Evaluation

This whole year has been a pretty steep learning curve, the workload went up a staggering amount compared to last year, but it has made me focus a lot more on the work so that I would become overwhelmed. I’m sure next year will be another step up in work so it has been important to practice time management over the last few months. I really wasn’t happy with the way my pre-production came out. I didn’t work at finalising anything until the last minute so when it came to animating; I was still making alterations to scenes and sorting out edits so had to spend time away from the light box to finalise scene lengths.

My aim next year is to have all the little things finalised as soon as possible, luckily I was able to edit scenes to the frame so when it came time to compile everything, I could drop scenes in and they were the perfect number of frames, requiring no further edits. Another thing I would apply to next year would be to colour scenes as I go, this year I stockpiled all of my scenes until everything was cleaned up, then began colouring in the final week, which turned into 14 hours a days of sitting at the computer. Now that I am familiar with the software I can jump straight in.

I think overall I produced a film that I am happy with. The backgrounds, music and sound effects all work together to compliment the animation. My initial aim was to create a film that was as cinematic as possible, using my love of films to influence the way I approached the project helped immensely. I realised in the last week or so of the project that all of the pencil mileage, all of the paint bucketing and all the fine lining was working towards a very definite final outcome that only came together in the last few days. It wasn’t until the Friday deadline that I was able to watch the scene as one coloured piece. I’m really proud of what I achieved this year; there was a definite step up in the quality of work I produced, and it’s nice to have some work I’m happy to put on my showreel. Hopefully next year will come with more challenges and I will push myself further and improve upon what I have learnt so far.