Release. Pressure. Animate.

The third condition might seem simple, but is the main point that focuses on losing the
flow. For animators, when you‟re feeling the character should do this, move this way,
then go up, move around and start dancing it‟s already like you‟re in a short state of flow
where you know what you will be doing, know what to adjust and what your next short-
term goal is. And at that moment, you‟re thinking (with a smile) I‟ll do this. You
straighten the chair, open your eyes, stare at the screen. Click-click-click, position here,
move that. Ah, getting closer for this pose. This takes time. Then, ok. Some frames later,
here. Yes, that‟s what I want! Ok. Play, and check. You watch. Stare. Think. Take time to
feedback the work. Once you notice something is off, not working right, you‟ll step back,
rethink and retry the initial step. For now, this sounds like not that big of a deal. But if
you‟re going to have to reposition to a total different pose, sketching out a whole other
way of your flow it takes too much time to stay in the flow. You lose the immediate
feedback of a visual image of what you‟re trying to create. Even more you lose a sense of
direct control. That‟s probably why most 3D animator return back to pencil and paper to
sketch ideas out and check if things will work.
As stated in the previous subchapter I shall provide some explanation on how a flow
can be induced - or better said maintained - in a team. Like mentioned, for a flow to exist
there should be immediate and clear feedback. This is hardly obtainable on your own in a
group project where opinion on the matter from other group members is of high value. At
moments like these immediate and clear feedback is only available when working closely
with the team members and the feedback is provided at a constant rate and is clear to
the one actively working on the matter so his flow will not be broken.
The cycles of rest, production, consumption, and interaction are as much a part of
how we experience life as our senses - vision, hearing, and so forth - are. Because
the nervous system is so constructed that it can only process a small amount of
information at any given moment, most of what we can experience must be
experienced serially, one thing after the other. […] Thus the limitations on
attention, which determines the amount of psychic energy we have for
experiencing the world, provide an inflexible script for us to live by.
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, pp. 5-6)
Like Csikszentmihalyi states there is a maximum amount of information we can
productively filter and use to our advantage. If this is generally perceived as true, than I
would consider 3D animation in its current state to be beyond our abilities. This totally
depends on how small this amount of information precisely is. As, at any given moment,
the 3D animation software processes a lot of information (of which much isn‟t really
meant to be given to the user and is to be done in the background, but it still is a lot of
information to process) which could make the user lose sight on his actual work. The
animator will have to switch between looking at the end result – the actual piece of art,
the characters pose, the line of motion, and so forth – and the actual process of creating
1. Creativity and Flow
8