So NATA's pretty much done now. In case you missed it, here's my video and here's Sif's. Let's reflect on how NATA went this past year.

WHAT'S IMPROVED
Visually, I like the style that I've adopted recently. It works better, I think, than the one I was using previously. I also got in that one 3D animation, which is something really hope to do more of in the coming months so I can get better at that.

WHAT STILL NEEDS TO BE IMPROVED
Story. It hasn't gone anywhere. There are two problems here that I think need to be fixed:

1. Detail - The stories in these movies are never made detailed enough to get real empathy for the characters. People seem to still be able to get empathy out of them, but I think that is just because ambiguous characters let you project your own thoughts as a viewer onto them more, which only works if the viewer's mindset is in line with the video, which it isn't always. Part of the problem is that I can't make movies long enough to add that sort of detail in the one month that NATA gives, so maybe now that NATA's over I can spend more time on making something longer and with a better story. We'll see.

2. Purpose - I'm making some of these videos for the wrong reasons. The more depressing ones aren't really made for an audience; they're made as an outlet for me to get rid of some thoughts, sort of like how some people write angry letters and then rip them up immediately. Except then I get stuck with them for a month and then show them to the internet. So at first that means I feel strongly about what I'm making and it builds upon what I'm feeling, but then after a while that part fades away and I'm just working on something to which I no longer feel any connection and which I feel lacks substance. Basically, I need to find another outlet for that sort of cleansing so that I can have unclouded judgement when working on animations, or I have to snap out of this mood I'm in that's producing all of these dark and pretentious movies. Unfortunately, just snapping out of it is pretty much impossible to do, but that's my problem that I can try to deal with on my own, and I can always force myself to make other types of things in the mean time.

WHAT NOW?
I've been making some little animation tutorials recently. They're not general character animation tutorials since there are plenty of those being made by better animators than me so I'm doing tutorials for specific things in my videos that you might want to try out yourself.

We've got one last NATA collab in the works for this year (here's our previous one, the Sarcastic Voice Collab) so you can look forward to that.

Then, there's school. School always means I'll be busy, but I'm going to try not to disappear again like I did last year.

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