500 Word Evaluation

Over the course of this project, my time management skills were tested due to multiple unexpected difficulties within my group. Members unfortunately were frequently unable to be present for meetings or complete tasks due to things out of their control. I made myself useful by taking on extra parts of scenes to help such as painting the boulder for the cave, painting a cave background, animating fire and helping colour scenes. By being made producer, I  was more aware of the deadlines and made sure to support the others. In the end, this has allowed for the final piece to be a higher standard than it would have been because elements were more polished and deadlines were ultimately met.

I feel that I have improved as an animator because I have been able to identify issues in my own work and apply solutions. For instance, in my dinosaur walk cycle, I identified that the weight and pace of the character was off for the personality I was trying to evoke. By finding references to help inform my sketches, I knew to stop the knees from rising up too high and to hold the frames for longer. I also think that my ability to apply the 12 principles of animation has improved as I have made active decisions about utilising follow through (the flower being crushed by the meteor) and arcs (the dip of the dinosaurs head). Creating backgrounds and animated with fully painted frames was a new experiment for me. I tried to push myself to be more consistent and I think that has also paid off.

On the other hand, my character designs were my weakest part of the project. I feel like they lack not only appeal but did not completely fit in to the world that the two main characters were designed for. While I made improvements by changing the eyes and focusing more on the initial shape of the characters, they were not completely successful and I decided not to use them in the finished short. Improvements could be made by starting off with  a main character and building on top of that design first. By making completely new designs, I did not allow for the key design elements to become apparent. If I had done this, I could have used similar shaped hands or hip shapes to create continuity. I want to improve in this area. By the end of this project, I have developed confidence in my lining and colouring of scenes which also leads me to feel more optimistic about character design in the future. I think that I would do better after drawing these characters many times and now being familiar with what other designs would suit the established characters.

It was difficult at times to work in a group but I feel that I made useful contributions consistently and helped my group stay in contact with each other by passing on messages and taking notes. While editing was none of our strong suits, I applied what I remembered of premier pro to help organise our scenes all together and used effects to alleviate the production.

Overall, I am very happy with this project. I think that I developed strong backgrounds designs and improves in my practical skills.