Effective Presentation tips

From this Seminar, I learnt a few things that I did not know to include in presentations.

One of the first things mentioned was that a presentation is an opportunity for constructive feedback from peers, and that a presentation should convey meaningful info concisely. When I have done presentations in the past, I have never introduced myself concisely and spoke about my aims and the subject that I am working on.

Another technique that I learned and hope to be good at is recovering from a mistake. From past experiences, making a mistake can really throw me off my whole presentation and cause me to sort of shut down. I am aware that it is still early on, but hopefully I will become comfortable with presentations, and be able to speak coherently in front of a group of people.

I found the presentation helpful, however I was already aware of quite a few of the tips, but I wouldn't say that I have used the tips before. My presentations are usually well planned, and I usually feel confident until I started speaking. I have found post-it notes and key cards helpful when revising or practising in front of people, however I find it difficult to stick to one point at a time and speak slowly. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can develop my presentation skills to a higher level.

Brief review on the 12 Principles of animation presentation

After analysing and understanding the 12 principles of animation I have begun to fully understand animating motions, movement and timing. I found that the presentation was really helpful, I had heard of the 12 Principles beforehand, however I hadn't really had someone explaining them to me.

I already had common knowledge of the first principle; Squash and Stretch. However the second, Anticipation, I had never really thought about thoroughly. Whenever I have drawn characters in action I had never really had the thought that "Anticipation is the opposite of direction". Personally I think that this saying is really important and I'm positive that I will always refer to this one especially.

Another principle that I really liked was the idea of exaggeration to demonstrate forces and making my animations more appealing, and also that its not about making things bigger. I enjoy how with these rules, you can achieve clarity and strength in your finished animation from referencing each principle.

Overall, briefly studying the 12 Principles of animations has helped put into perspective multiple goals to aim for and touch up on within my future animation processes.

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

Why you chose to study this programme?

1. Firstly, I have always had an interest and passion towards animation. From a young age I was creating flip books and being fascinated by weird cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy, which is probably one of my main inspirations because of how strange and different it is.
2. I also really want to develop my animation skills as I've only ever experimented with stop-motion and flip-books. 
3. I feel that I took this course because my dad has always been interested in animation also, he is extremely creative, and has always encouraged me to work towards my more artistic side. 
4. The college and course itself seems stable, committed and assuring towards pupils that strive to improve their skills. 
5. Because I come form a really small town, I have always been fascinated by bigger better cities that have an atmosphere and the fact that there's always something artistic going on and always something interesting to do drove me to come and live here.

What do you want to learn during your time on the course?

1. I want to discover how to animate in a style that best represents me, and in a way that I feel most confident. For example, at the moment I'm more comfortable with hand drawing my work rather than using tablets. I also feel quite confident in stop-motion as my last unit on my course I created a stop motion animation using dolls.
2. Explore a range of techniques and processes of animation and fully understand the overall process that is creating a successful animation.
3. I also want to create a great understanding on how the industry works, how I can progress and develop animations that people can enjoy and also be happy and successful and I feel that this course is well-rounded and will help me develop these skills.
4. Context and meaning behind a lot of animations is also something I wish to create a great understanding of. I also want to develop a great vocabulary for analysing pieaces of animation.
5. I also want to develop my character design skills, and creating a story that I can successfully animate.

What skills do you think are your strengths?

1. I feel that I am able to talk coherently during discussions if the groups are small and quiet and the subject is something I fully understand. If the groups are larger, I tend to shrink back into myself, and become quiet.
2. I feel that I have the ability to access situations and map out what needs to happen in order to achieve a goal to a standard that I feel is high. I usually do this through a process of bullet points and then go on to map out in my diary how much free time I have, and figure out when these tasks can be done.
3. I'm open to criticism and discussions over my work in order to improve. I enjoy recieving feedback so I can further demonstrate that I am capable of understanding what needs to be done from someone else's eyes. I find that I benefit more from one to one conversations rather than large group discussions as I feel that I can get more of an understanding having one person at a time discussing my work.
4. I always ask questions to avoid making mistakes from the start. I always want to make sure that I fully understand what is asked from me.
5. I am quite a focused individual when it comes to something that I enjoy, especially animation. I'm good at avoiding distractions when I feel that I need to strive towards an objective.

What are the things you want to improve?

1. I want to develop the skill of being able to talk in a larger group  because I find that I become quiet and reserved when discussing in groups of larger than 3 unless I'm already comfortable with them people.
2. I also want to become more confident when doing presentations and using clear language to ensure that people understand what I'm trying to communicate. I usually get overwhelmed and I don't think through what I'm saying, and my mind usually doesn't process what other people are trying to say.
3. Develop my skills using a tablet. I've only recently started to use them during inductions, I find them quite hard to articulate and translating the images i have in my head to the computer screen has also been hard.
4. I also want to improve my handwriting. I can understand my handwriting, but other people struggle because it is messy and confusing.
5. I also want to improve how to document processes like animating using photoshop so I can refer to these little tutorials so I'm not constantly asking other people. I usually do them for small processes but not with larger processes like animating with photoshop because of how complicating it can be. I have been taking notes during my inductions, but they're messy and confusing.

What ways will you evaluate your progress?

1. I feel very comfortable using sketchbooks to evaluate my progress because how they clearly present my creative process and I can easily see the progress that I've made.
2. I have recently got into the habit of analysing things in the format of blogs. I found it hard initially because I  had never done it before, but now I feel comfortable and confident with blogging my progress.
3. From my last course, it was expected to carry around an "Reflection" book. after each session or experimentation, it was mandatory to evaluate your progress. What you've learned, how you can improve, what is left for you to do and how you can improve. This helped me a lot because I was able to take a step back, and review my progress after each session. at the end of each week, we would have to do a 250-500 word evaluation of our progress from that week, and plan what was needed to be done over the weekend. Every month, we would have to do a 2000-3000 word evaluation on our progress from our experiences from that month, and what processes we've learned and improved on. I found this really helpful and will try to keep it up during this course to help me be the most organised I can be.
4. I find one to one tutorials to be really helpful when evaluating my work. I enjoy sitting there and talking through my processes and progress, because it helps me gain an understanding of how much I've actually done, and then what needs improvement.
5. Presentations in the form of timelines is also a way of evaluating my work. For example, I could look at the first practice I did, and then show through the stages of my progress on that same practice, then present my final, finished product. I did this once on my foundation year for our final project. It turned into a small discussion on processes and development which I enjoy.