We share!

It’s no mystery that the creative industry is the backbone of so many amazing shows, advertisements, movies, music and more. There are no limits to what they can do, but because of that, with no clear boundaries, stress comes hand in hand with it.

Multitasking sounds like the key to productivity, but would creatives actually benefit from this? Or, in other terms, context switching, where you don’t work on just one thing but multiple tasks in one go. Unfortunately, it’s not as beneficial as we think.

'Doing nothing'—Have you ever had a day where you literally allowed yourself to completely rest?

Source: Canva Collection Managing time is more than just setting a timer and allocating time for a given task.  It takes a bit of analysis of your current working style and trial and error to find the right strategies that allow better efficiency and productivity, especially for an artist. In this article, we share the strategies that work and the right tools to help implement them. Table of Contents 5 Recommended Time Management Strategies Digital Tools and Systems for Time

First of all, congratulations on landing your first animation project! Whether you’re part of a team or a freelancer, your first animation project sets the stage for the rest of your career as an animator. Therefore, it’s essential to understand the structure of animation work to ensure a smooth animation creative workflow that supports your growth and doesn’t trigger loops of revisions.

In the morning, you join the sync-up meetings, then continue to finish your tasks while keeping in the loop with the recent updates. Afternoon rolls in; you rush to complete some social media posts to be published in the next few days. Evening comes, and you want to wedge in side-gigs to fill the time. Then, when you lie down, it’s almost morning.

It’s midway through the month. It seems like your team’s energy has depleted, as if they had run a marathon. But they are responding to fixes immediately and are always there to reply to chats and emails.

‘Crunch culture’ seems to be a common story for the animation industry or even the creative industry as a whole. It has become one of the contributing factors for creative burnout despite the passion for the arts. Surely, there are better ways to conduct animation projects without sacrificing creatives’ mental health, right?

Have you ever experienced days where, despite a restful sleep, you still feel tired or demotivated? You may be feeling some creative burnout, and sleep doesn’t really help with healing that. Unlike physical resting, creative rest gives us that spark of awe and curiosity that keeps us passionate and innovative.

Giving visual feedback needs to be approached with efficiency and precision. When executed effectively, it can elevate work quality and improve team collaboration. However, poor feedback can cause a domino effect that could potentially derail the entire project.

Giving feedback can be tricky, let alone having to comment on a visually heavy project. Words like ‘make it pop’ or ‘can we use something more exciting or eye-catching’ aren’t useful feedback for creatives that need more actionable comments.

When mistakes keep repeating despite the written instructions, it's time to lay out a visual workflow process. This might seem like a corporate ‘jingle’, especially for a creative team that thrives on spontaneous and flexible schedules. But a well-thought-out visual workflow for creative teams will reduce delays and miscommunication.

Efficient visual collaboration is the key to ensuring better creative workflow and alignment, whether you are an animator, a designer or a video editor. To be able to communicate visually during feedback loops can help prevent potential issues and miscommunication. So, the question of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration comes in.

Visual thinkers often struggle with verbal feedback. Their primary way of processing their work is through mental images which are not easy to describe verbally. So, to bridge this gap, we’ve broken it down into this article.

Retrospectives are a great way for teams and project leaders to reflect on a project, even in mid-progress, to check in with everyone. It helps improve the approach in finalising a project and the team’s performance.