Release. Pressure. Animate.

with a limited amount of information at the same time. It is extremely important to relax
the mind from the tremendous amounts of information and data that goes through the
mind of 3D animators, especially those in smaller productions who have a bigger part in
overall production and deal with more than just one task – sometimes even
simultaneously. I‟ve also discussed the need for silence (for some animators) and the
need for overall rest and „peace‟ in the mind that every animator seems to be seeking.
We all want and should work our way around any interference.
An intuitive tool should not interfere or preferably even release any interference
where possible. Let‟s discuss the different forms of interference, in short:
- External
- Internal
o Distractions (irrelevant stimuli)
o Interruptions (multi-tasking)
o Intrusions (mind wandering)
o Diversions (multi-tasking)
(Gazzaley, 2011)
The first external interference, called distractions, is irrelevant stimuli that could be
coming from visuals or noise you‟re literally distracted by and are introduced to your
awareness without your own intend and is thus out of your own capabilities. Like an
animating animator being distracted by the ringing of a phone. The other external
interference, interruptions, is when you think you can do multiple things at a time. Like
when you‟re animating while team members are talking to each other and you‟re trying
to follow their conversation while you keep on animating. A human being can‟t actually
do two of such complex tasks at the same time, you would need to constantly switch
focus from one onto the other and back to be able to work with both. This introduces
impact on task performance as well as a time delay because of the constant switching.
(Gazzaley, 2011) The same can happen with listening to music while animating, like
we‟ve seen throughout the chapters. We‟re speaking of intrusion – an internal
interference - when the mind starts to wander off breaking any focus against our will. It‟s
traveling to places we did not intend it to do. The other internal interference can also be
described as multi-tasking, while animating you might be thinking about what you‟ll have
for dinner tonight and you‟re already allowing yourself to let your focus drift away. A
well-known problem we‟ve already discussed before is social media, for example
facebook or twitter, but also e-mail or text messages could introduce such interference.
Some people are in contact with up to 6 media at any given time. (Gazzaley, 2011)
We‟ve seen with Percy Tienhooven in the previous chapter how he personally initiated a
4. Developing a toolset
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