We are all just animators on this bus First week of new term, last class of the week. Walking out of the school when one of last term`s students calls me over. He is standing with a number of other students I have taught. Mr. Loc I have given up trying to get some students to call me by my first name we have something to show you.

They are all excited and active and filled with life. I sense a non-assigned group animation project. Nothing makes a group of separate students into a closely-knit conspiracy like an independent personal driven animation project.

One of the conspirators pulls out a character design and it is me all hat and beard and glasses without any other sign of face. I am in a student animation again. Cool! It is one of the highest complements an animation student can give a teacher. (Sometimes it the highest form of revenge, but I don`t think that is the case here?)

Now here is my complement right back to this group of fresh, eager, minds and faces. I`ve got a big personal animation project in pre-production that is going real slowly, laid down the voices, started working on the armatures, but these students infected me. I have to get to some animation right now. I need it. I have to get to a quick project. Something I can bang out in 3 or 4 weeks.

It is not a matter of how good the animation is or what I do with it after it is finished. It is the process. Hell, it is always the process. I ask my first term students how many of you want to be animators? and every hand goes up. Stupid question to ask animation students. Then I ask them how many of you have to be animators? How many of you would not be happy doing anything else?

Now that is the question. If you have to answer yes to that question then, my friends, you already are an animator. Everything else is just becoming a better animator. And that is why I try to get students to call me by my first name. We are all just animators on this bus.  ¶ 9:29 AM