504 #11 - Evaluation

 I had very different roles in the 504 Competition and Documentary. 

The Competition came first, which I teamed up with Ly and James to make since all three of us wanted to do the D&AD GiffGaff brief. After the previous project (503) I was quite burnt out creatively, so I offered to take the grunt work of lining and colouring and editing rather than the creative side. I used this time to learn Toon Boom Harmony properly and quite enjoyed the work. I think the final pieces we submitted were great, although I found the communication between the team lacking compared to my 503 team, but it was enough to get everything done.

For the documentary, I’d presented my idea to the class since I’d heard we were doing a documentary ahead of time and really wanted to do one on dinosaurs. I had much interest to join my project and got a team of four, of which I was in charge of collecting information, designing the dinosaurs, writing the script, animating a few scenes, and directing everyone else. Essentially the opposite of the D&AD brief.

I was very strict when it came to accuracies in the documentary, taking extra time to revise the storyboard to correct postures, movements, etc, which ultimately took time away from animation. Although the film wasn’t fully completed, I’d prefer it to be accurate.

Since I took so much pre-production work, and was intended on post-production work as well, I thought to give the last two parts of my section to Ceylin to do while I organised all the SFX and editing prep for when everything was done, however she did not have time to do them, so I ended up taking them quite spontaneously on the day before submission. I had no chance to finish it and ended up staying extremely late finishing everything up for submission.

For the next project, I think I’ll want to repeat what I did for the D&AD brief and take a creative break, do cleanup, lineart, colour/shade, or editing instead.

I am very glad Kahenya wished to join the project, as his 3D backgrounds were absolutely amazing and he kept me on regular updates as to how they were progressing, which I was very glad of.