Extended Practice Critical Evaluation

Extended Practice Critical Evaluation

I knew from the start that this was going to be my most ambitious project to date. I had the idea for a narrative in which a cop and his daughter have a very close relationship until something happens - the dad shoots dead someone who is unarmed, the daughter is none the wiser still thinking her dad is wonderful until she finds out and it damages their relationship. My aim was to tell a story that audiences of all ages could relate to: what happens when a loved one does something that you would find unforgivable if anyone else were to commit the same action? What changes? Could they ever be forgiven? I always intended this to be the central theme of the story. I definitely did not set out to make any sort of political point. I never wanted to package my animation with the message ‘American cops shouldn’t have firearms or cops are bad’, I wanted that part of the narrative to be sidelined and secondary. However, I found that delving further into the pre-production process, it was never going to be that simple. Whether I liked it or not, I was going to be making a political point and I was heavily advised to be prepared for this. This was something I was not prepared for and found myself needing to do a lot of research into police brutality from a variety of sources. I enjoyed doing the research and felt it made me better prepared to tell this story and in a way more qualified. Research has never been one of my strongest skills when it comes to developing a narrative and an animation. In the past I would simply think of an idea and jump right into it without really doing much digging into the subject matter. However I knew that this was not the sort of project I could take this approach with due to the socio-political issues surrounding it. Had I done that, there would have been repercussions further down the line or even at the stage of promoting my animation or placing it into festivals that I would have not have been prepared for. However, this is not the first time I have developed an animation that deals with important social and political issues. In Level 4 Animation, on the module Applied Animation, I chose to make an animation for the charity Childline. This animation is a perfect example of a time I felt I could just come up with an idea and jump right into animating without conducting a sufficient amount of research into the delicate subject matter I was dealing with. And I was given excellent feedback about this at the time, that if I were going to be creating an animation that was going to be featuring this type of delicate subject matter, I was going to need to show I had done my research so I could deal with the repercussions later. So with this project I knew how important the research would be, given that at the start of this project I knew little about the United States Police Force, nor had contact with someone who was an American policeman. That is why I gathered wide ranging research from different sources of journalism. I had been persistently advised by my surrounding peers that I should teach myself a new software to speed up my workflow. For past projects I have been known to animate quite inefficiently, because I prefer to hand draw my frames before drawing them digitally. I worked this way because I believed I drew faster, and to a higher quality, on paper than on a computer. However, these rough frames would often need a lot of refining, and I would still draw out my neats by hand on separate pieces of layout paper before then scanning these each individually into the computer. For this project, I knew my workflow needed to improve, if I were ever to stand a chance of finishing my animation. So I taught myself with the combination of YouTube tutorials and a book on learning Animate CC, Animate CC. Learning this software proved to be very beneficial to me in the long run and I now animate far quicker than I used to. Nevertheless, I found that I still put my work in jeopardy, because I taught myself the software too late into the project. Had I had invested more time into learning the software, and not just the basics, before starting production, I feel I would have finished the entirety of my animation in time for submission. I talk more about my issues with time management in my Studio Practice blog. But to conclude, I feel that is the main reason for why I did not finish the entirety of the animation in time for submission. Around a month ago I could have perhaps foreseen this event happening and would provide myself with two options, either rush to finish, cutting corners in anyway I can, I’d finish the animation but the general level of quality would decrease. Or carry on at the speed I was, dedicating the same amount of time and attention and not rendering out a clip unless I felt like it matched the same quality consistency and gradually increase in speed, but not finish my animation. That is the approach I decided to take and while I am dissatisfied that my animation is at present incomplete, I am very happy with the footage I have completed which is my motivation for finishing the project in time for the end of year show. This method also insures that I have good quality footage to put into my showreel. The experience of working with a musician was a first for me and proved to be incredibly rewarding. This motivated me to be more organised with my workflow because all the progress I made with my animation, I needed to keep him updated so we could stay on the same page.