Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want to learn?

"Why did I chose to study on this programme?"
Back when I was studying Fine Art at college and even further back, studying for my GCSE in Art; I found it frustrating how stylized work was automatically classed as 'too cartoony' by tutors, teachers and even students. How everything we did or attempted to do ended up being more like trying to make your work as 'realistic' looking as possible. Which honestly, after 7 years? I really wanted to try something new. That's the reason why I wanted to study animation.

I've always drawn strange and often weird things, imagined worlds and thought of characters; but I've NEVER had the opportunity to pour my brain out onto paper like this before. And I'm so, SO excited to start working. I also found compared to other places, the environment within Leeds college of art is always so friendly and fun; not at all intimidating. Not only that, I found that the tutors generally felt passionate about their students work and had this constant exicitment when talking about what they taught or even just wanted to chat about.

''What do I want to learn during my time on the programme?''
I really want to improve my skills in traditional CEL animation further, but I would love to experiment with stop motion and even 3D animation. I also want to learn more about post-production, such as concept artwork and story boarding. And even script writing.

''What skills do I think are my strengths?''
I feel quite comfortable around the pallet of watercolours and acrylics, as far as painting goes; And drawing itself, of course. Also I've already done some animation for a past project. Which involved a mixture of story boards and hand drawn CEL animation. I like to think I'm slightly amusing, so hopefully I can come up with some good scripts to make at least one person chuckle.

''What are the things that I want to improve?''
In the next three years I want to improve many things. But most of all, I want to improve how I capture movement; Both in my animation and illustrations. And I would also like to further improve my life drawing skills. I'd love some day to work as a story board artist or even traditional paper and pencil animator, even if the future of traditional animation is unclear right now. But I'm also looking forward to developing skills within computer animation along with 3D.

''What ways will I evaluate my progress?''
Along with sketchbooks, this blog seems like the perfect thing for looking back at old work and projects. Just clicking back a few pages on my old 'art blogs' I can already notice an improvement in my illustrations. Also looking back at my first animation on youtube I can clearly see areas where I'd like to go back and improve it. I think just looking back at old posts online and old sketchbooks, I'll be able to clearly see progress within my work.