I'm sure not everybody has the same outlook on the world, but as a student the undercurrent of all of my life is how do I make myself better. At drawing. At studying. At math. At technology. At learning. At animation. At videogames. At relationships. At thinking. At focusing.
Along with this background goal is a belief that it is achievable by minute progress after thousands of days. Today the test was focus. I had to animate a large quantity of animation today. I find somethings very easy to focus on, exceptionally easy. But animation is hard. You have to look at your dope sheet, your timing sheet, think of character action, draw stuff, organize papers, organized numbers in your head, write down numbers, look at charts, move papers, flip papers, draw, erase, compare, think, draw, erase, write, think, listen, look, listen, look, draw, erase, move paper, organize paper, draw, erase.
If you don't get the idea of the animation, and the timing, through your head, onto papers, and then into drawings, it just doesn't work. If your not organized it doesn't work. So in the end, the fact is it requires extreme concentration. It is almost a painful amount of concentration because you know exactly how much work you have left to do and it seems immense.
But today, through what I would call sheer power of will, I managed to intensely focus on my work for first a two and a half hour stretch and then another one hour stretch. When I say intense focus, I mean there was nothing else going on, no music, no talking, no anything. Just animating and drinking water. After large sections of animation were complete I would just sit in my chair and take a break, but not get distracted with anything else.
Now how this ties in with what I was saying before is that I believe that not only was this an exercised in animation, it was an exercised in focus. Every time I am able to enter that state, I will get better and better at it. Over years it will hopefully become one of my most potent assets. A deadly unyielding ability to put my mind to things that are hard.
It's like moving a mountain with a soup spoon. You just need to be patient.
Kyler
3 comments:
Any tips on how to achieve this state of focus?
I've heard it called "flow"
I'm curious whether our genetic similarities come out in the ways we behave when in states like this.
I'm going to answer Mory's question with another post.
I actually don't think when I animated I really get into a flow state. That is why it feels so hard for me. When I do enter a flow state is when I do things like shoot my animation under a camera. I get in a zen like trance and could do that type of repetitive work work for hours without noticing time.
How do you behave in your flow states?
Post a Comment