So I just got beaten out by the awesome ButzboPrud in NATA's novice round, and I gotta say I had an awesome time. In the end, it was a three-point difference out of 100 between our scores, super close! I've also had the chance to chat with and get to know a lot of the animators that I've been seeing stuff from for the past several years, which is totally awesome.
On top of that, I've had the chance to work with some really cool voice actors these past two months. There was ATheatricalSongBird on my Open Round submission, and Chongo for my Novice Round submission; they're both really cool people that you should follow and hire to do your voices. here were my submissions, in case you missed 'em:
SPACEMAN 2000 (Novice round)
A Nude Holiday (Open round)
Due to an unfortunately bad choice in submission-time on my part, I ended up not being eligible for a daily award for my Novice Round piece, Spaceman 2000. I submitted at around 7PM, and, as I've recently found out, the daily cutoff time is something like 9PM; from my understanding, the normal two days for judgement got cut down to about one day and two hours, which just wasn't enough time to get out of judgement with its current backlog. So yeah, guys, y'all need to get over to the UJ page and get voting!
Unfortunate timing aside, I received a lot of positive feedback on Spaceman 2000, which is always good. When I got out of judgement, I was sitting just above a 3.8, which is probably my highest score right out of judgement so far. Plus the NATA judges gave generally positive notes/scores and some good advice for the future. After a month of hearing the same audio bits, I wasn't sure if the piece was even funny anymore, so it was a welcomed boost to my animation confidence to see it generally well received.
Speaking of animation confidence, I feel like all this work in NATA has helped me come a long ways in my animation abilities. I'm closing in on one year of submitting here on NG, and I'm definitely further along than I thought I would be at this point. I've started to add a lot of full-bodied movements to my animations, and I feel like I'm getting a better sense for things like color, art, style, and themes. My current plan is to have two more animations done by the one-year mark, more on that below. Perhaps I'll take a small break after that to put together a first-year reel.
Aside from my actual NATA submissions, I've worked on two NATA-related collabs that you may have seen:
Sarcastic Walk Collab
Sarcastic Bounce Collab
They were totes fun to work on, and there'll probably be two more coming up. Look forward to 'em!
So what am I gonna be doin now that I've had my ass handed to me in NATA? Well, I've just sent a new script over to Chongo, and I've been working on another animation using a comedy sketch from the audio portal. I suspect I'll have one done in a weekish, and the other in maybe two-three weeks. They might be done sooner, but I don't wanna over-rush my deadlines after this whole NATA ordeal. I'll definitely try my best to have them out before I hit my one-year-of-submissions-day. After that, I start my first official animation class, which I feel I am definitely well prepared for. It'll be nice to have a chance to really study animation in depth, though.
All-in-all, I had an awesome time in NATA. I'll definitely be joining again next year, assuming I have the time. Can't wait to see how this year turns out!
AlsoImadeatumblrifyouwannacheckitout... I promise not to update it too much; in fact I haven't updated it once! Hell, I don't even know how it works!
If you're still reading, congratulations; you've earned a glance at this Planeasaurus.