100 Days Project 2017: Tim Wightman
100 Days Project is a simple creativity project that requires one thing, every day for 100 days.
This year’s 100 Days Project is well underway, featuring its usual exciting, and unexpectedly wide range of creative endeavours. This year close to 700 participants have signed up in New Zealand. We grabbed a few moments with illustrator, Tim Wightman, to find out how his 100 Days Project was coming along:
Hi Tim, you’ve signed up for this year’s 100 Days Project. Is this the first time that you’ve been involved?
Hi, yes, this is the first year I’ve been involved with it.
What inspired you to sign up for 2017?
I’ve always liked the idea of doing the 100 Days Project but never wanted to commit to it because it’s such a long time. One of my old tutors at Yoobee School of Design, Angelo De Marchi, has been doing amazing paper craft for his 100 Days Project for the past three years so he has definitely been one of my inspirations to do one of my own. As well as Angelo, the Creative Director at my work, Sammo challenged everyone in the studio to do the 100 Days Project and put up a prize for whoever completed it the best, so I thought I would give it a shot.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing each day?
My project is to illustrate something and then animate it in Adobe After Effects. So each day I think of something to draw, draw it in Illustrator, bring it into After Effects, and then usually watch lots of YouTube tutorials to learn how to animate it the way that I want.
How did you come up with the idea for this project?
I’ve always wanted to learn how to do motion graphics and animation. When I was a kid I used to make animations with this programme called Pivot Animator. The idea was originally to just illustrate something each day to get better and faster at vector illustrating, but somewhere along the way the idea of animating came into it, and it evolved into doing an illustration one day then animate the next and then just doing both each day!
Do you see this benefitting your professional role, and can you explain how.
Yes, it’s already had some benefits. I’ve been doing some animations for Serious Popcorn and at my other jobs as well. In the long term I think it will be great for me to me able to animate my illustrations, especially as there seems to be a trend towards web stuff like animated gifs. I think the more things I can do, the more valuable I am as an employee/freelancer.
It’s early days, but so far, what are some of the challenges and also some of the highlights?
So far the biggest challenge has just been learning the software. I had never used it before and literally downloaded it on the first day of the project. Another challenge has been doing it every day and making time to do it, so far I’ve missed a couple of days and caught up later.
The main highlight has been the positive response I’ve gotten from family and friends and people I don’t even know on Instagram saying how much they like my animations and that they look forward to seeing what I post each day. Also, seeing my own progression, getting better and learning something new each day has been rewarding.
Do you plan to take part in the exhibition at the end?
I haven’t really read much into the exhibition to be honest, but I’d be keen to show my work at the end for sure.
Where can our DA readers see more from you, Tim?
100 Days Project: http://100daysproject.co.nz/projects/100-Days-2017/tim-wightman-128
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tim.wightman
Behance Portfolio: https://www.behance.net/timwightman
Thanks for your time, Tim, and good luck with the rest of the project.
Visit the 100 Days Project at: 100daysproject.co.nz to check on Tim’s progress, along with all the other 2017 participants!