As a whole I have really enjoyed this project. It has taught me a lot, but it has been a challenge. I might as well start from the beginning. Matt and I were really happy that we were once again working in a group together. Of course our working partnership has not always ran smoothly as we worked together in the first module of second year Character and Narrative where the main issue we had was time management. I really like working with Matt because we share similar interests in what we like to watch, particularly in animation. So that's great considering half of animation in my mind should be watching stuff. Therefore, the fact that we like to watch similar stuff means that we also like to create similar stuff. In the first project we were so eager about our idea and it came so naturally to us that we just assumed it would happen again in this project.
Unfortunately the idea generation part of this project was the part we really struggled with. and that's not just Matt and I, because we were also working with Jemma and all three of us were initially finding it quite a struggle to come up with an idea. We also felt that the brief this tme was a lot more complicated than the previous and we were struggling to think about what we could make with the documentary format.
What I also really like about working with Matt and now with Jemma also is that none of the ideas we were coming up with were boring in any way. But the problem with the ideas we were coming up with were that they were simply too big and too complicated to create in a minute to two minutes of animation.
We did originally pick am idea that we all as a group found very interesting, but we went a bit too fast with it and developed it in a few weeks with research and concept art before receiving feedback that it did not really fit the brief. In retrospect I do agree with this but at the time we were quite disheartened because here was this idea that we were each passionate about and had already dedicated quite a bit of time to and now were basically having to scrap it and start again, for the right reasons. This put us quite far behind on schedule and unfortunately would have significant knock on effects further down the line into the animation development process.
It got to a point where as a group we decided to shut ourselves away in a room for however long it would take to come up with an idea for our Animated Documentary, this time that fitted the brief. Eventually we thought of an idea I still feel was very strong.
Working with Matt and Jemma was a unique experience because I had collaborated with people on projects in the past, but that was only with one other person, this was the first time I had collaborated with two other people. It did make my job as director more complicated because I had to make sure we all knew exactly what we were doing at all times. I felt like throughout the project I was pretty good at this. I knew that if I was working individually I would often neglect pre-production work such as the storyboard and animatic because I would feel like in my head, I know exactly what I'm doing so don't really need to worry about stuff like that too much.
But in a group, communication is one of the most important aspects I have come to realise and the project will flow much smoother if everyone in the group understands exactly what it is they are supposed to be doing at all times. That is why I did work quite heavily on concept work, for example so the other two knew exactly what kind of style and look we were going to give the characters in the animation. Furthermore I also made sure we spent time creating a LAV video so that if we acted out all the scenes we could each better understand the personalities and practicalities of the characters we were trying to bring to life. And lastly, this is also why I spent a great deal of time on the storyboard because, particularly for Matt who was creating all the background designs the shots needed to be planned out exactly as to how they would look on screen.
The main problems we had as a group was time management. Time management has always been one of my weaknesses and as a director it was my responsibility to stay on top of time management. I felt like it was okay for us to only have a rough schedule of when we needed to do everything by because in my eyes, the important thing was not when individual tasks got completed, it was just that they got completed.
Unfortunately we were unable to fully complete the narrative we wanted to tell and had planned out in the final story-board which sadly did effect the viewing experience of the final animation. Once again I take full responsibility for this because as director it was my job to organise the project and organise exactly when each task should be completed. If I were to do this [project again I would make sure we concentrated more heavily on coming up with an idea for our animation that completely fits the brief. Furthermore I would have also created a far more detailed schedule and made sure that as a group we would complete certain tasks in the animation development process within a certain time frame.
Overall I am happy with how the final animation turned out. Although I felt like if we had planned our time better, which again was my responsibility we could have finished animating all the clips that were originally planned out in the storyboard/animatic and the quality of the final piece would have been higher.
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