"Start small, keep building"

Check out this blog, kept by a non-Computer Science major, about a woman determined to teach herself how to code. She summarizes her big idea thinking in this nice blurb:

"One of the most important mantras for me has been "Start Small, Keep Building". When I set out on this project, I knew I wanted to learn to code dynamic interactive websites, but I also knew next to nothing about coding. Rather than try to tackle the enormous task of building a complex, fully functional social network, I took a small first step. I pieced together a few bits of html and CSS ...Tackling small goals gave me small, solvable problems which led to new small goals and more small, solvable problems. Eventually, after I solved enough small problems my conception of a small problem changed."

This is exactly the approach I use to teach animation programming. It makes a lot more sense to me to create multiple, simple programming projects that you re-visit as you progress, making decisions along the way to revise older efforts, and taking stock as to the best way to put together everything you've learned so that you create more complex, elegant works knowing that there's more than one "correct" way to build it. The little projects let you make your mistakes and learn from them and your early simple successes give you the confidence to take each new effort a bit further to see what happens next.