Self Evaluation

Personally I believe that I have done well in this project. This was due a few things I managed to do in this project.

First off I managed to keep on top of the work. I believe that my project management helped massively because it allowed me to keep the work organized and let me see the path I wanted to take with my animation. For example when I created my pitch presentation, it allowed me to organize mood boards, which helped in the creation style of the MP3 and gave me a template of then what to draw in Flash. Furthermore it also allowed me to put my animation idea timeline on paper, which then allowed me to create a time plan in Flash and also helped me create my asset list for what I would need to gather and create for this animation to come together.

Secondly being able to pick up the skills to create animations in Flash helped further my project. After being shown how to use the basic functions of the Flash program I was able to remember them almost instantly by looking at programs home screen. Having this knowledge quickly allowed me sit down almost instantly and get on with creating the separate animations for the main time line as quickly as I could.

Referring back to original set criteria for the project was that it could be no longer than 15 seconds, it must be bouncing in some scenes, must include music effects, a few animated backgrounds and finally a voiceover.

I believe I achieved this with my animation. This is because; my total runtime is 14.23 seconds, my player bounces in most of the scenes, I included music effects such as birds chirping, and retro scan sounds, my animated backgrounds have flying birds and I also recorded and inserted a voiceover.

Furthermore going back to my original ideas in my proposal, I tried to stick with my main idea so I knew what I was working with and could keep my production streamlined, however I had to change the fact I wanted animated clouds, to animated birds, so I could keep the animation easier to create, mainly because I had the clouds on my background layer, and it was becoming difficult to animate them past my detailed backgrounds. I also decided I need to add in a small scene at the beginning where the old MP3 player hits the ground because otherwise it wouldn’t make sense in the continuity of the animation.

Overall when I look back on the animation, most of it went well. It flows well when you watch it, the sound links up with animation well to create a realistic feel to what’s going on. Most of the animations work well within the piece but certain things don’t work well. Such as the birds, they were slightly rushed and look poor on the backgrounds against the other animations. Also on the MP3 player it looks terrible when it’s tumbling from the clouds and makes that section of the animation just plain boring to watch.

However there are a few things I would do differently looking back on it. For one if I had more time I would have definitely made everything that bounces, squash and stretch. It makes things a lot easier on the eye when you watch it and looks a lot more effective than if you just tumble your items. Furthermore I would have liked to create simpler backgrounds and tried to use colour within the animation to see if it improved the overall look and style of the animation.