Our first semester in 2D animation has been an incredible learning experience in terms of reintroducing myself and others to the fundamentals of animation, which can also be transferred over to our 3D projects. Our main assignment of this semester being a collaborative project was an event that I was anticipating (yet slightly dreading due to the fact that it was my first time collaborating on an animated project)
Overall in retrospect, our first 2D assignment as a group has been fairly smooth sailing when it came to the development of both concepts for the characters and worlds we wished to focus on. A few issues that we came across in development mainly stemmed from the fact that this class required us to keep switching around our original groups, which caused confusion as to whoβs ideas we were continuing to develop, which also caused issues when certain members of the group would disappear from classes. This wasnβt an issue nearing the end of the project though due to everybody finally deciding to lock in and focus on finishing the final stages of the animation.
However, in the end, we all managed to pull together and collaborate on this animated project, for which I am very grateful and proud of us. My favourite stages of development included both the character and world design due to using limited colour palettes for both of our characters to make them easily distinguishable from the backdrops. I was also able to take skills that I had used previously in my own animated projects to help create parts for the animatic by using a lower frame rate than I usually animate at in 2D. I am thankful for this course having introduced me to how to animate on a desktop as prior to this year i had only used my ipad to animate my own projects, therefore this was another new experience for me.
Collaboration was also a major player for me in this project as this was the first collaborative animated projects that i have ever worked on. Whilst I was worried at first that we would have issues and disagreements with the direction we wanted to lead the project in, everybody was so welcoming to each others ideas and willing to make improvements to their own, which I appreciated due to how overwhelming working with others usually is for me, but everyone was happy to accommodate everybodyβs ideas and designs.
Moving forward, I hope to be able to carry the collaborative skills that I have adopted through this project into my future projects, as this skill will become especially important moving forward into professional spaces and the creative industry, especially in Northern Ireland. I would also like to be able to work with more people in our class outside of my intermediate friend group which we formed near the beginning of the year, as I would like to see how dynamic our project concepts could become with a wider range of demographics working alongside me.