 Welcome back to an FNA and today's topic is you get what you put in and that means I want to take a look at what the students need to bring to a class and what they need to do beyond the technical aspects. Meaning I did a series about the most common animation mistakes. I put all those links in the description you can check it out. This is not about pops and arcs and spacing and stuff like that. This is the attitude you bring to a class. In just for context I've been teaching for over 14 years and I'm teaching at an English mentor. I'm teaching at the Academy of Art University. I have my own workshops. I do a bunch of stuff in terms of teaching and I see a lot of different kind of students and in different kind of environments as well. So this is kind of a bird's-eye view of what I've been seeing this year in the last couple years is kind of like a summary of stuff that I've been observing and something that I'm not sure is talked about enough. I don't know a lot of times we as teachers we want to focus on technique, workflow, spacing and arcs and stuff like that. It's not just technical. It's also about the effort you put in which I've talked about before again link in the description with more about that and if you're immediately going yeah but I'm busy and I can't always do whatever the teacher's asked me to do this clip is not for you. Everybody's going to have a very specific situation and a specific set of circumstances. So if you have a job while you're taking a class, if you have a family you have to take care of, you mean like everybody's going to have certain elements that will prevent you from giving 110% to the class. Totally get it also super normal and this is not what this clip is about. So if you have anything where you take specific sports classes for instance right and you're on tour you're moving around you got to do stuff you have other circumstances and obligations that will take time away from your assignments I totally get it and that's not I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the students who have the time who have decided to take a class and who are not putting in the work that they should be putting in. That's like roughly the framework. So get ready for a truth bomb because there's a lot to unpack. So one thing you have to consider students are your expectations and this is something that I've experienced and I thought when I was a student 20 years ago you go to school you get a certain material whatever like whatever you have you think that if I do this I'm going to get this out of it makes sense but the thing is if you are just doing the bare minimum you have to realize that you're going to get the bare minimum back which is what the title is about you get what you put in because you have to understand not every teacher is going to go above and beyond in terms of teaching and presenting material it sounds like I'm talking about me and I am but I'm going to say it's true I really try to put in more work than the curriculum is asking of me because not every student is going to learn the same way and some schools are better than others in terms of accommodating and adding workshops and just additional material to make sure that the student can learn in their way and progress in their classes because some people love video material some people prefer written some people prefer a live conversation so there are many different ways how you have to approach a student and there I say I really try to at one point if a student is struggling I'm going to completely ignore the curriculum and adjust the assignment so that if you see that the student is struggling maybe instead of a complicated lip sync assignment you can kind of down to a bottom mechanics assignment or even more down to the basics to really make sure that the basics are there and understood before moving on but again not every teacher is going to do that so as you as a student if you're watching this and you're signing up for any school anywhere break a mortar online workshop whatever you do you have to kind of do your research and see how that material is going to be presented then what is expected of you and the reality is that sometimes some institutions cannot change to accommodate you you have to change to accommodate the system that sounds like a bummer and of course it is but that's also the reality you can't just step into a school a class and expect that everything will be tailored towards you I try to do that but I'm also restricted within the confines of where I'm teaching this could be academy mentor my own workshops it's just there's always a set of circumstances that will not a hundred percent aligned with what you need and what you want but that's just the reality of how it goes and at the end of the day it's down to you as a student to make the choice to go above and beyond and take in the material that is given to you and then put in the work you have to listen to the feedback and the feedback can be subjective and objective right if you're going to some acting choices you there's room to debate but if there are notes about technical things pops and arcs you have to implement those notes before you can move on and at every step you always have to take an honest look at where am I at as a student what's my skill set what's my level and am I taking on too much and do I need to readjust my expectations of where I am what I want to get out of the class out of the assignment and am I ready to take on that assignment or do I need to kind of scale back the work in the expectations because I'm not quite there yet in terms of understanding the basic principles sounds very broad but again I'm trying to fit it to a view of you know maybe a general view of students who are potentially hopefully watching this it really comes down to you taking an honest look at where you're at so if you have been placed into a specific class specific topic this could be whatever whatever this year your classes advanced animation lip sync human acting creature acting whatever it is you have to look at okay I was placed in this class am I ready to take on what the curriculum is asking me to do and if you at any point have questions and I've talked about this before I had to previously about that you have to ask questions you have to analyze where you're at of course that's the teacher's job as well and mainly they have to look at the students and go maybe try this do that and guide the students but you as a student you have to be open to that guidance to that feedback and then potentially step back and readjust your expectations so let's say there's a system where you're handing in your assignments and you get grades versus assignments there might be a system that is tracking the grades the percentage of that and is based on that trends of where your grades are going it's projecting where your next grade is going to be potential now if you are thinking that your next assignment is going to get the grade based on that projection that estimation and not based on the work you're putting in then you really have to align your expectations and potentially your sense of entitlements if that makes sense and if that sounds like a subtweet type of thing it is because this is not how the real world works you will be in a class where there are different assignments and those assignments will vary in terms of complexity you might start off this is pretty cool I'm doing a bouncing ball I'm doing a pendulum this is all great and your next assignment is suddenly much more body mechanics heavy and you think that well I'm doing well and this is going to be great my next assignment is going to be great my grade is going to be great as well everything is awesome and then you do your body mechanic shop and then your grade tanks because you're just not quite ready and if your reaction to that is to complain subtweet again that's your truth bomb right there you got to reevaluate where you're at currently in your mind set of what you think you're going to get when you put in a certain amount of work again I'm trying to phrase this generally in a broad way and you also have to accept the fact that you're potentially not ready to do a 20 second two character lip sync piece and that you might have to go back to bouncing balls because you can't move forward if your principles are not rock solid and there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with bouncing balls I mean it sounds boring but it's such a good assignment that will teach you so much and you can do a lot with static bouncing balls as in static which is the ball in terms of physics and you have your squash and stretch you have a ball with a tail you can go through an obstacle course you can add two legs to the ball there's so much you can put on top of each assignment to make it more complex but it's a digestible way of going through each principle and learning the basics you don't want to go from a bouncing ball to a crazy body mechanics lip sync assignment you just you need to go and progress step by step but you also need to acknowledge to yourself that you're not ready potentially to move forward so don't rush things and once the class starts you have to take advantage what the class is off meaning if you have specific lecture material go through that material if you have questions about these you have to ask questions if there's a setup in your whatever class you're choosing where there might be like a live q&a there might be a live class in terms of giving feedback there might just be a short set amount of time for just class time to talk whatever it is if it's something where it's live and you can get immediate feedback take advantage of that and ask questions because you want to work at the top companies and maybe you just need to put in more work on your own again is that fair no and is this a harsh lecture yes but at the same time i'm not going to sugarcoat things i see so many students each year and there's such a range of how students approach a class in terms of the extra work that they're doing and even if they're doing really well some students still go above and beyond and look out for other material they ask a bunch of questions they're always trying to adjust their workflow and their way of approaching an animation and they're acting choices they shoot a bunch of references there's so much more you need to do in order to excel and have a top-notch demo reel because every time every class that starts in this koopie academy mentor like whatever i do i always ask what's your goal like where would you like to work and of course people love you know the work that you see online and streaming theaters whatever it is and it's usually done by bigger-ish companies again there's awesome work by smaller companies but from what i'm seeing 80% 90% of students they want to go to pixar disney sony and it's mostly feature animation studios games has come up so it's games in the future animation but the companies that are mentioned are top-notch companies so if that is your goal and it's a good goal to have i had the same dreams like you can always dream big but don't dismiss smaller companies you can always start smaller and then move around as a whole of the lecture about that but you have to be again honest with yourself that if you say i want to work at xyz top company well what does that mean what is the amount of work you have to put in because if you want to work there and you're unwilling to do nitty gritty frame by frame work where you adjust fingers you adjust foot falls and compression you really look at the arcs and pinpointing everything like elbows and nose and ears and you go in there and you loop your shot and you really work on this until you're so tired of this and you do it again if that's not your mindset in there you're not approaching your classes like that how are you going to get them real at the end of the class that will be good enough so that you can work at those big companies that you want to work for so you get what you put in and i'm going to repeat this again i know there are circumstances where you can't and i'm actually i have students right now where they can't they're doing other stuff and there's only a certain amount of time they have per week to put into the assignment i totally get it and of course as a teacher you have to adjust you can't expect more when someone only has so much time but then as a student it's also your responsibility to communicate if you submit your work and there are no notes you don't give any type of context and you don't tell the teacher how much time you have it's also going to look like you just have all the time in the world again there's a certain guessing game that you should avoid and again be honest with yourself if you have time if you sign up for a class and you have time to do the homework you don't have extra jobs you don't have people to take care of you have time for the class and you're not putting in the full amount of time and effort in terms of learning things asking questions putting in the frame by frame work then why bother again that's my my harsh opinion like what's the point then why do you spend so much money because a lot of schools are expensive especially brick and mortar then you might have to do that because of visa issues again i'm a foreigner as well i went through that as well but if you're there and you're spending a bunch of money which is probably your parents or someone else you got to take advantage of where you're at and put in the extra work or at least the work that is asked of you i'm even going to scale it down to that but if you're there you're doing the minimum amount of work and then you're going to complain about your grades i then i don't know what to tell you again you get what you put in and if that sounds like a rant it is but it's a rant aimed at everybody to be honest this is my honest opinion this is aimed at everybody and anything that you this has to be about animation this can be in any field yes you can shop anywhere for any class or anything that whatever you want to be a carpenter you want to be an electrician you want to do some sound design whatever you want to do i don't know but if you're going to do like the smallest amount of work what are you going to expect to get back from this so if you're still watching this is a longer clip i'm like you know brands can get also get boring but anyway so if you're a student that's going to take your next class and again it's going to be spring winter however however it's named in your whatever school system you're in be honest with yourself where are you at what is your skill set what kind of help do you need and then as you start the class take advantage of every source material every lecture everything you get devour that and you're gonna have questions i highly doubt you're not gonna have questions then ask questions and if you have a one-on-one time with your teacher this could be one-on-one as in like a live thing even with other classmates but take advantage of that anything that's given to you in terms of extra help if you don't take this and then you complain about the class that is your problem that's your fault i'm not saying that you as a student you have to be perfect and do everything right because you can't and either do i even at this point i make a bunch of mistakes but it's more about the minimum amount of effort you have to put into a class and that's what i mean with you get what you put in might be harsh or not but it's the truth you want to work at the top companies you have to put in top work now that top work is always going to be different for everybody again this is i'm trying to generalize this and i know someone's going to watch yeah but for me i know i know that's going to be different for you and i know it's going to be different for so many other people i'm trying to generalize this while at the same time also trying to be specific this makes no sense but i wish i could just simplify it into don't be lazy and show up for work but that is such a need your reaction to each individual situation that student is in and i know i understand that so take whatever i've been ranting about take those things and see how that applies to you right so it's not like a blanket criticism of everybody that's obviously not what it is but at least be honest with yourself in terms of okay well those things he just said that doesn't apply to me because i can't do that but i could do the other thing he said and maybe i should really lean into this and do more so again it's up to you you're also an adult maybe maybe you're young random but you should have the the self-awareness of applying some of the things that i said to your own situation and that just summarily reject everything because again everything's very subjective everybody has their own specific situation so take what you can from this maybe it's also nothing i know hopefully i didn't waste your time completely that being said if you are willing to put in more work that's like a weird segue into my workshops i do have workshops and that's exactly what i'm doing my workshops i try to adjust my critiques and my feedback for people who take my workshops so that it's specific to them so if you are in a school system where it's not specific enough it's also one of the reasons why i do this workshop so i can really work one-on-one with you and adjust the feedback adjust the assignments and just give you specific help that's tailored towards you your situation in your shop that's my pitch that's what the workshop does link in the description you can sign up at any time let's talk about this you don't have to sign up right away let's talk about if that's something for you or not so thanks for watching if you're still watching and uh yeah comment if any questions concerns anything that's make this a discussion i don't know but it's not going to be my last rant because it's always going to be something new with students and how things are progressing and changing in this whole crazy landscape of the animation history but that's it for me thanks for watching and hopefully i'll see you in my next clip