Freshman year of college, I met some of the most creative people I know, all of them studying CS.
That year we made a short film together called tacet. It’s extremely cheesy, but in our film, we took the meaning of “tacet” as a short pause. It followed a guy who left his passion for making music with his friends to focus on studying something “more serious.”
One of the lines was something like, “We’re going to be out of here in no time, then we’re going to be able to do whatever we want. Until then, we just have to make this count.”
Making that film meant a lot to me. As a creative studying an extremely technical field, I struggled a lot with picturing my future.
- I didn’t start coding when I was 5. In fact, I didn’t learn how to code until my freshman year of college. I’m so behind.
- I’m still confident in my ability to learn and I know I can pick up things easily.
- I can design and I’m confident in my abilities, but I’m afraid I’m going to get worse because I don’t have the time commitment to get better in my craft due to my degree.
- I didn’t want to study design because:
- I already am decently skilled from being self-taught. Will introductory level classes be stimulating for me or will I be wasting my time?
- I have self-taught online friends that regret pursuing a design degree because of this reason.
- I’m decent at math and test-taking, and I come from a background privileged enough to where my parents can afford sending me to school. Why wouldn’t I go and take up this opportunity that so many people wished they had?
- I already am decently skilled from being self-taught. Will introductory level classes be stimulating for me or will I be wasting my time?
- I did not get into a top school. My parents didn’t let me go to the school I initially wanted to go to in NYC. I ended up in middle-of-nowhere West Lafayette.
- If I’m subpar in all of my career prospects, will I even be employable?
- I’m scared of the future.
- Like, extremely scared.
But do I regret anything that I’ve done up until now? Hell no.
tacet made me feel like college was very small, in a good way. Until I graduate, I just have to make everything I do right now, count, right? It’s also what inspired my friend Matthew, the main director, to keep taking on film projects, and I’m so excited to see where he goes next.
Look Back
I didn’t have the words for what that pause gave me until two years ago, when those same friends and I took a day trip down to Indianapolis from Purdue to watch the movie Look Back, an animated adaptation of one of my favorite one-shot stories by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Please watch it on your own because I’d like you to formulate your own thoughts on it.
There was this one interview where the director, Kiyotaka Oshiyama, mentioned that there was a scene that most other directors would just cut. Basically, the main character, Fujino, had just realized that someone she thought was a rival (drew great artwork) was greatly inspired by her. This was followed by a lengthened and silent scene of Fujino skipping down the road in the rain.
They do that so the audience can really bask in her emotion. It’s a tacet: the story stops moving forward so you can just sit with her. I know Fujino felt all giddy with a boosted ego because I felt the same way about it.
But the skip only hits lands that well because of what comes before it. Earlier in the film, there’s a stretch where Fujino just draws, being really stressed out and wanting to be the best. The camera stays behind her at her desk while the seasons change outside the window. Friends drift away. Her family worries. She keeps drawing and improving. I can’t help but relate to her during the period of my life where I was the most obsessed with design and making the greatest motion graphics.
Yep, that was when I was 14.
It was 2020, I was stuck at home and had nothing but time. So I went all in on design because I was utterly fascinated with the things people could imagine and execute. After Effects, a little bit of Blender, Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma. Nobody was paying me, and nothing had a deadline. I learned things just to learn them.
That year gave me a depth I still lean on constantly. My most popular work online is through motion design / motion graphics. It’s really how I’ve gotten my clients & current job.
I don’t want to romanticize it. 2020 was hard for a lot of people, and it wasn’t all good for me either. For context, both my parents work in the medical field, so I’m very aware of how bad it was then. But the time was rare, and I didn’t realize how rare until it was gone.
Now, learning looks different. It gets squeezed in between classes, work, and client projects, and it’s always for something. I learn a new tool because a deadline needs it, not because I’m curious. I’m way faster than I used to be but I feel like I’m lacking understanding in so many things.
Everything moves fast now
I’ve been thinking about the learning process a lot lately because it feels like the whole industry I work in is cutting to the next scene.
Every week, or basically day at this point, there’s a new model, a new tool, a new “this changes everything.” AI art, motion design, etc is the most extreme version of it: it skips the montage entirely and jumps straight to the output. No years at the desk, no figuring out why the hell the shape I just animated is deforming weirdly. Just the finished product (that I am unable to tweak closely hahah). By the time I’m writing this, Opus 5.5 has just come out and everyone is making these shitty motion graphics, with the same patterns, not understandable pacing, and really terrible easing. I’m so tired of it but in the greater scheme of things nobody cares that much. Not everybody is absolutely obsessed with finding the correct layers of easing curves that feel the correct amount of smooth. (Sorry, I have to link the Opus 5.5 launch video because I’m absolutely in love with it. Kudos to Mother-Made!)
I’m not writing an “AI bad” post. I work in tech, of course I’m draining my company’s Claude spend to code without looking at code. With it, I can do way more than I can without. But I notice what gets lost when the process disappears. Speed has become the expectation at work, with clients, and on my timeline. And when everything’s optimized for the output, nobody gets to sit at the desk anymore and really think about it.
Useless and essential
Skipping doesn’t get Fujino home any faster (okay it might’ve gotten her home faster, but you get my point). It’s useless. Learning After Effects for fun while I was 14 was “useless” too. Art itself can feel especially useless in a world that values practicality over everything.
I believed that for a long time. It’s the whole reason I went into computer engineering instead of design, and the reason behind every fear on that list up top. Design was the thing I did on the side just for fun.
Then I started posting my work on Twitter kind of on a whim, and suddenly the “useless” thing was the one opening doors. Everything that has happened since traces back to the hours I spent doing something that wasn’t supposed to matter. The thing I was scared I was falling behind on ended up being the thing carrying me.
So how can something so useless be so essential to living? Look Back made me feel so much, made me want to call my friends and make something, made me want to skip. Nothing practical has ever done that for me.
Back to tacet
The line from our film was, “We’re going to be out of here in no time, then we’re going to be able to do whatever we want. Until then, we just have to make this count.” Freshman me read that as: get through the four years, make it count, and save the creative stuff for after.
But I don’t think it’s that necessary to wait. I forgot the fact that we made a little film in the middle of it all.
I just want to get another chance to skip all the way home.