Lockdown Term

This is dumb

Why I’m I being forced to do this? I’m struggling as is without being asked to do a mandatory joural in one day.

So. How has this term been?

I’ve hated it. No point being coy.

If it seems like I’ve been doing less work it’s only because I have. Self orgonising and self motivating has never been a strong point for me. And in this term it’s been hard. I’ve been trying to re-engage with what got my fire going in the last term. But it all seems to backfire.

Towards the end of last academic year I was multitasking. Trying to learn many things. And it felt great. I was drawing, animating, writing, reading, exercising, and even doing a little poetry. But I still got stuff done.

But my attempt to bring multitasking back has gone horribly wrong. The extra stuff has grown into a sort of cancer. Taking over my work. First it was my animation experiments. Taking up more and more time. I’ve written several journals about how they went. And in the end it ended up comming in handy when I needed to make an animation for Constellation quickly. And somehow there I was able to get my momentum up to speed in no time. After four days of solid work I had wh I needed. I hoped then I would be done with TV Paint. Didn’t stop me from making two more little experiments next week.

I do like them. But I didn’t need to do them. Just an excuse to try a boil line again.

Despite hoping i could channel the passion I’d had for the Changing Cross animation into my main work now. I found instead it was all going into my writing instead. Into a story the wasn’t even uni work no less!

I think the issue is this. There are many states of working. but the simplest is work that takes no or little hard thought. Were you can just go with it. Like stenciling. My animation work can be like that. Specially is I’m just doing the inbetweens and not worrying about the timing. Even storywriting can be like that if I know everything that has to happen. But above that is a higher geer where to have to think hard about what to do next. A lot of mental walls between you and work. Raw hard thinking. I tend to really get caught in this geer when designing or drawing complicated stuff.

I know I can push through this state were it gets easier. And the drawing and the designing start to become one. But I’ve been scared of this effort. And once again. Scared of trying to get there and failing. My attempts at drawing have been hard and lackluster. Only doing a few lines at a time. Feeling dispirited. And on many days doin no drawing at all. I’m sorry.

So as a result I’m very behind schedule. Still haven’t finished the character designs. No progress on my test painted animation. And haven’t even started my storyboards. (And to Owen’s shagrin, no photographs of my drawings.)

I don’t know what to do. But I’m going to haveto change my tactics so I can get the stuff that matters done.

I’m open for suggestions.

Merry Christmas everyone.