I’m the first to admit that 3D animation is hard. It’s frustrating. It’s slow. And it’s so easy to give up. I know, because I’ve given up twice before!
But sometimes we get so obsessed with what we haven’t achieved yet, that we forget how much we’ve already learned just by showing up every day.
Every rig you built, every scene you animate, every mistake you make and correct, those aren’t failures, they’re proof of growth. The only thing really holding you back is not acknowledging how far you’ve already come.
What is one thing you’ve learned on your animation journey that you’re proud of, even if it felt small at the time?
One thing that took me a long time to realize is that the lighting on the character and on the setting don’t need to be the exact same lights, particularly in closeups. In “real life” filming, there are all kinds of lights and reflectors used to add highlights or fill shadows only on the actor. For the longest time I spent a lot of time trying to get all the lights in a scene to work both on the setting and the actor because I was afraid they wouldn’t “match”, but once I realized I could separate the two (and get away with it, within reason), my life, and renders, got a lot better and easier.
