October Dormitory Diaries: Kimura

Hi everyone. It’s Kimura.

Here’s my Dormitory Diary entry for October.

The remote work measures we were taking against COVID at our studio have been lifted, and we’re now able to work in the office. Having peers close by doing the same work as you is great.

Also, there’s an in-between animator that works on my floor and I never got the chance to talk to them outside of greetings until recently. I finally got a hold of them and we talked about all sorts of stuff like our influences and our strategies for improvement. Hearing their thoughts was really insightful.

I get the impression that this sort of talk happens all the time during break here, so it looks like I’ve found the sort of anime studio I was looking for! It took a long time, but I feel like I’ve finally gotten used to things around here since starting (lol).

One of the people I worked up the courage to talk to is heading to another studio soon I guess. It seems like this happens a lot with the number of freelancers in the industry. I just got to know them though...

In other news, I’ve been assisting at a painting class since May. I was invited on by an artist named Migiwa Hidari. We create stuff with people of all ages, mainly elementary school students.

I’m there to teach, but I feel like I’m learning a ton. Just explaining how tracing is done, I get to reaffirm to myself why we make certain decisions, and if I don’t plan out the lessons well enough, then the students will use that idol time to goof around, so it forces me to think about various different things. There's some kids interested in anime there, and I got to teach them some basic blinking and lip-sync animation. Teaching more advanced concepts seems like it’s gonna be tough, but I think it will help me learn more about animation, too.

Also, there’s also some kids that started using Blender to create stuff like 3D masks, miniatures, and stamps for social media, so it’s been fun to get out of my comfort zone. That stuff is way too much for me… I thought they were supposed to be elementary schoolers?! I just leave that stuff to Magiwa. Seeing these young kids work so hard has had a positive effect on me. I’m gonna work hard, too.

November 2021

Kimura.