Recently whilst we have been thinking about putting yourself in to the industry, I came across a small issue. Though I should be happy about it, I think that this made me quite anxious for a long time.
Back in August, I started an entry for the Overwatch student animation festival which was a month to animate based on a prompt, on your own or in a team, and then it was to be submitted (in my case) in the September. I ended up misreading a lot of information about the submission such as the frame rate (i used 24 and it was 60) and also the length of the animation (Mine was 30 seconds and it had to be 60 max) University always says there's no harm asking for feedback. So I sent overwatch my animation and said that I know it's not eligible but if they could give me feedback outside of the contest limits, that would be awesome.
Apparently because of covid 19, overwatch decided to extend the duration of the September month submissions until January, to give people time. But they only publicly advertised this in January and they also added mine in to the mix of contestants - which I found out after the submissions had closed.
So not only was mine shorter than the rest, not complete (I didn't name it because I just wanted feedback, hence the 'Sigma Final'), but also everyone probably spent a lot more care and time on theirs.
I think being rated against others really lowered my self esteem, especially because I did this in august and I think just doing the group project in December this year has improved my skills drastically from this and I know I could do better. It is a little wounding knowing I'm ranked last by over 100 votes, and the public not knowing this wasn't complete.
It was also a little painful because I was getting YouTube adverts of the other contestants animations, so I knew people were watching mine in between their YouTube binging. And even if people liked it, I didn't have any contacts on it because I didn't quite understand how far these submissions were going in the summer.
It's taught me a good lesson in reading instructions at every possible stage through a production and not just the start and end, in case they change or add a more updated version like this time.
It also showed me that I have a very supportive group of friends around me. When I first realised mine was up on the website, I only had 9 votes against others that had 50 - 100. But my friends helped share it and voted and it reached 116 before the voting closed. I am very grateful to them, and the people who liked my poor attempt.
As unfortunate as it is that I probably won't get any credit or traction from this, I am glad this accident happened. I now am very cautious about instructions for our Giffgaff 504 brief. I understand how strong the effects of self hate can be, and that other people can still like your work, even if it's half hearted and not to your best standard. I know people around me, my friends and followers like my drawing art style in an animated form, which I haven't really done yet in animation. And I know the importance of advertising yourself and your contacts.
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