Animation Is Hard

     This medium is an intense combination of drawing skill, performance, and knowledge of  physical movement.
     The area I need to improve most is my drawing. Lately, I've been having a hard time with drawing. It's like my well of creativity is empty, and all that I can pull from it is the mud at the bottom. My drawings have been downright ugly and incoherent. Figure drawing classes help to fill up the well for a couple of days, but I'm soon back to the bottom.
     When it comes to performance, I feel talent inside me and can imagine a great performance, but my drawing ability hinders it from coming onto the page.
     The other difficult aspect is the physical motion, the actual animating. It's a crazy thing. To animate believably, you need an uncanny understanding of things moving through space in time that doesn't really exist until the drawings are compiled and played at a certain speed. It boggles my mind, but I feel like I'm getting better.
     A friend and I were talking about enthusiasm yesterday, and how important it is to have it in every piece of work you do. When I'm excited about what I'm doing, ideas and creativity flow like a river and I love everything I draw. But sometimes I just can't get excited, so I produce crappy drawings and in turn become even less enthusiastic about what to draw next. Then I go a week without touching a pencil. I watch lots of cartoons and wish I could be making them, but get frustrated at the thought of trying.
     Then one day I'm at work and a little idea pops into my head. I start to doodle, make a funny picture with a caption that my friends laugh at, and suddenly I'm craving my drawing desk. Ideas are bombarding me and I need to create again.
     My lesson in this is that you have to draw enthusiasm and creativity from other people. Sitting alone, bashing your head against a desk doesn't make better ideas happen. You need to absorb experiences and bounce ideas off of others.
     My drawing, performance, and animation talents will increase with time and practice, but I need to find a group of artists that keep me inspired and excited enough to keep pushing forward.