[Extended Practice]Critical Evaluation

Aim of the animation:

Extended Practice is the module I appreciate the most in this year. I was excited to visualise the true story of my father. We are very close and his retirement from the police force in last January is the trigger to this animation. His passion to the job inspires me to animate his memory and to make him proud. Another main reason is the disrespectfulness to police officers among teenagers in Hong Kong, mainly due to political reasons. I wish to bring out the message that every occupation should be respected and appreciated especially who put themselves in danger for our health or safety.

What techniques did I use:

I mostly used Photoshop and After Effects for animating and editing. The animation is drawn digitally and coloured by both scanned in watercolours and watercolour brushes, with different angle and direction in every single frame. However, this is very time consuming and caused a lot of confusion when too many layers in a file. Nevertheless, I decided to repeat outline even when the characters are not moving. This repeating method gives more movements which I discovered in COP that it brings life to the characters. There is a huge difference between a still line and a line that is constantly moving which basically establishes the major aesthetic of the animation.

Additionally, I also experiment with 3D animation in After Effect. I learnt this from YouTube and I enjoy self-teaching a lot. I can learn a lot in a short time by watching various methods online but being selective is also a difficult task.

 

Time management:

I am exceptionally proud of the time managing skill during this module. The first timetable was done at late February that was the time when I found everything was not organised and I was too chill to work hard. Week plan works the best for me because it gives me flexibility rearrange ‘timetable within the timetable’ also it is less intimidating than shuffling a lot of work in a day. I am glad that I followed the timetable strictly because this pushes my limits and be ahead of the schedule. This is a skill I need to keep and improve in the future and I believe it will lead me to some good companies.

Target audience:

At first, I was just aiming at Hong Kong audience as I thought foreigner would find it difficult to understand the story. My perspective changes during all the crits and production. The animation already breaks the wall of language and everyone can enjoy it visually and aesthetically. Therefore, I will say it is open to all age groups in the world who is interested in 2D or intense content.

How does this animation develop your specialist practice?

I want to be specialised in 2D and this animation is a valuable practice to showcase my skills also experimenting. I show the ability to adopt different styles in work also to develop as well as working effectively and efficiently. The theme of the animation would be attractive to Hong Kong animation company and the aesthetic could help setting up my brand.

Group project

At the beginning of the module, I volunteered to work with Lauren and the group of Callum and Hayley because it is fun to work with others also I can gain more experience when collaborating. I designed characters for Lauren based on some real photos of her and her sister. It is a good practice on life drawing and practice real portion which is also useful to my own project. Although the final character designs were anime looking, I had a lot of valuable practices and we both agreed on the design. For Callum and Hayley group, I made props for them because I love crafting a lot also want to expand this skill. Hayley taught me a lot from sticking wood pieces together to measuring for laser cutting. I gained so much new knowledge in a short period of time and very pleased to have good communication with the two groups, definitely want to get involved in more group project in the future.

 

What have you learnt?

I have learnt so much during this module. From planning out the project to actually producing it, I have never thought about completing a 2 minutes animation by myself. It proves that I have stepped out of my comfort zone and challenged myself with a difficult goal and achieved it eventually. The sense of satisfaction is priceless. I learnt to organised my time and schedule additionally spending extra time to work with other groups so as to gain more experience . I challenged new approaches to the software, exploring them even further and achieve the mix media style I want. What is more, learn to rest. My wrist was so stiff due to long hour working without resting. Hopefully there is no long-term effect but this is when I noticed the importance of taking a balance between work and rest.  Animators’ hands are life! Finally, and the most rewarding, learning to appreciate myself. I always have high standard and seldom feel pleased about my own work. During the production, receiving all positive feedback increases my confidence and started accepting others’ compliment rather than hiding my work from others. Although I still feel a bit embarrassed when showing the animation but I definitely appreciated it more and be proud of it.

Improvement

I wish to do more research at the beginning on the texture and aesthetic that I want. My resources are limited geographically so I should have taken more reference photos in the Water Head Village. The voice recording of my father is not perfect because it was not recorded in a completely quiet space and I wish to do something to relax him. As I mentioned how repeating lines could give life to the character, I should not repeat the line when the gangster is shot down so as to follow the idea and contrasting the living and the dead characters. This is due to not enough animation tests which should have done more at the beginning.