Evaluation

 Final Major Project SUPERCLASH 

The main theme for this project was mythology, and the sub-theme I chose was Thor, this relates back to my project since Thor is from Norse mythology. I chose Thor to be my main character because he is a well-known character and at the time my ideas were quite limited. My aim for this project was to get out of my comfort zone by doing multiple animation cycles such as a running animation and a jumping animation, I also wanted to use a variety of the different viewpoints we started to learn in Marshals class.

The skills that I have developed during this project are my art skills because I have managed to draw my characters from different viewpoints, and I have managed to animate them without asking for much help. This will help me in the future since it will allow me to be more independent.

However, there were times when I really struggled, for example, in scene five where the berserkers had to get into formation. The green lines I used for scene five helped me more than I thought since they helped me to guide each berserker to their place. Another skill I feel I have developed is my premier pro skills, I recently found out how to make the speed/duration for each scene slower. This helped me a lot because in some scenes it was too fast.

The reflective journal I did each week has helped me a lot since it allowed me to keep track of how long I have spent on that one scene. Although at first, I thought I was ahead. However, as I went, I realised that I had to colour in each frame, sadly I only realised this when I finished my fifth scene which was almost 400 frames. As the weeks went on, I decided that I should colour the running animation so that I could re-use it for the other scenes, this method made the colouring process twice as quickly as it would have been If I had coloured in each running cycle.

However, even though I added the music I felt that if I had left at least a week I would have been able to add sound effects to the animation to make it better than it already is. The music I used was better than I thought because I managed to use audition to merge two of the tunes, I chose to make music for the start of my animation. I feel that my skills in audition have improved since I am able to merge 2 different tunes. In the future, I should not make the mistake of leaving colouring to last as it will take more time to finish than the scheduled deadline.

Compared to my Final animation the concept has not changed as much as I thought. The only thing that has changed is the design of my Thor instead of being a squash Thor is now a chilli. I am proud of myself for not changing that much because I thought that the Idea, I produced was original and funny so I am hoping that when my peers will love my animation.

The most difficult part was trying to get the berserkers to come at separate times, to do that I had to make different layers and add empty frames so that they do not appear at the same time. Although when it came to doing scenes six and seven it started to get stressful as there were so many empty frames, it went to a point where I had to use the eye icon to hide layers so that I can concentrate on one layer at a time.

Even though I am missing tiny details from my animation I still managed to get the main parts done, this shows that I have improved from my last animation group project since I managed to finish this animation without help compared to the group project where we could not even finish our animation as a group. I feel that I have improved quite a lot throughout the units as I am now able to use animate comfortably.

However, there were times when I had asked for help, one example I can think of is when I needed help with drawing a front view of my main character Thor (chilli). Although, my organisational skills need more work because I underestimated how long it would take to colour in which cost me a lot of time that I did not have.

I am happy with my final outcome even if it is missing a few details, what matters is that I got it finished before the deadline. The positive part about my animation is that I managed to do multiple camera shots and a varied number of viewpoints. This is a positive as it allowed me to go out of my comfort zone.

However, the negative part about my animation is that towards the end it gets a bit scruffy. Another negative is that my organisational skills were nowhere to be seen in the project. My animation conveys the theme really well since I have Thor who is from Norse mythology and berserkers and minotaur who are also from Norse mythology.

Most of the audience's feedback was positive which made me very happy because all the time I have put into this project was worth it. However, there were some improvements which I thought made sense, such as Myan said for me to make the last scene longer so that the audience understands what is going on. He also told me to colour in the whole scene instead of some which made sense since I ran out of time and I wanted to make sure that the audience knew what colour they are supposed to look like.

Haya thought I should improve the smoothness of my animation which was a good improvement, mainly because when I played the animation back there were some scenes where it was too fast or too slow so in the future I will aim to keep the animation consistent.

I had two other students see my animation and one of them was Abdullah Majeed, he said that I should build on the backgrounds more, which was a good piece of feedback because when you look at my animation it is mostly set in the mountainside which looks more boring. Another student who had seen my animation was Frankie Rae who said that I should have coloured in the background to make it more lively, which I totally agree with its just I did not have enough time. in my future animations, I will try to focus on my organisational skills.

However, Akbarul thought that I should add dialogue which would have made my animation even better since it gives it more life. Also, I agreed with it since the feedback was pinpointed at a certain area in which I could have spent more time. He also said that it would be better if the dead chillies were at the bottom which I did not really agree with because I wanted it to be a crime scene where the chillies were killed by the minotaur as soon as it arrived in Asgard

Mary thought I should make more movements such as the arms moving while I'm running or jumping. I thought that was a great idea because  It would make the animation look even more realistic. However, this just shows that I really need to improve my organisational skills.

A valuable skill I have learnt is how to draw my character from different viewpoints, this will help me a lot in the future because when I visualisation diagram I will be able to draw the character from different viewpoints allowing the client to see my character in detail. Another, valuable skill I have learned is how to use animate to the fullest, this will be immensely helpful in the future since I now have a backup plan if I am unable to become a concept artist.