Evaluation

Evaluation

My test animation was to give me a vague idea of what I wanted my final outcome to look like. I did my test animation to help me figure out what my animation was going to look like as well as helping me find out some of the difficulties that I would come across during my filming. Compared to my finished animation there are quite a few significant differences between them. First of all the fluidity of my current animation is a lot better in some parts than the test animation which was the first time I’ve ever animated something properly. One shot at 0:28 of my current animation there were some faults to where I had too many objects to animation which lead to poor movement and fluidity but apart from that one scene my animation was quite consistent. Another obvious difference was the length of time as well as a sense narrative compared to my old animation. My test animation was very short and lacked any sense of a narrative but this was mainly due to the fact that it was a ‘test’ animation instead of a finished product like my final piece.

Some noticeable differences between my finished animation and my test animation were the lighting. In my final product there were some problems with the exposure in a few of my shots in my final animation. This was because the settings on the camera weren’t sent on to manual so the camera kept trying to re-adjust itself to the changing light. With my test animation which since I did it in much a short amount of time, I didn’t come across this problem so I had never checked for it during the filming of my final animation. I quickly resolved this by changing the camera settings to manual so that it wouldn’t happen again.

                                                                                                            

One of my main inspirations of this project was from a music video called ‘Three LittlePigs’ by a band called Green Jelly.  The animation used three pig models which inspired me for the idea of this animation and tried to achieve similar aesthetic qualities. Compared to my animation I don’t think it is any were near the same standard of quality as the ‘Three Little Pigs’ music video mainly because it was probably done by an experienced animator with a higher budget than me. I aimed to create a human like plasticine model just like the ones from the Green Jelly music video so that my audience could connect with the characters and be able to relate to them.

Once I had finished my animation and had uploaded it to YouTube for people to view, I created a survey which asked the viewers to rate my animation out of 10 on different aspects of the production of my animation. I sent the survey to members of my class and to other friends as well, they all filled out the survey and I collected the results up into graphs. Over all I think that the feedback from the people who filled out the survey was positive but also pointed out a few flaws within my animation.

Each question was averaged to a number out of 10 depending on what the viewers rated out of in my questions. I found that the lowest result was the question asking to rate on the aesthetic of my animation with came out as 4 out of 10 which I personally agreed with. This was due to poor lighting and problems with exporting the cuts of my animation as the aspect ratio was changed during the presses cropping the film slightly. This could have been solved if I had noticed beforehand and quickly re-export the clips to the right ratio. Due to my lack o f experience with DrangonFrame this problem wasn’t resolved leading to poor aesthetic quality.

Some of my strengths of this animation were the creative qualities that I had used. Also people who watch my animation had mentioned to me that they thought it was creative as it showed in the results of my survey which turned out to be 9 out of 10.

Over all I am pleased with my finished product and received positive feedback from my class mates and friends. There were a few thing I wish I could have done differently like changing the aspect ratio when exporting my clips and correcting the exposure levels on some of my shots but I think it came out quite successfully.

By Merlin Parr.