The Lessons in Getting Lost
As an artist who uses Photoshop and Illustrator, I’m no stranger to creating artwork with a lot of layers. I thought that I’d easily be able to transfer that knowledge into motion graphics.
The most recent mandala video I created showed me that I was wrong.
I had one goal for the video: make it more complex. As I was putting all of the layers together, I only had a loose idea of what I wanted the final video to look like, which is generally how I’ve always worked. It’s basically the digital equivalent of putting paint on a canvas then taking a step back every so often to see what it needs. Maybe a little glow would add interest? Maybe some movement in the background? I mostly just play around until it feels done.
When I exported it, the progress bar fluctuated up and down as it always does, finally landing around 4 or 5 hours. With the video being 10 minutes long I didn’t think much of it and headed to bed. When I woke up, it not only wasn’t finished, the progress bar said there was over 6 hours remaining. Something was obviously wrong.
I remembered there’s a column that shows you the render time for each layer, so I went back to my file and opened that up.
I started backtracking, trying to figure out what was bogging everything down. In my attempt to fix the issues I kept getting lost in the maze of layers, forgetting where things were and what I had and hadn’t already done. I finally came to the conclusion that I could either keep digging and wasting time or I could back up and start over from almost the beginning.
I created a fresh document and started pulling in pieces from the disaster, salvaging what I could from what I had previously built. Instead of getting rid of the mess, I decided to hold on to it for future reference. It might come in handy as a reminder of what didn't work out.
If you’d like to get a behind the scenes look at my process, subscribe to the Extended Version! This week’s video goes into detail about the mess I created and how I fixed it. Subscriptions are pay what you wish and start at $1/month.
The learning curve for this new work has been rather steep as I need to simultaneously improve my motion graphics skills, work through a lot of trial and error to find success on YouTube, and determine how I can potentially bring these mandalas out of the digital world and into the physical world with projection mapping. It’s a lot to navigate.
(If you’re curious, to monetize on YouTube you need both 4000 watch hours in 365 days and 500 subscribers. After a month, I’m nowhere near either.)
The biggest takeaway from this past week is that growth often takes place in unexpected ways. I thought I was going to learn how to increase the complexity of a scene, and instead learned that my “let the spirit lead me” workflow is highly inefficient. If I want to add complexity, I need to do more pre-planning. However all the planning in the world doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be bumps along the way. It just gives us some guardrails to bounce off of.
Until the next newsletter, be well!
Giesla
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