Applied Animation: Evaluation

Differ from all the previous modules, Applied animation is time is to produce a documentary. I like watching documentary especially those about animation but never pay close attention on the animated part and could be purely informative for example showing a chart or line graph. Oscar, me and Lauren formed the group OWL and decided to base our documentary title on family. In order to embrace the animation with the topic, the content has to be something abstract and might be difficult to mediate, we start finding interesting white lies that parent told their children and aiming for a relaxing, funny and lighthearted documentary.

In order to learn more about the true experience, I set up some questionnaires and ask if my mother who is a teacher in kindergarten, could help me asking the children and parents about their real experince on white lies. Through the process, I noticed how hard it is to make a professional and polite questionnaire with appropriate amount of questions and information. It is more difficult than I thought and so it took quite a long time to finalise. It seems like I was the only one is the group who want the documentary to bring out some kind of educational message as the animation might lack of dimension but the rest of the group claimed that they just want to make an visually interesting animation and I really did not see the point pushing my thought towards them. Although none of the result from my questionnaires is used, it helped set up the final questions and topics we want for the animation and Lauren has collected the majority of reference from her family since they live quite close and she goes home very often. I could not help much in script writing because it will be best to have some proper English in the animation in order to raise resonances from the local audience so I only help with generating ideas.

We all want the animation to be soft and full of creativity so as to reflect the imaginations of the children therefore it is designed to be watercolour based with pencil outline on textured paper. I love using watercolour so it is very enjoyable during the experiment and I have learnt a lot of new ways of painting watercolour throughout the process for instance wet to wet and dripping water on top, that allows different effects and outcome that is suitable for this animation. At the time we had the interim critique, storyboard, character designs, colour texts and some line tests were done which make us pretty ahead within the rest of the class. However after that, we all have been focusing on responsive because the deadlines are approaching which made us all incredibly stressed out and busy. We did not follow the timetable for a couple of weeks and we started picking up Applied soon we hand-in deadlines for other subjects. I understand that as a successful animator, we will be constantly have multiple jobs or tasks at the same time and prioring a project is simply not allow therefore it is important to have a schedule for multiple projects that I could refer to everyday and this will be essential for next year undoubtedly.

During the production, me and Lauren were assigned to finish most of the animation and Oscar was also drawing some but mostly take part in editing in post production. It has been a while since the last paper animation and therefore I was very excited about it and wanted to proof how much I have improved since first year. However I found the timing very confusing because they want 24 frames per seconds by doubling 12 frames at the same time, for the transition part such as line forming, we are using 18 frames per seconds. In order to reduce confusion during production, I made a table listing all the frames and timing of each scene which is exceptionally helpful in organising work. Other difficulties I encountered is that the punch holes on the animation paper are in different positions. This was a huge disasters that the frames might displace when scanning and cause a lot more trouble. Despite of the greater time consumption,  there were really nothing I could do to fix but drawing a frame on every frame and crop around the frame later in Photoshop. I think in the next time, it will be a good idea to check the punch holes and everything than starting straight away as less mistakes would be made and improve the efficiency of work.

During the post production, Oscar wants to do the whole editing by himself even when me and Lauren ask if there is anything we could help and this make me feel so bad because I am not being very productive thus I want more contribute more. Therefore I take part in making the watercolour background, the stencil for the ident and the DVD cover. I have learnt about through this module especially working with others as a group. Nearly everyday we chat about the progress and plan online and use google drive to share materials, this is vital that we can all access the work we did which enable better quality of teamwork and communication. I become more confident in speaking out own idea and taking order as well. On the other hand, I may not be very good at claiming job actively and pretty passive during post production which needs to be improved. Also I want to improve my English level in order to help with the voice recording, script or any other writing even so that I could engage more into the project. Overall, I am very satisfied with the quality of work and the teamwork that we had. It has been a great experience in this year which we have a lot of opportunities to work with others but I still miss personal project at some point.