a sponsor post. Thank you very much, welcome for providing me with that tablet. So let's go and switch cameras to show you this. So let's switch over to this. Actually, let's make this full screen. And you're wondering, okay, so what is this trick? What could be so simple? Well, the simple thing is this, and I would highly recommend that you use keyframe pro for this. Link in description if you want to check it out. So I have my shot here, right? This is broken up into two different shots. So what people usually do, they show the shot to whatever mentor or teacher and then they write down those notes and then that's it. And then they start working on their shot. And that's kind of where the note taking ends a lot of times. And I say a lot of times mostly because I ask students and I kind of look at their workflow and I can also see how the updates are. And as my new semesters will start next week, actually, this will be something that I will recommend right off the bat. So the specific thing that you want to do is that once you're done with the notes, you're going to start implementing these into your shot. So when you do a play blast, here's the problem. A lot of times you animate, you do a play blast, you go, OK, all right, well, let me do this. And then you start noodling on things and you might change my animation here and there. You do another play blast. Yeah, I guess. And you might do a play blast of everything. You might do a play blast of this little section. And that just if you go like this over and over and over, you're wasting a lot of time. So here's the trick. So let's say I am not happy with this entrance because the way this enters here, I don't like that there is the belly here first. And this seems like it's going to intersect through there. I want it to be straight where it's basically just the beak, maybe. And then the bigger side of the head and maybe the head comes in here and then that and so on and so on. This is something that I do on every shot. I look at this and I say, all right, head. Entrance, right, in my super writing that only I can understand. And then you can take any type of notes. You want to look at smoothing the geometry just for later polish. Then you look at later spots where if you go forward, maybe this you want to move a bit more over so that the beak is in a better silhouette. So it's not straightforward. So you want to turn this around and say turn head again in the writing and only I understand you move forward and on that hit, let's go back. That doesn't quite feel like there is a contact because of that shadow here. So contact maybe here, a better deformation. Again, geometry fixed when he does this, this feels very harsh as the body goes down on this frame too hard. So here, hard stop. You can also do something with different colors. Now I'm just inventing notes here. I'm changing colors. Let's do this. You can do straight versus curved. I'm really just pretending with notes right here. But that is the trick. You go and you look at your animation and let's say you're always disciplined with five notes or seven or 10, depending on how fast you are. But let's say five, just concentrate on something you can manage. Look at your clip right down on each train that has a problem. I need to fix this. Make a list of maybe five to ten notes. I'd keep it small at the beginning. And then as you go back into Maya, you look at your clip, you go through this frame. Let me fix exactly this, this frame. Let me fix exactly this. You're done with those five play blasts. Look at it again. OK, take more notes. You have to start attacking your shots and your revisions in a structured way where you know exactly what to do. So you don't start noodling things where I want to work on that pinky a little bit. I don't know, maybe that background thing. I don't know. You do this and you do this over days and days and days. You're going to extend the schedule of your shot. You're going to waste so much time. I know this seems like, wait, what? What? Super simple. It is, yeah, probably because it is so simple. It is absolutely underused. And the moment I started doing this at work, I got so much faster because I look at beats, I look at chunks. And within that, I take those notes. It's a checklist that I go through. And when I'm done, I move on. Then you go to the next section, take notes and you move on. And every now and then, you look at the whole thing to see is the flow still there. Did I compromise anything in terms of overall timing or the flow or just the feeling of it? That could be a bigger note. You look at the whole thing. So, all right, well, I think I fixed this. This seems okay. All right, now it's that settled and is about to get up and fly. Hmm, okay, there's something that I missed here again. Then that's your second chunk. You know that from here to here, whatever in your timeline, I'm going to start taking notes. So you want to look at potentially better silhouettes. Maybe you want to change that so they're a bit more separated here. You go forward again. Let's say here, this is too thin. I want some wings that are a bit here. This potentially having more of a curve as it goes up so it's not so straight. Let's go back here. I mean, I can take brand new frames here and always fix something. This line seems really busy. I want to change that. As it goes here, this, I don't understand what's going on here. So really work on silhouette or something like that. So in Keyframe Pro, you also have your bookmarks. So when you're done with your notes, I can toggle and go quickly through all those sections where I need it and make notes. So you can flip through all those areas that you need. And once you're done, delete all the bookmarks, go to the next shot and do the same thing. All right, now you're identifying the chunks, right? I'm going to do from here to here. That is a section where it flies down. I want to look at this. That is the first interaction with the car. Going back, that might be another section. Once the character is done here, is the forward walk into a close up and then I'm going to start taking notes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm just pretending here, notes, blah, blah, blah, pretending note here and I can again flip through all of this using Keyframe Pro. So I think the combination of Keyframe Pro, actually with a drawing tablet like this, is really powerful. I'm not saying this because it's a sponsor. I know this is conveniently sponsored, but if I go with a mouse, writing things down with a mouse, it's a pain and I can't, I can already barely read my handwriting. It's going to be worse with a mouse. Not with a tablet on screen, much better. With a tablet directly on the screen, to me it's even faster. So ever since I got the walk in one and in the future with a Cintiq that I will review, it's just going to be so much faster. Well, I can really draw directly and it's going to be much more precise. I can write really fast on it, put that in the corner, flip through the notes and then go back in there and take notes and attack the shot in a much more precise and structured manner, which will really save me time. So if you're not doing this already, try it. Maybe it's not for you. Maybe like, eh, I don't need this and it's going to actually slow me down. Maybe. Well, for me it has really worked. I get the notes from my lead, from my soup, or from the client, whatever it is, or if I do something at home, I look at the shot, take the notes and make sure that I just attack exactly that. Because the notes that I'm going to write down, those are the things that really stand out. There's not going to be all the newly polished notes, not yet. That can be your second pass in a different color. These are the shot breaking notes. Red. I want to do this. This would be really good. Orange. If I have time, polishing notes, green. You know what I mean? You can really structure this in many, many layers that I guarantee will save you time. Speaking of saving time, if you want to work with me, to save time on making your shot better, I have to work. I have workshops. You know the drill. You can look at the description. I have all the links. Workshops are open and you can sign up at any time. Speaking of time, you know that if you're watching this whole clip till the very end, you know that I'm very thankful for your patience, for going through the whole thing. And other than that, that's it for me. If you liked this, and you don't want to miss any of those types of uploads, feel free to subscribe and hit that bell button. So you're up to date on all my uploads, which I do every day except weekends. And that is it with my usual end of clip spiel and pitch. Thank you for watching and I will see you in my next clip.