64Digits

Productivity

Posted by Kamira on Feb. 10, 2015, 1:31 p.m.

I somewhat recently started to animate and I've really enjoyed it. However, it takes a large amount of time and as a college student, time is not something I have a lot of. My longest video, Chop Chop, Pyro! took at least 72 hours of work, though I had a relatively work-free summer so I did have time then. My other two videos were short and didn't take much time, though. I have two large projects planned, but I worry that I'll never be able to get around to starting them. It's frustrating because when I'm busy, all I think about are all these ideas I have for videos, but when I do have free time, I usually waste it playing video games or watching Youtube videos. A couple days ago I tampered with my TF2 files so that I'd need to update and verify the cache in order to play it; TF2 was too much of a distraction, so I'm hoping I can focus better without it.

So, I have some questions for you guys: How do you balance school/work with your projects? How do you relax so that you can concentrate on working without getting stressed out and quitting when something goes wrong?

I worry that I may be too ambitious. I'm trying to be a prestigious student, an excellent engineer, a skilled animator, and a talented musician, and each day it becomes more challenging.

Comments

Kamira 9 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

I got about 30 minutes of sleep a night in my last year of high school.

That's another problem; I feel tired all day unless I get 8-9 hours of sleep. I wish I could function on low sleep, because I totally would.

CoolGamrSms 9 years, 10 months ago

Quote: Kamira

hahahahahahahahahahhahhahh

Nehemek 9 years, 10 months ago

I just started college, I'm having quite a good amount of free time actually for my projects right now.

As for the problem of wasting time, yeah I know, it happens, what you need is something very simple:

A TO DO list.

It will help you keep focused and teach you how to work, it also makes you feel good when you are deleting things from it.

And for the animation, well you need to learn that when you finish an action you don't stop moving which is something I could notice, when the pyro finished choping one wood plank he would stand totally still or nothing else would happen. There needs to be either a smooth transition, or two elements being animated overlapping their times.

Kamira 9 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

when the pyro finished choping one wood plank he would stand totally still or nothing else would happen.

It's stop motion, so it's impractical to have idle animations. I do my best to ease and bounce out of most actions, and I'm sure I'll improve on that with experience.

DesertFox 9 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

I somewhat recently started to animate

He's been just standing still all these years!

But seriously, a huge part of it is that as you gain experience, you'll be able to do more quicker. You'll learn the tools, the shortcuts, and eventually you'll have much less trouble 'doing', leaving most of the difficulty with figuring out the 'what' to be done. Having a project that you know is worth it helps a lot too - for me that can be a driving force.

Even so, the truth is that projects take a lot of time, and you just have to be diligent, keep at it. I clocked in 60 hours last week, and 80 the week before working on a refactor. I've spent hundreds of hours on my vm project, and thousands of hours on certain apps.

Astryl 9 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

If anybody finds this out, tell me too. :<

Jani_Nykanen 9 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

Well, school has always been easy to me, so I have concentrated on my projects. Not sure what happens when I start my studies (probably) in university next autumn (I have to finish my studies in my current school first), though. But before that, my projects are what I live for and school is a place to meet friends.

ChessMasterRiley 9 years, 10 months ago

I'm currently attending law school, working part time, sleeping 8 hours a night, DMing a monthly Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and managing to dedicate at least an hour a day to game development (as a hobby).

The trick is scheduling. I have every day planned down to every 30 minute segment with scheduled breaks and built in buffer time if something comes up. Once you start doing this, you will realize you have so much time on your hands.

I've also cut back on video games; this was a huge time sink prior to getting my shit together. I try to limit my gaming to weekends these days.

Acid 9 years, 10 months ago

ChessMasterRiley! Nice to see you again!

Long story short is that I don't and I should probably schedule my home-time, like CMR does. I'm awake from 7 am to 3am and it's the worst thing ever. I am not balacing, I'm drowning. But at least I'm having fun while I die! :D

ChessMasterRiley 9 years, 10 months ago

You as well, Acid!

Get some sleep! You will reduce your lifetime more than smoking (some studies suggest) if you under-sleep.