This is my reflective blog post for Assignment 1, as part of our Animated Narratives module for our second semester, along with a reflection of my experience in our first year in the Animation Course.
Upon reflection, I found this assignment and module to be incredibly challenging, yet also a rewarding experience over the course of the semester. The task was to create an animated short similar to a previous assignment in our Animated Studio module, however the difference being that this one would be fully 3D animated. I was initially worried about the assignment as I had struggled with working with 3D during the previous semester, and was unsure if I would be able to create a 3D animation as it was a medium I still felt I was not very experienced in. Despite that however, I ended up very proud of the results and improvements I displayed over the course of the module and feel that I had worked to a very high standard.
Firstly, the criteria we were given at the start of the project had added restraints to our narrative and creative ideas, which served as a good challenge and lesson on how to work within the constraints of our animation set by outside inputs like producers. The criteria included: each student in the group contributing to the project and creating one character each, characters can have arms but no legs, the theme of the narrative should be on ‘Escape’, and lastly that the animation should not be longer than 30 seconds. Despite that, and with narrative revisions to ensure our short would meet the time allotment, our final animation ended up roughly 30 seconds over the limit. However, we felt that we did our best the shorten the animation as best we can, without reducing the tension or narrative flow of our narrative.
As for our animation itself, we went through a couple of different ideas before settling on our final concept. Our initial ideas included: An animator trying to escape a nightmare where they are chased by an evil flour sack, robots working in a junkyard with locks on their chest screens that unlock when they become sentient, and lastly dust bunnies that are chased through a carpet by a large vacuum cleaner. We ended up choosing the Dust Bunnies idea and began to work on our narrative.
Our animation’s story had also gone through several changes: initially, the story would have taken place fully within the carpet, with the environment having a fluffy, pastel appearance with the carpet fibers resembling tall trees. Later on, we changed the environment idea to include a much larger room resembling a living room, which then eventually turned into a study room later down the line. Additionally, our ending had also gone through several changes as the original idea had the dust bunnies find a rubber band and use it to slingshot the vacuum to break it. Then it turned into the bunnies using the band to throw the vacuum into the basement, however that did not make sense spatially. So then, we had the dust bunnies tackle the vacuum for it to fall into the basement, however that didn’t make sense in terms of scale. As a result, we settled on having the dust bunnies jump out of the way of the vacuum, making it charge into the basement instead. This portion of our project ended up teaching our group about the main points we need to consider when writing a narrative within the space of a 3D animated short, such as space and time, which has greatly influenced our storytelling in a positive way.
Additionally, whilst working on our projects, we were also given classes on more in-depth rigging techniques used to fully prepare a model for animation. These included lessons on creating more intuitive rigs using empties and object constraints, vertex groups and shape keys. During these classes, I felt that I had learned and understood the material incredibly well, I followed along with the information during lectures and was able to put what we had learned into practice with the practice models provided, and when I rigged my own model for our project.
As for the work I put in for our project, I personally feel that I had made many big contributions to the project and handled my responsibilities and deadlines well, along with having good control over a lot of the important decisions we had to consider when working. Despite there being no formally assigned roles to the groups, I took on the role as a de facto director for mine very early on as I aspired to create a quality product for this assignment. I lead many of the discussions regarding our production and had established a structure for our group’s workflow, along with taking on some extra work so I had more input on the quality of the project. Moreover, I also made an effort to keep up good communication with my group and consistently gave updates on my work, and any questions regarding our project. Thus, I feel that I have given a lot of effort into the assignment and am proud of the contribution I made during the production.
The hardest aspect of our project, in my opinion, would be with our group’s teamwork and overall communication. I am very proud of the effort and results my group members have put into our project, however there was quite a few difficulties that we had encountered during production, namely through communication and scheduling, along with group members not being on the same page at points due to these setbacks. I am aware of outside sources that were causes for setbacks in our project, and I am still proud of my group for what they were able to accomplish under these circumstances.
To summarize, I personally feel that I had put in a great amount of hard work into this module and personally feel that I have further improved my skills on teamwork, project management and on animation, which I plan to further refine during next year.
To reflect on my first year in the animation course as a whole, I feel like my first two semesters were a great introduction to animation as an industry and allowed me to properly understand how the animation process worked as a whole. I found modules such as Animated Studio and Animated Narratives to be greatly beneficial to my teamwork and creative skills in idea generation and problem solving when working in a group. Additionally, I found 3D Digital Literacy and The World of Animation to also be very interesting as they taught me new skills in 3D modelling, rigging and animation, and how animation has been affected through influential art pieces and different time periods, furthermore the module also allowed me to put my previous film studies to good use. Lastly, the lecturers for each module had helped my learning experience greatly as information in lectures detailed and well explained, along with support being shown whenever I struggled or had a question on the topic being focused on.
I am very thankful for the opportunity I had to take this course, as it has provided me with a creative medium where I can work well with my creativity, and I personally feel that I have greatly improved my artistic and technical skills over the year. Furthermore, I feel that I had made a good effort to study the subject and learn how to work efficiently in group projects, which will greatly benefit me when going into our second year.