Hello all you beautiful people!

June was a bit of a whirlwind. It started out slow, which allowed me to delve into some personal projects of mine. I started learning how to animate through trial and error. See below:

If you want to check out more of my animations, head to my instagram page @Gettingthescience OR check out my portfolio here: https://www.rebeccamellema.com/figure-portfolio

That went well for two weeks, and then my journalism class started in July and HO BOY IS IT INTENSE! I’m also reminded why I hate grading. After completing a PhD, I find the whole point system in the class annoying. My editing class just started, and that’s more my jam. The professor provides a ton of editing practice that you can do on your own, and it’s graded more on whether or not you took a really good stab at the editing.

Anyway, I have a lot of homework to get to today, so I’m going to make this (late) newsletter brief!

I did manage to put out a quick blog post before class overwhelmed me!

Link to the post here: https://gettingthesciencewrite.com/Echolocation/

Full disclosure for the next blog post: I’m going to put that one on hold until my journalism class is complete. Hopefully I’ll come out of that class with a solid science article for you all to read!

We are still in the depths of editing. It’s currently going extremely slow due to the journalism class!

For those new here, I’m writing a science-heavy comedy fantasy book. I finished the manuscript back in March and have just been plucking away at it.

Since this is a brief newsletter, I decided to use my new animation experience to get across this month’s point. Here’s my case study:

1) Pick an animation tool. I currently use Toonsquid and Procreate (not to be confused with Procreate Dreams). Toonsquid allows you to do way more things, but the benefit of Procreate is that it’s a simple program, meaning it won’t overwhelm you at the beginning. You can also do animation on a computer, I just love using my Ipad for hand-drawn art.

2) Find basic ball animation tutorials. YouTube is your best bet to find a treasure trove of them.

3) Realize that a lot of things in science look like balls. It’s true. Molecules are balls. Cells are balls. Suddenly, you add a nucleus to your animation practices, and suddenly you’re just animating cells!

4) Keep doing animation practices, but with cellular concepts. You’re practicing AND doing scicomm at the same time!

5) Make it simple because you cannot draw details for every keyframe to save your life.

6) Post on your social media. This one is scary, but here’s the thing: people enjoy seeing you try. They enjoy the messiness that comes from learning. Plus, you may get tips from people who know how to improve your craft! (That’s been my experience with my watercolor work!)

This section isn’t about animation.

I’ve seen people hold back from projects (scicomm or otherwise) because “they’re just not ready,” or “they need more training. Folks, it is more important that you take a stab at it and make it poorly. I honestly thought my animations are not the best because they’re inconsistent between keyframes, things move around, and it’s loosey-goosey in terms of style. There are plenty of mistakes and imperfections in them.

But people like imperfection.

So to my science communicators who are on the fence of any project type, be it writing an article, illustration, or podcasting… Just make it. Make it poorly. Put it out there. Don’t wait for it to be perfect, because it never will be (especially when you’re starting out). If people like it, great! If they don’t like it, they’ll ignore it, but you’ll have put your work out there. You can get better. In fact, you will get better.

Just make it.

That’s all I have for this newsletter! Onto some homework!

Again, if you like what I do and want to support me while keeping my material free to access, you can join my Patreon or make a one-time tip on KoFi!

-Becca