My journey

This is more a post for me to read in the future than anything else, but I think it's quite important to remember how I got to where I am today. If anything, it'll help me remember what I have learnt over the years and things I should not forget.

2006-2007 Animalia
Basic acting
Quadruped animation (how to straight ahead animate a creature doing complex action)
Blocking in spline. Result of straight ahead animation.
Auto tangent and it's uses
Time management

2008 Zeke's Pad
Pose to pose animation, the workflow of doing a blocking pass and a spline/finishing pass
Cartoony posing and zippy action
Smear frames
Consistancy facial posing by using the pose library and making it my own

2009 Erky Perky
More care in posing, braver and using the rig to sweeten up the pose
Tighter lip sync
Using the top jaw control to animate lip sync
Crazy breakdown and inbetween (arcs)
Manually copying other people's poses in order to learn how they pose their characters so successfully (obviously I only picked the director's favourite shots)

2009 - 2010 Animation Mentor
I learnt the basics of everything in animation mentor, everything I was missing became clear.
Developed a workflow
Discovered detail and polish
Acting confidence
'movement in reality is not clean' sometimes it's better to break an arc in order to add energy

2010 Lil Larikkins
Weight shift, finger movement, feet repositioning. The details that breathes life into a character
Lead and follow
Really focus on posing (thanks to developing character sheets for the show)

2010 - 2011 Penguins of Madagascar
Follow storyboards and build on the strong foundation it provided (focusing on energy, strength and effort)
Blocking in all breakdowns, secondary action and moving holds
The importance of looking at a shot in it's entirety, taking a step back
The power of polish, really pushed everything to the limit on selected favourite shots

So... this is where I am right now. There is still a loooong way to go to even become good enough to be called a true senior animator in TV, but at least I'm heading in that direction. What I would love to discover next is:
*the way to successfully act within a pose, and make it look less pose to pose
*break away from simple actions like headshakes and explore other ways of moving to a new pose
*really push for great facial expressions