Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Self Reflection and Project Evaluation for Term 3, Year 9 Creative Media Animation Project



Discuss your feelings about the production task:


·      Are you satisfied with the final result?
       Yes I’m really happy with the outcome of my animation because over the past two terms I’ve put heaps of effort into drawing and finalising every scene, so I think the effort has definitely paid off.


·      Did the animation process require more or less time than you originally thought?
     I was actually really surprised with how I didn’t finish too early but haven’t had to stress about not being able to finish. My final animation was fully completed one week before the actual due date, which gave me plenty of time to adjust the soundtrack and make sure everything was in place. 

·      Would like to change any aspects of your final project (style of animation, the concept etc.)?
    I don’t think I would change any aspects of the final project because I feel as though everything in the storyline fits in well and I’m happy with the drawings and movements of the characters. Even though we’ve had ages to work on our animations, I wish we still had more time! I’d love to add in some more scenes, especially ones closer to the end.

·      If you could start the project again what would you do differently?
     If I was to start the whole project again, I might choose to have a different storyline with completely different sceneries to draw. For example I might chose to base my animation on an African Safari, which would contrast a lot from an underwater theme.  Sometimes I found it a little hard to always move objects up and down or side to side as if they were bobbing or swaying in the water. So if I started to base an animation with the story occurring on land, this may save time because I wouldn’t always have to make everything move.


Respond to each of the following dot points (using complete sentences or paragraphs). You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.


·      Discuss whether your final animation has turned out the way you imagined?
           I think my final animation has turned out to be better than I had imagined because one, I have never been able to draw whatsoever so I was really surprised with the amount of objects I actually drew, and two, everything fit together really nicely. When I was planning this animation at the start, I was worried about the storyline not running very smoothly from scene to scene. However not that it is finished, I can say that I do think each scene fits in well and there are no awkward scenes that don’t really join onto the previous one. 

·      Discuss whether you had to modify any elements of your original concept and planning to create your project.
      I didn’t really have to modify too much of the original concept and planning to create my animation. Some scenes I had to cut short and others I had to make longer, so everything tied together in the end. However I wanted to have one or two more scenes at the end where my fish swims into his reef and all the other fish are so happy for him to have found his colour again. 

·      Explain how your animation skills developed during the project (i.e. did you become more efficient? Did the quality of your animation improve? Did you have to use a variety of animation techniques? etc.
      My animation skills definitely developed during the project! I was a really big novice at the start because I only really knew how to draw one frame and kind of make it link onto the next. I was kind of familiar with the program however because in past years I had worked with it. I pretty much only knew how to use onionskins, how to trace on a picture and how to change paint colour, erase and fill. I slowly taught myself how to be more time effective with these tools and with Mr Powell’s help, I quickly learnt how to use layers, send objects behind, duplicate frames, add keyframes and exposures, use the transform tool, export each scene to QuickTime and last but not least add a soundtrack in Garageband. Especially as Term 3 progressed my time management skills greatly improved. A scene that once took me maybe 3 or 4 lessons could now only take me 2. Longer and more detailed scenes still took a much longer time but for the shorter scenes, I could effectively manage my time so I wasn’t rushing at the last minute.

·      Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during the animation process. (These may include; technical difficulties, corrupt or missing files, difficulty using the editing software, problems exporting etc)
      I encountered several problems and difficulties during the animation process. These included:
·      USB’s freezing and quitting out because my animation was taking to long to save/import

·      Files not opening

·      Files going missing
·      Forgetting how to work a certain aspect of Animationish

          Although these were all really annoying and impacted my time, I got through them eventually
          and was able to get back to work. For the USB issues, this mainly occurred at the start of the
         project because instead of saving my animation to the desktop, I would save it to my USB. This
         took forever and often resulting the loss of some files or files not being able to open. At one
         point my whole completed shark scene somehow deleted form my USB so I had to start this
         scene from the beginning. Looking back, this wasn’t actually a bad thing because after making
         the scene once I knew what worked effectively and what didn’t really. I was able to draw better
         sharks and the movements had more flow and weren’t as jagged as they used to be. 


·      Explain if you made effective use of storyboards and scene planning/breakdown?
      I think I did use the storyboards and the planning/breaking down of my scenes effectively because I wasn’t stressing at the end because I had no time to finish my project and neither was I working on one scene heaps longer than another because a really big scene wasn’t split into two.

·      Describe whether your planning assisted or helped you to focus during the animation process.
      I think my planning did really help to assist me focus and manage my time effectively during the animation process. Whenever I felt as though I was moving at a snail’s pace, I would look back to my storyboards and take a mental note of how many scenes I still had to do. Most of the time I was actually sitting in a good position with my time management so I was really worrying over nothing.

·      Describe any time-management issues you or your group came across during the project and describe the steps you took to improve in this area.
          As I mentioned before, I didn’t really encounter any time management issues throughout the two terms we spent animating. If I did feel a little bit stressed for time, I would look back to my storyboards. This helped me plan how many lessons I should work on per scene, which ended up being effective because I finished my whole project on time. 

·      Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs/journals and think about whether it looks like a whole term worth of work)
     Compared to our avatar unit, I personally feel like I’ve put much more effort into my blog for the animation unit. At the beginning of the project, I made it my goal to write a detailed reflection for every lesson, and if I could, I would always include a screenshot of my progress. I stuck to this goal and think my blog is pretty up to date with all of my progress over the past two terms. 

·      List any other software skills, animation techniques, tricks or shortcuts you have learned during the project.
      I’m pretty sure I have mentioned all I have learnt while doing this project, but overall I’ve learnt so many of Apple’s shortcuts such as command c (for copy) and command v (for paste) which if you add up every single time I’ve used them, they would have saved me so much time! In general I’ve also just learnt how to manage my time effectively and that the more you put in, the more you will get out :)


I can’t not say I haven’t enjoyed making my animation. Although it has been a very long and          sometimes frustrating process, I’m so happy and proud with my final outcome. I’ve learnt many computer skills that can help me later in life and have a really cool animation that I can look back on and watch for years to come.

ThankYou Mr Powell!!! 


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