Progress - Week 12. Evaluation
I have finally finished my film! It took a lot of perseverance and a lot of rejigging my ideas and time management throughout, but itâs complete to an acceptable standard. I learned a lot of things through the process, about timings, strategy and discipline, what to prioritise and what should take a back seat. The rough animation took by far the longest of any aspect. This reassures me that cleanup and colour as concepts are not as daunting as I first thought (though they require their own forms of strategising), but also made me consider why this might be. In the first place, I think a spirit of perfectionism has to seep into roughs, as when they are complete you already have a strong sense of how things are going to look in motion; while I am tempted to simply note something like, ârough animation takes this amount of timeâ, what I really think happens is that rough animation might always take a little longer than I want it to - just because I want to make it as good as possible. Aside from learning my technical limits, I will have to keep my mindset in check when going into the next project - just how much time can I allow myself, and will the overall piece benefit or suffer from how I decide that? Having said that, I am totally pleased with how the finished piece looks. Devoting enough time to colour and compositing was essential from the start to give it a polished look - it was only after I added overlays, particle effects and backgrounds that the piece really started to come together. I would like to spend more time thinking about how to maximise the potential of these assets - how could I work backgrounds in more effectively, or efficiently? I am also interested in experimenting more with the 3D effects available in After Effects, as I have great faith in the potential of 2D/3D hybrid animation; traditional is good for certain stories (and budgets) but there is a whole untapped world of ideas available to those who can be bothered to unlock it.
The dialogue, music and sound design came out great. I am delighted to have been able to insert as much of that sound world as possible - in fact, the sound was perhaps the one thing which felt the leats compromise from planning to development stages. I had a blast working with others, getting their feedback on their parts, and building around their constraints. If I were to make this film again I would probably have tried to get the important sounds sorted a little earlier than I did, but it didnât cause any big problems in the long run that I didnât.
Overall, happy with my film, but a big big learning experience in how it could have been better. I hope to take everything I love about this project forward, and to work on everything that doesnât add up. My planning was MOSTLY successful, but more successful was my capacity for adjustment and putting things together during that learning process. If I keep challenging myself, next time will no doubt be similar, but I have more tools than ever to keep that process going :)















