As a whole, I have found this project to be beneficial and challenging in many ways. It hasn’t necessarily challenged me in terms of my animation skills, but it has challenged me in other ways, such as working as a team member and working within very slim time frames. It has also provided me with an opportunity to work on my animation skills that I felt weren’t as strong as others, such as timing and spacing. Not only this, but this module has pushed me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to find new ways to solve a brief. I feel that I have progressed both as an individual and an animator throughout this module, and I have learnt a lot about myself and how I cope with new pressures and working on multiple projects at one given time.
In terms of animation skills, this module has allowed me to take a step back and focus on developing skills that I felt would benefit future work. One of the skills I have been able to work on is my character animation. For the first brief I completed, I focused upon the character and looked into body movement and body language more closely than I had in previous projects. I found that whilst doing this, I also learnt a lot about timing and spacing and how, when it is applied correctly, it can make a huge difference to how that character moves. I am really pleased with what I learnt from completing this brief and I feel that I have gained a stronger understanding of timing and spacing that I can apply to other projects, such as Applied Animation.
Another aspect I feel that I have developed is character design. ONFORM provided me with the opportunity to work upon my skills as a character designer, which I feel it did so, however, I don’t feel that it worked as well as I initially thought. Whilst it helped me with character design, it helped me more with idea generation and encouraged me to create ideas more quickly each time. Although it didn’t fully achieve what I had hoped it had, it did provide me with practice in drawing digitally, which is something that will benefit me in future projects, as I predominantly work digitally. I also feel that this brief is the one in which I found the most improvement. It is evident throughout my responses that my line work becomes stronger, I become more confident with my drawings, and I begin to think of more complex ideas. I also found that as the brief progressed, I was able to generate ideas much more quickly and I was also able to complete the drawing much more quickly too.
A final skill that individual practice has resulted in me developing, is applying the principle of timing and spacing. This is something that I have always understood but struggled to put into practice. I used the last brief to focus on simply applying this principle to a simple animation. I found that by focusing on this area alone, I was able to successfully apply the principle and I feel that I understand it much better than before and I will be able to apply it to future animations.
During my collaborative practice I found that I enjoyed working as part of a team much more than when I had previously attempted to do so. I feel that I have improved greatly upon my communication skills and I was able to bring up concerns in a professional manner that resulted in problems being sorted in a mature way that didn’t leave any member of the team feeling unhappy about the decisions. I managed to keep up constant communication with my team members and I feel that I worked well as part of the team and contributed fairly to the project. In terms of communication of ideas, I feel that I did a much better job than previously in Character and Narrative. I feel that I was able to communicate my ideas in a clear and concise manner that was understood by all members of the team, and from that I was able to work with the team to create a successful outcome to the brief.
For the collaborative brief, I focused predominantly on post-production because I wanted to improve my skills in this area, as it is something that interests me. I feel that I have made a lot of progress with After Effects and I find that understand how to use the program to solve issues such as light balance, motion jitter and I can also use masks effectively.
Reflecting upon my time management for the module as a whole, I feel that this hasn’t been my strongest module for it. During the start of the module, I had a tendency to leave things until the end and left myself with very little time to complete the briefs. This led to me cutting a few corners and not doing as much development work as I would have liked, particularly for the first brief I completed. It also had an impact on other modules, such as Applied Animation. Despite the fact that it was unlike me to do this, I have learnt that I can lose motivation when I let things get on top of me, and this is something that I will always try avoid in the future. To do this, I will make lists of what I need to do on a weekly basis and take each task at a time, rather than thinking of the finished outcome.
Overall, I feel that I have enjoyed this brief as a whole and I feel that I have learnt a lot of things about myself both individually and as an animator. I also feel that I have developed on a number of skills that will benefit me in future projects and I am pleased with my progress overall.
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