Max the Mutt Animation School Blog
This is the place to stay on top of what we are doing at Max The Mutt Animation School
Don’t forget to think! Education is an active pursuit and you are an important part of the process. To get the most out of your education you need to be an active participant. Think about each assignment in a course: what is the point of the assignment? If you are attending a program with a well thought out curriculum there is a reason for every assignment, a skill that you are teaching yourself by going through a certain process. Do the assignment the instructor gave you keeping the point of it in mind! Don’t make assignments more complex than they are, but don’t skip steps.
As you progress through a program, instructors will be aware of what you have already been taught. They are assuming that you have a body of knowledge, so don’t begin every course as if you know nothing. Be aware of the knowledge and skills you have already acquired and use everything you know to solve the next set of problems. There is no point in taking a course in design and composition if you don’t use what you’ve learned in every subsequent course. There’s no point studying human anatomy unless you know how to use that knowledge to improve the quality of your drawings of people.
Every time you enter a studio or begin to work on an assignment, think! Center yourself. Do some deep breathing. Review in your own mind what the next drawing, or the next project, is about. What do you need to think about? In what order? What do you already know that will help you solve the problems? Do you have the appropriate materials to work with? Should you do research first? Play to win.
Your education is not about grades and doing what you think the instructor wants. It’s about acquiring knowledge and skills that you will own and continue to develop over a life time! We cannot teach you everything simultaneously, so we devise a series of courses, each designed to teach specific skills. To become an artist, in the end you will need to drive all the horses at once.
Eventually, your subconscious will do a lot of the work for you, but in the first years you have to use active mental energy to remind yourself what you need to be concerned with to have a drawing or project succeed.
To be successful you must take responsibility for your own education. Think about process and don’t skip steps. However, do ask questions if and when you don’t understand why you are being asked to go through a certain process. Good instructors will be happy to explain both “why” and “how.”
We are now beginning the second half of first semester! Eat well and get a walk in every day. You will be able to think better with the right “fuel” (not junk food or cigarettes or too much caffeine) and your body will help you to stay positive if you also make sure you get some exercise every day ( a 25 minute brisk walk will do the trick). Take pleasure in the fact that through your hard work and passion to learn, you are developing yourselves. Most things that are worthwhile are difficult to achieve. Expect to have your share of work that you wish was better or need to redo. Take it all as part of the process. Remind yourself of all that you understand and can do now that you couldn’t do before you started on this path. Just be sure that you are doing your part, and aren’t working on automatic pilot!
Last but not least, keep your sense of humor and support each other. We are all in this together.
