So i have been teaching a few hours a week for the last almost one year. Last semester at Takshaa i started teaching basic animation acting. I have to say I was kinda nervous about teaching classes but since i have been doing it I have started to really look forward to it.
Teaching something.. or in my case trying to teach something forces you to look at the subject in a very different manner than you normally would in a work environment. You are forced to come up with reasons why shots dont work or the physics doesnt look right. A lot of this stuff becomes instinct over time. And also over time a lot of this instinct can be forgetten. Everytime my shot doesnt look right is because i have forgotten to put something utterly basic in it. Or i have not planned it right.
Teaching forces you to come up with an ideal way of working for animation. It makes it obivious to you and the students why things dont work.
And you know what surpirsing it is always the basic stuff. Animation is a really really complex art but at the heart of it is made up of really really itterly simple common sense concepts. Infact we owe a lot to the animators of the past who were able to boild animation down to such simple elegance. Mess ups happen not because some major intricate concept was forgotten but because some simple principle was not applied!
This has happened so many times in class that I was completely taken aback.
Next week is the finals for my students. If the students are ok I will post some of the best work out here.
