Si Ying's GL e-Portfolio

Now that the final animation is complete, I would like to reflect on my Guided Learning journey in this semester!

If I have to identify challenges I faced, it would be:

Communicating and collaborating with SVA: I initially thought the project that was introduced to us in the SVA briefing was already on-going, and that I could simply help SVA by interviewing more vet techs around Singapore. Turns out, the project was not established yet, and both parties had different understandings on what the project was going to be like, which led to confusions between us. I also faced uncertainties where I felt like the project was not collaborative at all, as it felt as if I was only retrieving information from SVA, instead of helping them as initially planned during the SVA briefing for our GL proposals in school.

Small number of responses received: The low number of responses made me concerned as to how reliable the statistics will be, as 10 respondents definitely did not seem reliable. During this time, SVA mentioned that their survey results would be out soon, hence I initially thought I could use their results for analysis, and to pool a larger sample for my project. Hence, I decided to pause my animation progress to wait for the results before I proceed to work on the scenes that required the statistics. However, after pausing for a week, I realized that I would not have enough time to complete if I wait for the results to come out. Hence, I decided to continue with my animation without the data from SVA, ultimately sacrificing statistical reliability in my infographic.

Delays and postpone to project plan: After the delay and postponing of the animation progress due to the pause in the progress as previously mentioned, I realized that together with my underestimation on how long an animation scene will take to complete and the fact that the initial timeline plans were postponed, I may not be able to complete all of the scenes that were planned out in my initial storyboard. This led to alterations to my final storyboard, where I unfortunately had to cut out scenes that I felt were not as important as addressing the misconceptions about being a Vet Tech. 

Additionally, if I have to identify the weaknesses that I have realized in myself throughout the journey, it would be:

Overconfidence/underestimation: As seen from my initial timeline that I planned, I was definitely too overconfident and severely underestimated the amount of time and work I actually needed to put in into this project; as I thought it would be simple. 

Lack of realistic planning: To add on to the 1st point, I failed to plan realistically due to my overconfidence. 

Tendency to procrastinate: Addition to the previous 2 points, due to my overconfidence and lack of realistic planning, I had the tendency to procrastinate throughout the project as I thought completing it would be a breeze. This led me to set this GL project aside while I handle the other modules’ projects, before reality struck me. 

Poor time management: While on the midst of this project, there were concurrent projects ongoing in the other modules as well. My lack of proper time management resulted in pushing back one of the projects, and also a work-life balance in most days. 

Irrational fear: While on the Planning stage, I was very hesitant to send out e-mails to various clinics all around Singapore as I felt that they would not take me seriously, and may find my request to be “ridiculous”. This led to me waiting for a minimum of 1 week before I sent out another e-mail again, as I was worried that sending out another e-mail would burden the clinics, and that my e-mail would be seen as a “spam”. 

Too detail-oriented: Although it may be a good thing if in the right situation, it was a weakness in me as I was already facing time constraints even after reducing the number of scenes. I realized that I had to speed up in drawing the frames. This resulted in half of the animation looking less-detailed as compared to the first two scenes. Various frames had to be re-used as well in order to save time from drawing more individual frames. Due to this, I felt rather uncomfortable proceeding with the project as I tend to strive for perfection and I disliked the feeling of rushing and not being able to give my best in the animation.

If I have to give 3 words to describe the overall project, it would be:

Creative: Mainly because of the fact that the project is mainly focusing on the arts, and I had to come up with a plan for to execute my project independently. 

Interesting: Not only because I get to learn about animating and the experiences from actual veterinary technicians/nurses, but also because of the challenges I had faced. I initially did not expect that this project would experience many roadblocks. For an ordinary person, who have thought an animation project would have so many setbacks and challenges involved when it is supposed to just be “drawing” only? 

Mind Opening: A major word I would use to describe this entire journey. This project has taught me that there are many blind spots and weaknesses in myself that I was not aware of. I initially thought I was already an independent, self-initiated learner, and I thought this project would be easy enough to complete quickly as I already had an art background. I thought I could spend time to “set this project aside” to handle other modules. However, I was quickly struck with reality when I started animating. I definitely underestimated how long it takes to complete 1 scene and how incredibly time consuming it is, despite the simple concept behind animation. 

If I have to come up with 3 values to describe what I have learned in this project, it would be:

Open-minded: In addition to ‘Mind Opening’ as previously mentioned, this project taught me this value as I realized I needed to be open minded to be able to find ways to solve the setbacks I faced, I needed to find alternative ways instead of following 1 exact pathway. If I were to continue being insistent on following the initial pathway that I planned for the project (e.g. to get SVA’s results, every scene must be perfectly detailed and smooth, etc.), I would not be able to complete the project in time. 

Additionally, on a deeper level, I learned to be receptive to criticism, not only from the feedback I obtained from the animation, but through realizing about my weaknesses in the things I do, as stated in the previous paragraph, and learning how to improve from there. Many people tend to stray away from knowing their weaknesses (Let’s be honest, it doesn’t feel pleasant hearing bad things about yourself.), which can results in a sheltered, fixed mindset which is detrimental to future growth. 

Curiosity: Other than willing to learn more about animation, I forced myself to search beyond my comfort zone. I was initially afraid to send out emails to various vet clinics nationwide as I fear that they may view my request as a “burden”, or that my questions are nonsensical, ridiculous, and a waste of time to answer. Despite getting only 10 responses, those 10 that I received ended up to be very insightful and I realized that obtaining 1st hand information about something I am very passionate about is much more rewarding than a 2nd hand, book resource. This helped build further curiosity and confidence in me to be willing to learn more from others firsthand in the future.

Independence: In the midst of my project journey, I eventually came to realize that I could not rely on SVA for the results responses.

This has taught me to not rely on others for my learning, and I should take initiative in my learning and the things I do in the future. 

If I could add on 1 more value, it would definitely be Appreciation. This entire journey taught me to appreciate the smaller things in life especially after experiencing how animating actually is like. It did not dawn on me that animating actually has many things happening backstage, and it’s not simply just “draw many frames”, as your mindset, motivation, and perseverance all play a part in the completion of the work as well. This project taught me to appreciate even the minute things in life as you may not always be aware of what is happening backstage that allows the small things to happen. 

If I were to reflect on the things that went well for my project, it would be:

The overall execution of the animation: I was quite pleased with the final outcome especially when the narration was added in, despite the reduction of scenes and poorer-quality frames due to time constraint. 

Application of what I’ve learned from resources: Especially when drawing frames that represent falling/bending/movement. I believe that this strength could be applied to my academics, as modules such as Clinical Diagnostics Techniques, and Animal Diseases and Clinical Pathology are definitely more application-based instead of theory. 

After obtaining feedback, I decided to add in background music to the info-animation.

I think the music adds a great touch as it feels more complete! Despite already obtaining some feedback, I have decided to continue obtaining more feedback to learn! 

After the final animation draft and narration script were created (as seen in the previous posts), recordings for the narration were made using the Voice Memo app in my iPhone, and the respective lengths of each scenes were edited according to the script using iMovie. 

After a few weeks of animating each individual frames and scenes, these are all of the scenes that will be shown in the final product! 

After monitoring my progress, for my milestone progress report, I have identified setbacks during my project perform stage. Hence, during the monitor phase, I have managed to come up with solutions to solve the problems faced whilst making sure that I am able to complete the project before the deadline. 

After altering the timeline (as mentioned in the previous post), while I was working on the 5th scene, I realized that I may not be able to finish all of the scenes that were originally planned.

As such, I unfortunately had decided to cut down or alter some of the scenes that may not be relevant to the main topic; which is to address the common misconceptions that the public have. 

While the animation journey was ongoing, some alterations to the timeline had to be made due to various factors.

For example, prior to starting the animation scenes, I was in-contact with SVA as a collaboration for the project, however, there were communication challenges faced as the initial deadline for the responses for their survey was postponed, and after a few weeks, e-mail responses from the SVA mentor gradually halted.

Due to the hiccup, there was a delay in continuing my animation scenes as I initially planned to analyse SVA’s results together with my personal survey, and alter my original storyboard according to the combined data. 

After a couple of mini animation attempts to help me get comfortable with the features in Krita, I went straight to the official animation. 

While I was doing this scene, I came to realize that animation is really time-consuming and I have definitely underestimated the amount of time I will need to complete a scene! This scene alone took me approximately 3 days to complete.

After the mini ball animation, I decided to take things up a notch and attempt to animate a “bouncing” dog, as this concept is part of the 1st scene of the official animation!

I have attempted to apply what I’ve learned from AlanBeckerTutorials’ “12 Principles of Animation (Official Full Series)” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4) on YouTube here.

As I am using Krita as my primary animation software, I wanted to do a test run and get comfortable with its animation features first.

In addition, I have also sketched out a main character for the animation, a vet technician!

The sketches on the right shows a few possible ways she might look during some of the scenes

Using the information I received from the survey, I crafted out a storyboard for the animation I have been planning to do for this project. 

It may seem rather messy, but at least it makes sense for me and I am able view how the animation is going to flow! 

After collecting the 10 responses, I went ahead to analyse them, which resulted in this simplified list of all of the responses! 

After a few weeks, I have managed to collect 10 responses from various vet techs around Singapore despite sending various e-mails to many clinics, multiple times.