Animation Ch 8: The College-Professional Limbo

Where student projects never end, professional work never quite begins

Peak Procrastination: The Jury Animation

I made an animation to start my final jury presentation the night before, instead of preparing the actual content. Looking back, it was just elaborate procrastination—but also perfectly summed up my college experience: creating technically impressive detours to avoid the main assignment.

College doesn't teach animation as much as it teaches how to transform panic into productivity.

Projects in Purgatory

The title sequence for "Kapus Kondyachi Gosht" became one of those projects that exists in the liminal space between student work and professional animation. I loved creating it, even though it never reached a state I could call "finished." Not quite academic, not quite professional—just permanently in progress.

The Beautiful Failure

'By Frame' was my most ambitious concept: a meta-narrative where the frames of a 2D animation prepare themselves for the film through stop-motion. I never completed it, but the process taught me everything—from making armatures with dental filling face molds to welding cycle spokes to ball bearings.

This magnificent failure taught me more than any completed project could have. Sometimes animation education lives in the wreckage of collapsed ambition.

The Friend-Animation Connection

When inspiration runs dry, you animate your friends. Smruti became my subject—the origin story behind her nicknames Squatu and Squatum. Animating people you know forces you to observe with uncomfortable precision, transforming familiarity into character study.

This habit intensified after graduation, when colleagues unwittingly became animation experiments during boring meetings.

The Professional Cold Shower

The transition to professional animation delivered several brutal truths:

• In college, an all-nighter is heroic. In professional settings, it's just expected.
• Student work is judged on its best moments. Professional work is judged on its weakest points.
• In college, "interesting failure" earns praise. In professional life, "boring success" pays bills.

The first professional project teaches you that animation isn't just about making things move—it's about moving things exactly how someone else wants them moved.

Survival Through Side Projects

When client work drained my creative energy, personal projects became not just outlets but lifelines—small acts of creative resistance during lunch breaks and train rides. These weren't ambitious works, just reminders of why I pursued animation before budgets and deadlines entered the picture.

The line between professional and personal blurred unexpectedly. Techniques from personal experiments infiltrated client work. Constraints from professional projects generated new approaches to personal animation.

College provided foundations, but real animation education began in those first professional years. No jury feedback matched the educational impact of a client's disappointed face.

Yet those painful lessons built something college couldn't: the ability to perform under pressure, adapt to limitations, and find creative solutions within tight constraints—while occasionally still animating your friends and giving them ridiculous nicknames.