#13

Hello Jan 2012 version of myself. Wait to get a haircut, the one you get over spring break will be totally awesome.  To make your life easier for this animation class do your blog posts earlier in the week. Aim for Thursday. You drink on Friday and Saturday nights causing you to either forget about blog posts or make angry ones without spell checking them.

                Rent equipment and do everything in advance because media services runs out of stuff. It is a gamble to shoot stop motion movies the night before you have to return it. You could always pay the five dollars to keep stuff longer and screw someone else’s project up but that would be a little douche bag like. Plus five dollars means a lot to you poor little media arts student.

                Learn that story boards are awesome. They just plan everything out for you. Thinking about stuff as you go takes forever.  Story boards are like rough drafts. You can revise scenes and come up with better ideas. They’re super awesome.  Don’t just scribble a story board the night before they’re due and scan them in to you blog. Take time on them and it will be worth it later.

                Weekly projects aren’t as intense as you think they are. They’re worth a small portion of your grade, still do them but don’t make them the most important thing ever. They don’t even take up as much time as you expect them to. Except for the first 2d ball one. That one takes forever because you will try to figure out after effects. You can watch videos on how to use programs though. Contrary to popular belief tutorials teach you a lot more then blindly clicking around. The toon boom tutorial videos were very informative but be sure to watch them about fifty times.

                Every movie will take you longer than expected. More days and hours and days than you plan for. Try to do more things in advance. Just try to make a better plan. Think about how you will do something before you go to do it and what you want. Just don’t take naps or play your xbox 360 anymore to plan ahead and stop procrastinating. You’ll never ever be productive after a nap. Trust me. You wake up feeling sleepier than you were in the first place then you will forget about what you were supposed to be working on before your nap.