Anthony Ma
gameplay Animator
Tea Time Animation
I founded a Tea Time Animation chapter at my school as a way to combine my passion for animation and production. I saw that there was not really a club at Purdue that was dedicated to teaching students how to improve on their technical skills especially around animation.
At Tea Time I am responsible for preparing weekly educational powerpoints, surveying what students want to learn for the week, and hosting group activities (like critique sessions and animation jams) that allow students to practice and improve their animation skills. Personally, I have been using this club to practice my public speaking and organizational skills in an art-oriented environment!
Images courtesy of Tea Time
Since starting the club I have been able to have been able to grow the organization to about 38 members. One of the biggest challenges I have faced would be switching the club to online during the whole pandemic situation right now. My solution to connecting all these members including the remote ones has been to post all educational content regularly to the discord and setting up different times during the day people can drop in for help from the officers.
Images courtesy of Welly Chang
Club Challenges
- Moving everything online definitely proved a challenge to the Purdue staff but we eventually settled into a routine
- Coming up with educational content on a weekly basis was a learning experience, luckily students were helpful in telling us what they wanted to learn
- Event turnout outside of regular meetings proved quite an obstacle
- Finding content that was at the level of the students proved to be an challenge initially but was improved on over multiple classes
Club Successes
- Established the club with 37 members in the community discord
- Strong weekly in person turnout to club meetings
- Created a detailed resource center for students learning animation to refer to
- Set up weekly review sessions so that students can get constant consistent feedback
- Organized connections between students and alumni in different areas of animation