What do I know about Animation?

Today in class we were discovering what we already know about our subject areas, so we know which direction to go in with our education and what skills we need to obtain. We did this exercise by answering a few questions and here are my answers:

 What should I be doing in my subject area?

My subject area is animation, therefore it is clear that I should be mostly creating animations. Animation is creating an illusion of movement to create a film or a cartoon. Creating animation is also strictly tied with creating characters, creating sets, making storyboards or creating a script. It all is quite similar to movie-making.

What skills and knowledge do I need for my subject area?

To be an animator. there are many skills I need to obtain and knowledge I need to have. Firstly, knowing the software. There are many animation softwares and being able to work in them is critical if I want to work in a big company. Also it is important to know the rules of animation and what actually works on screen, for this I think it is good to befriend Disney's 12 principles of animation, that are in a book called "Illusion of life", of course these are not the only rules the animators should know, but they are a good place to start. For my subject area I also need the drawing skill on a high standard to draw my characters or the actual animation. 

What jobs can I get by studying this subject?

The most obvious one is, of course, animator. There are plenty of animation studios in the world that hire animators but also it is possible to become a freelancer. In those animation studios, when creating an animated film, there are many jobs to be occupied, for example: storyboard artist, character designer, production designer and more. Most people occupying those jobs are animators, because to understand how to, for example storyboard, they need to understand animation. Working in an animation studio is like a ladder and at the very end of it is definitely production designer and the director. In this subject area I can also get a job in video games / mobile phone games, like for example Dermot O'Connor whom I researched last term, who worked on a mobile phone game called "Where is my water?".

If I scored myself out of ten, with ten being the highest, how well do I think I know my subject area?

If I was going to score myself, I would give myself a 4. I generally understand what I am trying to learn and what I need to know, but there is still a lot I need to learn and find out. Especially because I would like to specialize in 3D character animation, and I do not have a lot of skill in softwares or how exactly those computer animations created.