Study Task 5

Evaluation

The Fish Food project has taught me about a number of technical and management techniques. Through trial and error I believe that working in a group has developed my existing skills and showed me areas to improve in future projects.

In terms of the general management of the project. It greatly assisted to assign roles to the team members. Co producing with Rhys meant that we had to assure that the many different aspects of creating the film were done in a way that made sense chronologically. I feel that especially at the beginning of the production timeline, the group was certain of the roles we had to play because we created a detailed Gantt chart. Time management was also an area we could have largely improved on however. As the project progressed the organisation slipped somewhat as we didn't maintain a tight schedule to work on. This made me realise the importance of recognising the roles of every individual in the team. Another area which had strong and weak elements in the duration of the project was communication. During a slight altercation due to difficulty of blending digital and stop-motion mediums presented problems for the group because the schedule we had maintained had slightly backfired on us. We were however able to resolve this problem but being able to communicate the issues we were having to find a solution could have been done more smoothly. Overall James and Rhys were effective team members who were resourceful enough to find solutions to the issues which were inevitably going to present themselves to us.

Unfortunately much of the practical work I undertook was not present in the finalised film, only as reference to be animated in 2D. As I was keen on undertaking a stop motion project, I was tasked at creating and animating a puppet on green screen which would then have 2D elements animated over and under it. This proved more difficult than expected as we were not working with flat green on the background and key lighting on After Effects was not working successfully. As I had never used a physical green screens this was a major learning curb for me, making me realise the technicality that must go into blending two different animation techniques. As these are techniques that I wish to develop in the future, I must learn more about green screening and layering 3D onto 2D. 

As stop motion is an area I have interest in, I would like to further my knowledge of analysing movement for animation. For example it was interesting animating a Fish puppet because contrary to animating humans and knowing the way they move, a fish is entirely different. Therefore I believe it to be important to constantly observe movement, as it is a key element to making  animations believable. Furthermore, taking videos and having as much reference footage as possible is important. I feel that during the process of animating the fish, the more time I had spent considering the movement of different fish would have shown in the final animation.

With the pre-production process areas I would like to improve on in the future are the ways I present my work. Firstly, I tend to do conceptual drawings, turnarounds etc. with pen and paper as I see hand drawn as a strength. However I want to translate my confidence by hand to the digital medium because it is a way to present work more clearly and aesthetically. I was able to demonstrate this in the animatic I made. Although it translated from the storyboard well, I also want to improve on the continuity of my animations, drawing the scenes together with a consistent colour palette and smoother animations. Despite my intentions to further my skills on the digital medium, The hand drawn will always be my preferred medium, so an activity I will ensure that I do is sketching every day. I believe it to be important because it will maintain a confidence to draw quickly with minimal mistakes. 

Overall, the process of making a group project has taught me valuable lessons about the communication required to run a smooth project, and technical issues encountered within the project are all areas I believe I can improve on in future productions.