Review: Evaluation of Artefact

HOW DID YOU THINK THE PROGRESS WENT

WHAT WAS GOOD

WHAT WAS BAD

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE BETTER IF YOU DID IT NEXT TIME OR WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING DIFFERENTLY?

For my Extended Project, I decided to produce a 2D Animation about a boy and his bird with strong emotional themes. When it comes to evaluating my work and looking back at the progress of production of my final draft I felt that a few things went well but more things didn't go so well as production for me was on and off a lot of the time.

I found the animation progress to be rather difficult and more time consuming than I thought it would be. I had to experiment with several programs such as Adobe Premier Pro and Photoshop and whilst I have had time and experience with these programs before, putting them into an animation proved more difficult. I had to keep cutting my animation down from a five minute or so epic with a strong tale with something extremely simple but what I felt was ultimately effective and that's what I liked about my animation, the concept.

It stills meets the goal of producing a 2D Animation with a strong sense of emotion and a boy and his bird but it's a different kind of emotion, style, tale and more than I originally planned to do so it still has some of the bearings the original idea had, just in a different light. Even though I spent a few hours producing the final draft in order to meet deadlines, I felt the animation fluidity was very nice but that came with a cost as against more frames and having smoother animation came a much shorter animation but I didn't want it to drag and I would rather have a smoother image that lasted a shorter time span and I felt my audience would too, considering it's more catered to a younger audience of children but can still be enjoyed by all sorts as the concept of bird poop on someones head is something I see to myself as a "fart joke" so it's rather light hearted humor.

I feel the simple design of the characters and the environments helped fit the mood very well and made the smoothness of the animation seem more apparent. It's a lot more colourful than I originally planned but it targets a younger audience more so when you look at stills of my animation at face value so that is something I enjoy. As I have mentioned several times when gathering research, music seemed to be of great importance and I very pleased with the music choice I went with a song titled "I'm Like a Bird" by Nelly Furtado and it was the how fitting it was with the animation that set it apart from others. It had a rich, friendly nature to it and cutting it off at the last second only heightened the comedic value of it I felt. A lot of the animation had to be timed and associated with the music choice and choosing a song like this, I felt it was better for it. It's quite a repetitive song but you wouldn't think that with such a short animation so I felt I could get away with that.

Lastly, what I enjoyed was the change of emotion. I chose humour and humour isn't typically my strong suit but the fact that it worked pretty well and shared a few smiles across my clients made me very pleased. I thought doing sadness and the sense of loss would be something very interesting to do and whilst I'm not denying that, I feel capturing that is a lot harder as you seem to have to work length, character development and have a strong story behind you from the research I gathered for your audience to really have a strong connection with the characters on screen. Switching up was a good decision and I'm all better for it.

When it comes what I disliked, I disliked the length of animation. Perhaps having a 20-30 second animation was very suitable for having that grasp of humour but the animation didn't really have much if any in terms of story unless you decide to look at my blogger site and the rest of my work pieces to try and gather some kind of back story. It is a simple concept of a boy meeting his friend on a field but gets distracted by the birds marvelous nature and before he notices, the boy in the purple/pink has been pooped on but that simple story, I felt, hurt the animation quite a lot and I feel with the all the research and pre production I took into account, I think people in my class, my tutor and me personally was expecting a lot more.

I did enjoy how it conveyed the emotion of happiness/humour but in a way, I still think deep down having loss would've been a slightly better move. When it came to time constraits, humour was a good option but if I perhaps worked a lot harder into the production of the 2D Animation and spent my time evenly, I probably would've produced something a lot more interesting and originally with those themes inside what is eqvuipvelent to a "fart joke".It didn't go with my originally intentions and because of this, a lot of story was cut out which is a shame I feel and due to the fact that the animation was produced on one day with little to no pre production for the final draft and was made to pretty much meet deadlines as such, the animation felt a little rushed.

I decided that to add annotations such as "This is a bird" would lighten the prospect of me not taking the time or consideration to animate a fully featured bird and it ways it worked but the movement of the characters, the effects, it's less of what I feel I am capable of and because of this, I ultimately feel a little disapointment as you can tell that this animation was rushed but I can still say I was a bit pleased with the result, even if it was a quick effort but that quick effort does result in the final factor of what I disliked of the animation and it was the purpose.

With my original intention it was meant to be viewed so the original purpose would be summed up in the form of moral at the end of the animation whether that be "not take drugs" or "love your neighbours" or whatever that might be but when you watch this, the stronger purpose it could have been lost and that is a shame so just like the animation itself having to be simplifed through various stages, the purpose has and as a whole, it's pretty much for an audience who wants a quick laugh if they are into that type of humour.

If I was to produce this again however and do something similar, I would take the original idea with the original intentions and make the lenght of the animation at least 5 minutes long because whilst a lot of feedback I got discussed the music and fluidity, I feel length would make it more interesting and you can build quite a lot in a 5 minute timespan. Environments, characters and sound effects could all be used and convey something a lot stronger with a moral I would appareicate to showcase but that's if I was to reproduce or try again rather on this 2D Animation Extended Project but if I was to have a chance at producing something different, it would probably be something to with Video Games, a personal hobby and passion of mine and what type of media that would be I am not sure but it would probably be something incorporating Video Games in the form of a video as video production is something I feel I specialise in and work well.