I’ve been a mocap animator in the games industry for a few years now, and I’m feeling very frustrated with the job and with myself. The job often feels like simple drudgery. Here we’ve got 1,000 frames Speed Test Scrabble Word Finder Solitaire of a walk with a character’s feet going through the floor. Go and pull all those feet out of the floor. And even as they complain about obnoxious menial stuff like this, my co-workers seem to all far out-preform me in completing that stuff on time (or at least, fixing it to a point that the leads don’t notice or have a problem).
It’s not all total drudgery. Some of it is fun. But I am always slow. I don’t know if it’s just a lack of focus (which has been a huge problem), or if I’m just unable to work quickly. Even in personal work unrelated to animation, I seem to take so much more time than I would think. (Why on earth did it take me a year to make a full colored 10 panel comic strip? Why did it take me over a year to make a tiny little Flash action game?) I feel like… give me an opportunity to be meticulous and get lost in details, and I will. Give me an opportunity to drag my feet and get distracted, and I will.