Reflections

 

Thinking about all of the things that I have learned this year and overcoming problems and issues I feel as though I have done extremely well on these projects considering the short time scales we had to complete them by, and my complete lack of knowledge of animating I have learned a whole new bunch of skills that I can truly utilize next year.

For example, the first Project consisted of the more traditional approach but with an experimental feel, this really helped with being a little more free with my ideas and I got to learn the essential skills to take me further with character animation through learning the main principles of animation and also being introduced to things like rotascoping which is a really simple but effective way of animating things like walk cycles as you get a brilliant perspective of how the body moves.

I already knew the basics of storyboarding, and I really enjoy putting written narratives into a visual piece of work in order to show what you would like to portray. Learning how to further this through use of an animatic is a pretty useful skill to have and I’m thrilled to know how to do this now as before I had never used Final Cut pro or had a moving storyboard, I now see how useful this is in order to present your ideas clearly.

  

However, when it comes to 3D work I don’t enjoy building or rigging characters whatsoever as the programs are really complex and difficult to use. Given a good length of time and some clear directions of how to use Cinema 4D I may get better at it, but for now I would rather focus on the things that I enjoy and progress further with them rather than battle with a way of animating that I don't like.

 Things I would have done differently with all of my projects would have been keeping a check on my time management and not straying so far away from my initial ideas once I have started working on the projects. Also using my time at college productively on the computers and not leaving things till the end and rushing through them, as this could lower my marks by not completing all of the objectives within the modules. Clearly thinking through the entire module before starting a complicated idea and trying to be a little more creative when it comes to designing characters so not to make them without thinking about their personalities and possible traits, as I feel my 3D character lacked ‘character’ in his model sheets when actually he was supposed to have plenty. Otherwise I feel like I am constantly learning and developing new skills and I can learn from mistakes made in the beginning that will hopefully help to make future decisions better and more efficient to the modules. 

From this latest project I have learned how to use After Effects and it may be my new favorite program for digital cut out, as it is easy to use and it actually makes animating much easier and is relatively straightforward to use. I think that I achieved all of my goals albeit a little different from when I started but its worked extremely well considering the changes and I’m glad that I have had input from my peers to help mold the animation in the right direction as it looks great. The final piece is fit for purpose as its just really bongy and is basically a short surreal situation.

Things interesting about this latest project were how fast my animation was actually made with relatively less time than all the other projects that we have done so far that had a considerable length of time to complete. I chose to use computers even though I don’t feel that I work very fast or efficiently on them, However, with having less parts to a project really gives you enough free time to focus on the final product and making it excellent rather than all of your effort going into the research so it gave me more motivation and time to do things that I haven’t tried before.

At the start of this I really didn’t think that I had the skills needed to effectively finish the first year, but I have obviously learnt a lot more than I had first thought as now I feel much more confident with everything. When I have spoken to my peers family and friends about my ideas and they have seen the final outcomes they have all been pretty impressed surprisingly and totally got what I was going for, which is a surprise to me considering I had never animated anything before starting in September and it really has given me confidence to carry on and produce some more animations.