OUAN505 - Applied Animation: Evaluation

OUAN505 - Evaluation:

Throughout the module I feel that I have participated a reasonably fair amount by kickstarting the project, coming up with the idea, and starting the pre-production phase. I managed to gather a team of three of us in total that would each have individual roles and have unique skills to bring to the project. I focused primarily on the research and development, set design, and character design stages.

Due to absence and general need of advice and assistance, Alex asked me to join her in the stop-motion suite to assist her with the animating and I feel that together we managed to combine our views and opinions of animation to create reasonably well animated scenes. I focused more on straight ahead animation when shooting scenes on my own instead of meticulously planning each scene out second by second. This meant that I could really 'feel' the animation and get in the zone rather than worrying and stressing out too much. However, this sometimes meant that I made subtle mistakes such as prolonging a movement or some parts being too short. I easily corrected these mistakes by deleting frames and redoing them in Dragonframe.

Time management was very good to begin with but ended up being poor near the middle and end. This could be down to the fact that although we had a drawn out plan, we were still negotiating roles and ideas for the animating stage. It took two weeks too long to create the set which was entirely my fault as I was too shy to visit workshops and tutors on my own to ask for help, and I had to save up money for the supplies which took time.

Team communication was good as we contacted each other via a group chat using social networking sites. We drew pictures and created content using Google Slides which was incredibly convenient as we could share this between us and show where we were at in the project. However, there were some minor hiccups with communication and I think parts of the project caused tension between us due to absences, lack of animating, last minute storyboards, and animatic problems.

I believe that I pulled my weight and put a lot of time and funding into this animation. I focused more on the beginning as I feel that I was able to use my skills of character design and team management more effectively. I kept the team organised and well informed, eager, and tried my best to keep them happy and looked after as I felt it was important to make sure their welfare and needs were thought about. One area that I didn't do too well in was the animation production stage. I felt very 'pushed' into animating by tutors despite protesting that although I wasn't an animator and I would happily make attempts at it, I had spent all my energy and effort on the pre-production and I was drained. I still gave it a go to help out the team and feel that the few seconds of animation that I did create wasn't too shabby.

I enjoyed stop-motion overall, however it can be incredibly expensive and materials aren't cheap! 2D animation might be the way forward for me as I do prefer drawing by hand. However, creating models is always enjoyable too...