It is definite my honor to have this collaboration with Victor. He is an animator with a strong personal style. I once saw his work at the one-minute animation screening and was deeply impressed by the bright colors, strong contrasts, sharp lines, and flat graphic style. It is a great pleasure to be part of his work and to know about the workflow.

Victor takes our partnership very seriously. He sent us an example of his work, and recorded a tutorial video with commentary, to help me and Alice use Adobe Animate to animate and create graphics that fit his style. It helped me a lot and I soon got started with Adobe Animate through his video.

Then we soon got sequences files from him. Every track is marked and named, and unnecessary parts for our work are hidden and locked. Each shot has a fully finished keyframe to help us confirm references to color schemes and other treatments. All we need to do is select the different areas and then color them, step by step, as he explained to us in the video. I can imagine that if we were in an animation studio as employee with Victor, all the work with him would be very smooth.

Work with Victor’s animation was going well and enjoyable. But it also made me realize what competencies and standards will be required in my future work, if I’m going to be an animator like him. I need to have a clear understanding of the needs of my colleagues and customers, and have the ability to do a good handover and explain all the details to them. That’s exactly what I’m lacking right now.

I was a perfectionist before and was a bit paranoid – especially when it came to drawing static illustrations. I was reluctant to use softwares and processes that I was unfamiliar with. I also thought that going from sketching to clean-up to coloring would be a labor-intensive process. But after collaboration with Victor, I realized that a good art style doesn’t always require meticulousness, but flexible control. I still have long way to go.