Summative Evaluation

This module introduced me to some very interesting ideas regarding key aspects of animation, such as collaboration and pitching, and these are aspects I had never even considered before. There is also the value of gaining exposure by doing outside briefs in my own time that I learned about through the work I’ve done here.

The work I managed to do for my individual practice was great for self-improvement, exposure, and other valuable aspects that could benefit me as an animator.  My Syfy brief, while I did decide not to submit it, I learned how to plan and create pitch boards, something I initially had a tough time understanding the importance of, and is one of the most useful skills to know in the long run. Upon being introduced to YCN briefs, like the Syfy one, I learned more about why those competition briefs are on YCN, since they are failing and need something creative and eye-catching to support themselves. This is a good method of gaining exposure, and adding to my portfolio, by following these types of briefs. This study task also made me consider how to respond to a target audience, as well as how to recognise genre signifiers through mise-en-scene and colour, and both of these are important elements to master, since I’m an aspiring storyteller as well as an animator.

I also managed to develop my skills at posing, character design, and illustration by doing a bunch of t-shirt designs for the website, Qwertee. I mainly made designs based on popular video games and cartoons, since fan-shirts are the most famous ones of all on that site and therefore more likely to win. I was able to experiment by using other people’s art styles and seeing how my style and method of drawing translates with professionally designed characters. I feel like my skills at drawing have increased because of that. The poses, specifically for the “Gravity Souls” Qwertee design, came out looking great. The character design skills developed even more, after drawing professionally designed cartoon characters, because I picked up how and why those designs worked in the first place.

I also looked at a website called Loop de Loop, which posts briefs in which I have to make animations that loop and relate to a given theme, in my case the theme was ‘Gravity’, for example, and they let people be as creative as possible with their themes. The theme of gravity was a rather tough one to look at, so I figured rather than plan ahead for it, I could just keep on animating and see what I come up with as I go, which did actually lead to a bunch of surprises. I made some very nice looking expressions that transitioned very fast yet smoothly between each other. If I had refined it a little more then it could have actually managed to be accepted for submission. I had to make something for 11-second club as well, though. I actually used some of the skills I learned from the Qwertee designs and a little bit from Loop de Loop as well, to make a little something just to get my mind back to animation for a bit. I actually think if I did any more animations for this website, then I could actually build up my portfolio a lot, as well promote myself.

As well as my individual practice, I was given the task of collaborating with someone. As an animator, teamwork and leadership is an important trait to have, and I believe my partner, and I, both worked well enough together to create some very decent work. We were both loyal and understanding enough towards each other to know each of our roles and responsibilities. I genuinely enjoyed working with her as well. We were both had the same thoughts and opinions on our work, and what we could gain out of it. I learned more about creating pitch boards and presentation, and we both managed to work like professionals with our work when we were presenting it. We also both tried a more darker and bleak approach to animation, something we both have not done before, that is to say, and I personally have not done something like that in a serious manner before. I actually did this because my partner recognised my rather dark imagination and wanted to work around that, so I’m glad I was able to respond to that.

Overall, while this module did give me a lot of opportunities to learn new things that could be applied to animation, I just wish I wasn’t forced to lessen my time spent on other modules in order to work on this, as the workload was crazy. It certainly wasn’t as engaging as the main subjects, and while I did make my work relate to animation, it was still more geared towards stepping away from that, since animation is such a long process it was often recommended against that. All that is especially considering all of these skills were much better handled in PPP and Applied Animation.