Yoshimi Yamagata Aoyagi

Early Access: April Dormitory Diaries - Kaneko

Added 2021-04-09 02:29:58 +0000 UTC

It’s Kaneko. Here’s my dormitory diary entry for April.

It’s been a week since I’ve started working, and I’m adjusting to my new life little by little.

Training started the day after I joined the company, and we’re practicing tracing to start.

In animation terms, we call this clean-up work. We take rough key-frames and make a clean copy.

Training is essentially analog; we work with paper and pencil. Up until now, I’ve always drawn digitally though, so getting lines to come out as I imagine was a difficult task.

Compared to my first day, I’m able to draw much cleaner lines, but they still look coarse compared to the example lines of my instructor.

I feel that practice is currently a matter of volume.

I’ve recently also started practicing in-between animation, which like clean-up, is quite difficult.

I’d like to eventually become a digital animator, but analog seems like the go-to for most companies right now, even during training. To not forget how to draw digitally, I’m trying to do the training assignments from the company in analog, then take them back to the dorm and draw them digitally.

In a time where there are companies holding training remotely without ever going to the office or meeting face-to-face with peers or seniors, I was placed side-by-side with my peers when I joined my company (with dividers of course.)

One of two in-between animation directors is usually there, so if there’s something I don’t understand I can immediately go ask them. I’m grateful to have an environment where I can do that.

The weather is getting warmer, but there’s a sharp difference in temperature between the mornings and evenings. I’m sure some of you are feeling the stress of starting a new life. Please look after yourselves and your health.

Kaneko

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