Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Do You Want to Learn During Your Time on the Programme?

Drawing in digital medium

Digital painting is really challenging to me because I do not know the techniques to do so. I tried to watch tutorials online, but I cannot learn them through watching as they have presets that enables them to blend the colours. I admire lot of concept artists' speed paintings and want to get as good as them.

Which animation I enjoy making

I would like to find out what I enjoy making through experimenting different medium as I do not have a particular medium preference at the moment.

Appreciate theories of animation

In my opinion, an animation that successfully engage the audience have certain formula. Hence I want to learn and be aware of the theories of animation so that I can apply it to my animation projects.

Professional practice

I aspire to work in an animation studio based in the UK or France after I graduate, and I want to build my portfolio along the way.

Dealing with people while collaborating

I really enjoy interacting with the people in my class so far, and I cannot wait to collaborate with them. Collaborating is fun if I know how to  get the best of it, and having good people skill will be helpful to avoid conflicts.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Ways I Will Evaluate My Progress?

Reviewing my sketchbooks

As an artist, I bring my sketchbook everywhere and sketch many things. The good thing is that I never tear out a page from my sketchbook because it is a Moleskine; Moleskine is expensive, so I do not have a heart to tear it apart. Therefore, it is relatively easy to check my progress. I just have to flip through my past sketchbooks and reflect on what I have done better than before.

Setting expectation

Expectation makes me start working on a project because I feel obliged to fulfill it. I make expectation through looking at professional's work, and I set a realistic one for myself based on that. At the end of the project, I will usually refer back to my initial expectation compare that to the end product.

 Keep track on what I have been doing

Checklists are essential to discipline myself so that I can finish my work on time. I make them on daily basis by writing each of them on a sticky note. Hence, I can evaluate my day-to-day productivity and reflect on what I can do better for the next day.

Crosschecking my work with the learning outcomes of a module

Despite what I went through on the preparation of working on a project, I am still paranoid about the quality of work I am doing. So, I often look at the learning outcomes which I perceive as guidelines to evaluate whether my work has reached the expectation.

Criticism

I am a little bit extreme feedback seeker because I always go to the most critical friend of mine to give an opinion on my artwork. One one hand it seems like I am hurting myself by doing so. One the other hand, I value such criticism the most because they make me realise where I stand.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Things That I Want to Improve?

Life drawing skill

Living in a relatively conservative country, I really longed for a life drawing session. I have only done life drawing once and I think it benefits me. It trains my drawing speed and makes me appreciate the three dimensional features of the anatomy which will be useful if I am animating.

Maintaining eye contact

I tend to shift my eyes away from a person I converse with because I do not feel comfortable staring at one's eyes for too long. I am fully aware that it is not desirable to do so in the professional world where I have to engage the audience with the ideas I am presenting. Hence, I hope I can work on it while I am in college.

Handling distressed people

I am no good in dealing with distressed people, and might as well ignore them so that I do not do anything wrong that will tarnish our relationship. However, I feel bad not consoling them, and I really want to improve on this skill as it will help me to deal with difficult situations that might happen during group projects.

Be active in creative events around UK

Since I am in the UK, I want myself to go to many art festivals, comic convention, film festivals and animation festivals. It will be a great experience to have because it is where professional creatives congregate and share what they are doing to the world. Moreover I try to be more active on volunteering in such events so that I might be able to meet people with the same interest.  

Being an active learner

My right hand is like a recorder as it busily scribbles exactly what the lecturers said during classes. Nonetheless, I cannot make sense of the information  because I simply cannot multi task; I cannot think and write at the same time. Despite being really challenging to improve on this since it has been my bad habit for as long as I can remember, I will try to participate more in class.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

What Skills do I Think are My Strengths?

I am not a perfectionist.

According to myself, not being a perfectionist is good. It gives myself more time to make and experiment on other things.  

I enjoy research.

(What I mean by research is analysing while indulging myself in animation feature films, cartoons, anime and artbooks.)
The thing I love the most about studying animation is that I can see how the theories that I learn in school are applied in the animated films that I watch.

Doodling is my specialty.

Should I put this as my strengths? because the rest of the people in the Animation course might say the same thing and it will not look as special anymore. However, I do not have my own specific doodle style because my style is highly influenced by what I like at a certain point of time. I have a flexible style, which might be a strong point of myself as an animator because animators must adapt to the art style of the animation they are making.

I adopt healthy lifestyle.

I do not consider myself as an athlete but I do like to exercise, to eat a balanced diet and to have enough sleep. I consider this as a strength because having the will to do so at a young age is impressive because people normally do not do that. Furthermore, this strength of mine will help me to not overwork myself and it encourages me to plan ahead to so that I can get my job done in time and get my sleep.

I am open to feedback.

I learnt this skill when I was working on my 'O' Level Art coursework because we must work in a studio every time as we are not allowed to do our work home. So I overcome my fear of being judged, and I started to show my work to people in the class, and they give feedback which really benefits me as I would know what I can improve on and what is good about my artworks. Now, feedback is really precious to me.

Who Am I? Why Am I Here? What Do I Want to Learn?

Why I Chose to Study Animation at Leeds College of Art?

Working with images is all I have wanted in life however it is just two years ago when I found myself mesmerised by the work of big animation companies. The film that inspires me to study animation is How to Train Your Dragon Series and Big Hero 6, which are both coming of age animation films that soothe me when I am down and motivate me to try a lot of amazing things in life. I really hope that I can make an animation with such genre because I want to make the audience feel the same way as I do when I watched such animation films.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) by DreamWorks Animation, United States.

Big Hero 6 (2014) by Walt Disney Animation Studio, United States.

Animation skills do not come over night. Although it is as straightforward as making a character or an object to move frame by frame, it has complicated theories which I do not really understand until they are taught by the lecturers. This experience has reiterated that I come to the college to actively learn and to experiment so that I can understand the animation making process.

On that note, I choose the college because drawing could not get me anywhere in the animation industry as I need to know how to use and access the equipment used in the production processes of different media used for animation. Leeds College of Art (LCA) offers a broad range of up to date equipment essential to make professional animation films hence it is a perfect place for me to try out some of them. 

In addition, the curriculum schedule helps us students to pursue our own interest as they entrust us with a lot of independent study session when we can have access to all of the college equipment and resources related to Animation.

The college also provides opportunities for me to collaborate with people from the college, not just within the Animation course, which really suits my need. It is quite rare to find such opportunities in animation schools and colleges around the world as the courses are usually exclusive. Even worse, there are those which are internally competitive. As a student, I prefer a positive and friendly environment, like what LCA offers, for learning as I easily stressed out from competition.