My TA was Mean to Me

So today we presented our animatics for the film we plan to work on next semester for one of my animation classes.  Mine was about Spoons, a character I created a few weeks ago. 

In general, people who’ve commented on my writing usually find it somewhat humorous, especially if they can appreciate a drier, darker humor. For Spoons, I’ve written a twenty page script in a screenwriting class- a script from which I’ve received a lot of positive feedback as well as a lot of laughs.  So, I figured I’d take advantage of this animation class and use this 30 second film as an opportunity to try to make an animation based on this character I’ve grown to love.  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to make witty banter work in thirty seconds, and I was barely able to cut my animatic down to 50 seconds.  But I managed and I thought it was at least mildly humorous.

However, when one of the students in my class asked my TA what he thought after I’d shown it twice, he responded, “Well I just don’t think it’s funny.” Then he stopped talking.

As much as I tend to blow off what other people think, and as much as I feel like a five year old girl for saying this, that actually hurt my feelings. 

I’ve been on both the receiving and giving end of many, many critiques in my short life, and I am well versed in the certain tact one needs to take when telling someone that one doesn’t like their work.  It’s not that I don’t want people to be honest with me, because I do, but telling me you don’t like what I’ve done, and then not providing any insight into why you don’t like it or how it can be improved is pretty useless.  Had this been one of my classmates, I would perhaps be more inclined to excuse it, but it was my TA.  Or rather my SA (student assistents don’t have the same authority as a teaching assistant).  It’s his job to be helpful.  He’s getting PAID to be helpful.  Not to be an asshole.

Then the group started giving me suggestions about how I could change it but all their suggestions seemed to bring it closer to slapstick humor and made it stray away from dry, deadpan humor that I like and was trying to express.

Its hard to tell whether it was the delivery of me just talking the dialogue instead of actors acting it, the fact that you couldn’t see the characters acting and facial expressions, the probability that the group I was with had a vastly different sense of humor than me, or if it really just wasn’t funny at all.

I don’t know.

Either way, my ego has suffered and woe is me.

With Alotta Love,

zee zee cakes

Tags: Animation, critique, mean people, writing