Coursework 1: Design a World Reflection

This project was very interesting to work on.  It was really fun to work within a team all working together towards the same goal.  I have been a part of projects like this before but this felt much more organised and focused.  Overall I think that the collaborative work was successful and we were able to make all our individual animations flow together relatively smoothly.  We made lists of plot beats and divided them up evenly so that certainly helped.  We worked well as a group, and our discussions developing the story were really productive.  In our group talks as the project progressed we all had to compromise and adapt individual story lines, and that went well.  It felt like everyone had a little something to add, bits of inspiration others had not seen.  I have not watched the ‘Spies in Disguise’ movie, but other group members had and it became a pretty big inspiration.  It felt like a real collaborative effort, with everyone pulling their weight on the project. It was nice talking to others and getting feedback during the animatic process.  Using Discord was really helpful for communication between members of the group, but I thought that not having everyone attending every meeting in person made the discussion of the plot a bit more difficult.  There were times we could not make a lot of decisions without hearing others feedback.

For my own part of the project I particularly enjoyed when we were coming up with the character ideas.  It was a little tricky finding what birds would fit for the different shots and actions.  We needed to drop a few, we thought having too many birds would get confusing and messy.  I was happy with my work on the environments and shots, I mostly had to do a lot of environmental stuff which I enjoy doing.  In terms of lessons learned, I think I could have started work on the animation earlier than I did, I felt under a bit of pressure especially with all the other assignments and work for the 3D Digital Literacy course.  I am going to think more about time management for the next project.  If I were starting again, I would change the designs to be more cartoony, which I think would have reflected the tone of the story and the premise as it developed a bit more.  Looking at other people’s designs there’s a lot more exaggeration, but I guess a silver lining is that most of shots are pretty far away from the bird so it’s not too bad.

I feel that doing more animations in my own time, not just during lectures or for homework’s is a smart move.  It would help me practice new techniques and give me a better idea of what I’d like to do in future animations.  It has been very interesting and fun to properly learn the process of animation, and the lectures and learning how to use Krita were great.  I’ve never used proper animation software. I’m looking forward to creating more animations and working collaboratively with others in the future.