Applied Animation Critique

Today I gave a presentation about my Applied Animation idea for an animation for ChildLine. I received some very useful feedback regarding my idea and how to go about producing the animation. I am aware that I might be slightly fighting an uphill battle due to the fact I don’t know anyone else who is doing the same brief as me. But I was given much help about how to approach the difficult subject matter.

Firstly, I received criticism about the central character’s age. Olly felt that the 17-18 age of my central character was a tad too old; he felt that ChildLine was a charity for children that are younger. Conversely my tutor Matt felt otherwise and stated that ChildLine are also for older teenagers up to around 18, he felt that therefore the age of the character was not an issue. What he felt was an issue was the character’s social life. He didn't believe a young person with depression would be in a club so said I should scrap it.

Although I did think people with depression often have perfectly normal social lives, I did take his point and decided to re-evaluate the social side of this characters life. Initially what I focused primarily on was accurately representing depression in a sympathetic, realistic, not to on the nose way. The reason why I made her 18 was because I wanted to make the character as realistic as possible and I hadn't had too much time to do some proper research into animating a younger character so I used what I knew. I created a character a year younger than me because I knew that age group better than any other age group.

Criticisms out the way, the actual idea behind my animation and the visual representation of depression was well received, an idea I had felt could be a bit clique. Another aspect of my animation that was well received was the colour scheme.

In conclusion I was very satisfied with the feedback I received and felt beforehand nervous about undertaking a project like this since I was the only person doing it, but I was given a lot of help so I now feel like I can approach this project with more confidence.