It's been a while

So, it's the 22nd of August today and I am VERY far behind on this blog. But I have decided to change that by trying to write what's going on twice a week from now on (Saturdays and Wednesdays). So, world updates: Coronavirus is still happening, but life is slowly starting to go back to normal, shops are reopening and you can go out wearing masks and socially distancing still. It's nice that things are slowly getting back on track, still a weird world we live in but it's better than it was a few months ago.

It's taken me a long time to get back to my desk to draw and animate. I'm at that horrible phase where I hate what they've made, and it's hard to sit down and look at the film without making myself sad, or upset. I know that a lot of people have that with their work in creative fields, and I'm hoping it goes away soon because the block has been there for a few months now, so I'm trying to get over that and just get on with making it. Just before lock down in February-ish, I had set myself on the goal of having animated most of this film by the end of August, so that when I came back for my second year I would only have a small amount of animation, the colouring and cleaning up to do, and then I could move onto a new project. However, as it stands I have a LOT to catch up on.

I wanted to come back for my second year and make a pitch bible and a pilot episode for a kid's TV show I want to make about the character from my final 3rd year undergrad film Fisherman Dee. Hopefully I will have some time in my second year to work on that as a side project, but I think it now makes more sense to spend second year trying to make this current film a good one. Over lockdown the only creative things I've done is made and sold some t-shirts, edited my showreel and done an animation of fruit flies racing. Better than nothing I suppose but hopefully now I can make up for lost time at the desk.

At the moment I'm doing a mini version of 10x10 to get motivated and back into animating again so I'm trying to do five animations over five days. I really loved how refreshing 10x10 was, it was hard work but fun so I am attempting to recreate that at home (though maybe I should ask Alan if that's okay first?). I will post the 5 animations on here day by day. Unfortunately I can't do them all consecutively as I have some days coming up busy but I look forward to the challenge!

Other than that, in the meantime I've been trying to get ahead on my dissertation and I've been trying to do research. I know this is an animation blog, but I'd like to also look back on it and see here and there what I was thinking dissertation wise too, so future me can see how much it's changed. Currently the plan is to write about how kids (aged 3-11) are shaped by the TV they watch, and how over the decades children's TV has kept up to date with changes and trends in society (and also to see if some of the content they have eg. sudden additions of for example gay characters are from a genuine 'kids should see this as a completely normal thing because it is', or if its to tick boxes to stay relevant. Or both?)

That was a bit of a tangent but it's been nice to keep up with some form of schoolwork as I'm feeling pretty behind schedule. However, the only person that can change that is me so I am going to put my head down and catch up!

So on the whole, this entry has been a bit of a ramble but I'm happy I'm back at it again. Only way is forward now, fingers crossed forward is productive!