• Is animation underappreciated?
• Animation! An art of passion and patience.
• The art of animating.
• Are animations art?
• Animation appreciation
• Recognizing passion and hard work
• “Is that it?”
• What is so complicated about animation?
• Passionimation
• Seeing the world from a different screen.

When I explained all of this to my sister and she seemed to grasp the concept a bit better. Even though she doesn’t watch animation or plays video games regularly, she was able to see the amount of work that was put into my project. I’m glad that she could understand the concept, and I wish to do the same with anyone else who has read this article. Hopefully the next time you go see an animated movie, or play a video game, you can see it for what it is and appreciate it a little bit more.

• Anecdote: my sister unimpressed with my animation
• Difficulties of animation; using reference (Hard work and patience)
• Comprehend what you’re doing (Passion, ability to learn, to empathize)
• Examples of professional animators struggling (Hard work, Passion)
• Why animations aren’t only for kids

I added a personal experience and some analogies.

Animated movies are for both kids and adults. Many of them win Oscars, for being brilliant movies. Almost every Pixar film has won Animated Feature Film. Many 3D animation movies have underlying messages to them. Zootopia is a message about two natural enemies teaming up to defeat the bigger evil. Another movie, like Wall-E can have a message about pollution. Shrek covers the journey of someone being able to accept himself. Inside out tackles how emotions affect a person psychologically. There are also some adult jokes slipped into kids movies most of the time. Animated movies are always fun to watch as an adult, and shouldn’t be considered as only kids movies. All that being said, some of my friends still think that animated movies are for children. I remember wanting to go see frozen 2 at the theater one time, but they refused to go because they thought it was for little kids and would rather see an action movie. As much as I understand their point of view, I believe they are mistaken, and even if it was a children’s movie, it doesn’t make it an non-enjoyable one. It’s like judging a book by its cover. Its not because the book has a colorful and fun cover that its contents wouldn’t be any interesting for someone over the age of twelve. There is always something that can be pulled from an animated movie, whether its simple enjoyment from a good story, learning something new, or seeing a message in it.

Rewrite the lead

My friends believe that watching an animated movie is childish and that’s its made only for kids. They would always go for the fast action paced movie with blood and violence, as they think its a more appropriate movie for their age group. However animated movies are made for everyone. Some are actually intended for kids, but a lot of them are made for everyone to enjoy, as it contains an interesting story, morals, and even some adult jokes. A “Kids” movie can be appreciated by adults and they shouldn’t be looked upon as childish.

Even the best animators struggle in animation sometimes. According to this source, Mike Hollingsworth, supervisor director for BoJack Horseman, said that his most difficult moment was when he needed to animate a speedboat race. It was a very specific thing to animate, not something you learn in school. Naturally, he had to look for reference and apparently had to animate the same scene twelve times over. This happens to every single animator.
For example, according to this source, Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation for Frozen and animator supervisor for on tangled, and Bolt.  He himself said that there was a very challenging scene in Tangled where Flynn is dying in Rapunzel’s arms. He said that he thought he was good at animating subtle emotion, but that was on another level. Another example, David Stoddolny, animated a 3 second shot that took a month. It was an elaborate fighting shot with Po and the wolves from Kung Fu Panda.
All these examples really demonstrate how much work is put into some animations for even very short scenes. Some scenes that last a few seconds can take weeks or months to animate. When even some of the most respected and talented animators like Lino DiSalvo find animation complicated, you know that it’s a skill that takes a lifetime to perfect and should be appreciated a little more.

Whenever you do anything at all, using reference is always a good idea. Whether you’re doing art, sport or math, using something that already exists can help you understand the subject. Same thing goes for animators, most of the time they don’t animate from the top of their head. They use reference, or they get up and act it out, or even film themselves. Similarly to a painter who does a sketch of the subject before painting it, to comprehend the shapes. As a boxer who watches footage of his opponent to understand his movements, to get the timing of his hits right. Same for animation, reference is important to get your timing right to make a nice natural art piece, because nobody wants to see a bad fight, a bad painting, or a bad animation.

First hand scene

I remember my family asked me to show them my school projects one day in the summer. I’ve shown my mom my projects before, but my sister has never seen any or almost none of my works. The animation I showed them was a ballet animation I did at the end of my third semester. It turned out very nicely, it was a total of around four to five seconds. When it ended, my sister asked: “Is that it?”. She’s not a person who watches animations or plays video games. So I understand that she doesn’t understand the amount of work put into a short animation like that. It really opened my eyes to how some people don’t really understand or value animation for what it is. My mom, luckily, told her that an animation like that takes a lot of work and time, so I’m glad that she could understand, but I believe it was because I’ve shown her my works before. If that was the first time she saw my animation too, I strongly believe she would have had the same reaction as my sister. As long as she at least understood that an animation takes time, I’m happy.

Imagine yourself are the student having eight or nine classes and also have other responsibilities.

College students just feel like they don’t have a passion for their program and so procrastinate to then be drowning in work.

College students are not lazy, they just have other responsibilities, like some take care of their children.

“those details that are crucial in an animation that makes it stand out”

Crucial: decisive or critical, of great importance. It means what i thought it meant, I didn’t find any oother defenitions.

other words for crucial: essential, vital, necessary, pivotal.

Step One

The proudest moment in my life is probably when I flew to Japan to participate in the karate world championship. I’ve been doing karate for a long time now, and my teacher has built a small team starting in 2017 to go and compete in Japan. We trained a lot, I went to the usual classes, so four times a week, plus an extra class for the special training. We did fundraisers to collect enough money to fund the trip, since it was pretty expensive. We had to pay for the flight, the hotels. the food, etc. We were around twelve or thirteen competitors in the team, the rest of the people were coaches and parents. The stadium was very big and held around three or four thousand people. By the way, I got to see the Olympic stadium being built, it was right next to it and it was huge. In the end of the competition, no one from our team won or was even close to it. In my case, it wasn’t so much because of the lack of training, but the enormous pressure on my shoulders. I was the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life and it showed in my fighting. I couldn’t fight calmly and I lost because of it. However I learned a lot from my experience and it still makes me proud that I was able to participate in a competition of that scale, since they didn’t select just anyone to go. The journey was amazing and even though we all lost, we won a great lesson that we will never forget.

Step Two

My karate teacher organised a small elite team to go participate in a competition in Japan in 2017. I trained five days a week for around a year and participated in the fundraisers that were held for funding the trip. When we arrived at the stadium, it was big and there were a few thousand people there. It added to the stress I already had a ton of. When it came time for me to fight, I felt all the pressure on me and I couldn’t clear my head. I fought badly, like if I haven’t trained for this whole time. I lost the fight because of it. I was upset at the time, but looking back at it now I know that this experience has thought me a lot and I am proud to have been part of such an amazing and unique journey.

Step Three

The proudest moment in my life is when my karate teacher chose his best student, which was me of course, to fly to Japan. Of course, since I’m a black belt, I’m one of the best in Canada, winning several competition here. My team and I trained five times a week, not like I needed it, since I had the talent to win without training. I participated in fundraisers so other people could pay for me, because I didn’t want to pay for myself. When we got to Japan with the other people’s money, we got a nice hotel and relaxed. On the big day, we saw the stadium we were in and it was bigger than my ego. There were so many people there, we had to wait hours in a line outside to get in, and it was raining cats and dogs. Once I was in the ring fighting, all the pressure got to me and drilled me into the ground. I felt heavy and got exhausted just by thinking about the fight. The great Canadian champion lost that day, but not because of his capabilities, but because he was still new to traveling to different countries and was scared to show his skills off to the new audience. In the end, I was still proud of myself for being this amazing guy who represented the whole of Canada by simply being there, in Japan. I don’t expect anyone to thank me for my deeds, but I know that they mean to do it deep down in their hearts.