Animation Unit: Self-reflection and project evaluation:

Discuss your feelings about the production task:

·      Are you satisfied with the final result?

I am not as satisfied with the final result as I could be.

·      Did the animation process require more or less time than you originally thought?

It required a lot more time than I originally thought.

·      Would like to change any aspects of your final project (style of animation, the concept etc.)?

I would like to change the background images for our animation to make it more interesting and exciting by possibly making some of the objects move around the screen.

·      If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

I would do the animation backgrounds different by making them more complex and exciting for the audience watching by adding more to them.

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?

In terms of the photos taken I am overall happy with our photos in our animation but I think our background animation could be improved a lot more.

·      Discuss whether you had to modify any elements of your original concept and planning to create your project:

I would like to change the storyline of my original concept maybe by adding an animated character to the background that could interact with bella, such as a gummy bear that could have moved around the screen and interacted other objects.

·      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);

I became more efficient using Photoshop during this process, with making photos  transparent and cropping images as well as being able to add background images to my foreground images. And I feel like I have really developed and added to my photo shopping skills.

·      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.)

During the beginning of our project we started importing our iStopMotion images to our background images in Animation Ish. When we were supposed to be exporting our background animated images and putting them into photoshop with our images that were taken with bella on iStopMotion. We had to restart this process of putting the background images and images with bella again because if we had of continued doing this the process on Animation Ish it was possible that our file would have corrupted and broken from being too large.

·      Explain if you made effective use of storyboards and scene planning/breakdown?

I don’t think we could have planned our animation as well as we could have as in the beginning we hadn’t decided how long each frame/shot would be for our animation which makes it difficult when it came to creating the actual animation as we didn’t know how many frames we needed and how long each scene was going for.

·      Describe whether your planning assisted or helped you to focus during the animation process;

Our planning helped us during the animation process as we knew how long each scene was going to be and how each background image on animation would have looked (roughly) according to our storyboarding.

·      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;

We had time management issues in our group when one member was away during a lesson and we missed filming/animating time during class. We also found it difficult to manage our time as sometimes we couldn’t borrow a laptop to take home over the weekend to work on our project as they were all borrowed out.

·      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);

I don’t think I have required adequate amount of detailed reflection throughout my project and I think I could have done a lot better on my blog work and reflections for each week throughout the term.

·      List any other software skills, animation techniques, tricks or shortcuts you have learned during the project.

I have learned how to add two images together in Photoshop and cropping and making images transparent as well as using specific tools and methods such as the magic wand tool, duplicating and flattening images, transforming and more. I have also learnt how to import and export images from iStopMotion to use in Photo shop.