Before starting this semester, I knew absolutely nothing about animation. I have always had an interest in it, but I didn’t know any of the theory behind it and had never actually tried to animate anything. However, now I have created an animation, which although it isn’t perfect, is impressive to me as my first attempt at a proper one.

I think that my grasp on perspective has definitely improved as I was previously absolutely clueless on how to work with it, and frame things correctly. The parts of my animation that worked well in my opinion were the backgrounds, the colours, and the staging of the scenes. I’m impressed by the backgrounds I created for the animation, as I had believed I hated working on them before this and usually left them out or made them very simple. However, I enjoyed creating them and I’m quite proud of them.

There are a few areas I think I still need to improve in. Colour theory is something I’ve never really considered before this semester, as I usually just picked colours, I thought looked nice for my art. Now that I have learnt more about it, I would like to continue practising so I can use it effectively in the future. I also think that I need to practice inbetweening and cushioning with my animations, as I feel like some parts are still very jumpy and may need extra frames to make it smoother. I also don’t completely understand what should be a keyframe and what shouldn’t, so I will study and practice this more.

I think my animation process needs revising as I drew out two roughs, one in less detail, and one with more before lining my art. This was effective but very time consuming, which was not good when I was already pushed for time. I think I also need to split things up between layers, for example, the necklace and hair should have their own layer, so I can add more accurate secondary action without erasing my line art.

Creative teamwork was an issue for me at the beginning, as I am not very comfortable talking to people I don’t know and am not used to teamwork. My groups had their ups and downs; however, my last group was an absolutely amazing experience, and I have found that I actually enjoy certain aspects of teamwork. I have learnt that I need to communicate more, as at the beginning I only communicated when necessary due to anxiety, although later I began interacting and it improved things immensely.

In conclusion, I know what I need to spend time practising and the areas that I have almost no knowledge of. I absolutely need to work on my time management, although a lot of the issues this semester were caused by personal issues that I couldn’t control. I do think that with everything considered, I managed to create something impressive despite my lack of experience.