Cobwebs

You know that old axiom “If you don’t use it, you loose it”? I had a whole heaping helping of that today.

It took all day to knock off the rust and shake out the cobwebs in the part of my brain responsible for motion graphics. I even pulled out one of my old books to refresh my memory on expressions – little bits of code that make everything a hell of a lot easier.

In the end, I had just enough brain juice left to know what questions to ask when searching Google. I found some snappy, bouncy code that’s really going to ‘sell’ what I’ve got very nicely, and I bought a large package of transition presets that will come in handy. All in all a good day.

The real challenge has been deciding how to animate all this text. I have so many choices, so many wonderful possibilities. When I approach it tomorrow I think I’ll take it from the opposite angle – start by thinking of options that will not work, and hope that it will clarify the ones that will.

I still got my word count in today, so I’m proud of that. I took a break from the motion graphics work to write. I think that will be the pattern for the next few weeks.

Have you ever needed to come back to a skill after a long time away? Did you have to take a class, or get a book, or was Google enough? Leave a note in the comments below about your experiences getting yourself back up to speed.