50203850 What I will be writing about: Within this evaluation, I will be writing about my current project in Visual Storytelling. I will start talking about my Pre-production, next would be the production, and then the post-production and lastly the conclusion of the project where all sections will be shown how I think the current subject improved my skills, and what I think went wrong, and how I can fix what went wrong in my next project.

What went wrong?

What I think went wrong in the pre-production, I would say to start off is the story-board, where I made a basic one with numerous amounts of cards, where I then decided to use the laptop for a better story-board and add more detail, where I only had flash for it, as time progressed I had the chance to use the software “mischief” where I then thought, this would be ideal for my story-boards, so I remade them all in mischief, the problem? Was the time I had to waste re-making the storyboard even though it’s the exact same story, but in more detail, I only had a short time, to create the actual production because of the amount of time I had, was already used up.

What went well?

In my opinion, what went the best was the character creation for “Duko” the chieftain of the tribe, I had major plans for him, unfortunately due to me not having any experience in animation, I found moving his spiky hair, and creating different angles for his hair, I found difficult and so I had to remake him with a different hair style, so why do I think this is the best out of the pre-production? Because it was how fast I had noticed this problem, I didn’t found the problem while in the middle of animating, I understood what was going to happen in the near future and changed his hair style straight away without a second thought, and because of this I vastly improved the amount of time I had for the story-boards and other character designs.

What can be improved?

It is only the starting point, so there isn’t much you can improve on, in a rough sketch state, as the most improvement you can say, is actually creating it and changing from pre-production to production. Although I would say I could have improved the background choices, where I had forgotten that I needed backgrounds, and because of this my animation was a huge disappointment in the backgrounds as I needed to make them up on the spot. I would also like to say that the story-boards could have been improved, not on detail of the characters position, nor the backgrounds as I mentioned earlier, but the software I used in creating it, where I wished I added them into a cloud storage, because I now have a new laptop and its left in the old laptop where that old one had broken and so I no longer have the storyboard, so not only I have wasted in my time for a really detailed storyboard, but also I no longer have any proof that it even existed, and which is the most biggest problem, so I would say the biggest improvement to be made is… just having a backup for future mistake(s).

What happened in the presentation?

Now I am adding this section here as I would think that the presentation was placed in a time where I still was only in the pre-production, but what does this have to include in my pre-production? Well I would say it’s what I had learnt from looking at the other student’s proposal and what my mentor had told me.

To start off, the student’s proposal and what they told me to keep in mind, as I looked towards the other student’s work, I was happy, it made me realised that what I am doing now, and how far I have gotten, I am close to being equals with the rest, as from what I learnt at the start, me and one other student had not taken an actual animation course for 2 years, as the rest did, so I was getting nervous, showing my work in animation where I had no experience compared to them, but to me I felt like I was close to equal terms with them and it made a big morale boost which helped me get through the rest of the project.

I would like to add this as to last and this is what my mentor had helped me with. No he didn’t just told me what to do, but instead he asked me a series of questions, such as, will I create this animation by tweening, will I make it in frame by frame, what fps will I use (frame per second) which I had no clue to any of them questions, which yes, did make me question my very own abilities, and reminded me I had no experience compared to the rest of the class, but because of this, it made me realised also about how little research I put in the past 2 years (even though I was in college doing other courses, I was doing researched animation and how to do certain effects, such like the parallax effect for 2 years on certain websites like, pinterst.com and youtube.com) but because of this I have learnt from the experience as all I did was a simple searching on the internet straight after, I learnt what I wanted and how I can improve myself which helped me with who I am today!

I would like to add here that the titles that was placed on the top left corner on each page, was found in the website www.Dafont.com

50203850 My first experience in animation: Now this is for the production side, my start on animating, and what I have learnt and how this project will help me with my next project. My experience with this project I would say is frame by frame and tweening tools, which I will mentioned further in this page, and how could I improve what I have already made.

What went wrong?

Now there are many things I am very disappointed within this animation, to start off, I thought my skills was going to go par with what my mind thought of meaning… fight scenes, magical powers to appear and many more, but because of this, I had made many mistakes within my animation and story, the story was too complicated to understand unless I tell you what is actually happening and that is one bad thing! Not only that, I started to make this smoke text effect for the introduction, without realising that adding a real smoke text effect compared to really cartoony animation, really stands out and doesn’t complement each other. By the time I figured this out, it was a couple of days before I had to send it off… so I decided to just leave it, I mean it isn’t the end of the world, just a few seconds of cool looking effects that doesn’t fit well, not the worst thing, but I had made it in after effects, once I had uploaded it to YouTube, and it was an after effects file converted for adobe flash, and still I do not understand why but “media converted file cannot be found” and only 2 days till I had to officially send it off, I had no time, as I still needed to make the concept art, I decided to leave it, not the most smartest thing in the world, but at the time, it felt like the best thing to do.

What went well?

Over the year, I have been assigned this project, where I had already finished my story-boards and the character designs, and all that was left was the actual production and in my opinion, the best/favourite part of this whole project, is the trees… now I know that isn’t much to say, but it was made for my 1st scene to the 4-5th scene/background, and if you remember what I put down on my pre-production, I had to make the background without a story-board showing any description, so I had to make it out while making the actual animation, and because of these trees I had made some of my best work that includes the backgrounds. Now if you check into my animation, it isn’t the best, but I do assure you the backgrounds are something I am proud of thanks to the trees that had been placed. For instance look at the 1st scene or even the 2nd scene, I had made the trees large at the start and slowly decreased the size of the trees, and if you have a good eye, you will noticed the lack of organization, this was intentional, but in doing so I had to place each tree individually (over 200 tree’s in the 2nd scene) and it ended up amazing, and better than expected! Definitely my favourite part of this.

What can be improved?

At this point, I usually think of adding more detail or more shading to the characters and background, but after a while I realised, the way I made the background with the same way as the character’s, really went well with each other and I already spoke about the after effects being corrupted. So what is it I think I can improve not including the situations I previously mentioned? Well if you watched the animation/film trailer (if you can call it that) then you would now what I am talking about, and that is the audio!

The audio within this is one of the most unprofessional and worst thing I have ever created, I bought a headset that is made to go into all media types such as the Xbox, PlayStation and computers which I thought was the best solution for all my audio problems, it was only £25 and I thought that was a good price for an amazing mic, and I was wrong, at the time, the audio, was amazing! Or it seemed to be as I was too used to all them, £1 mic’s you find every now and then, but because of this, my audio wasn’t’ the best. Where I could improve this by obviously buying a better mic (which I have ordered a professional Mic and stand with a pop filter now so expect a good audio in future!) but obviously, that isn’t the audio I wasn’t pleased with… it was the music, although in audacity I had lowered its volume and then converted into an MP3 file, it automatically turns into the original volume and so, it was way too loud for my own voice to be heard and I did not know what to do, and so I just left it, I done so much research but nothing helped, but now I know how to fix this problem I don’t have the time, to change the animation as its already uploaded. Lastly, I would say I could improve… by getting a more reliable mic, as when I was trying to do the last audio, it failed and all I could have done was use my phones recording for the last audio and it ended up being... Horrible, and so I have learnt from this, was to get a better mic. That is currently happening.

50203850

Thw

Within this section: You should be expecting, to read about how I think my concept art went and how did the editing go! And obviously all the improvements that I have experienced within this section.

The bad things:

Within the editing and concept art goes, I learnt to hate to even attempt to edit in adobe flash, it took hours and hours just to move one layer over one other hour after having many other layers altogether, that my laptop barley could handle the amount of layers all on one save file, I had learnt this lesson and changed over to premier pro, which I should have done in ages ago, but the sad moment… I forgot to add some extra scenes in, as you can see the picture on the left, it was supposed to go into the editing/trailer… where I forgotten to and numerous other backgrounds and, even some of them didn’t fit well, and couldn’t see how to add them in. So most was just thrown away unfortunately, due to my lack of thought, most of the time, I thought “oh that would look epic!” so I quickly designed it and took more time to create it, even though it wouldn’t fit in the animation at all and all I did then was waste time and effort onto this, I do wish I thought things through right from the storyboards and followed it exactly, which I thought I did until I actually started to edit, where I go “oh where is the last scene? It should be in this file… oh wait… I didn’t create it” and so I had to waste time drawing another background that it looked all distorted and not even in proportion.

The good things:

My favourite part of the animation? Would be the concept art, it was something I ended up to be proud of, something I am more than happy to show others, now throughout the entire project, I slowly got more and more disappointed through my work, because I couldn’t draw up what I had envisioned, but also in the year, the amount of drawing I had done I slowly got better, and as the concept art, was the final bit, and only a still image, so I don’t mind adding as much detail as possible, it ended with me having a small smile on my face, unfortunately my animation ended up bad and just can be better no matter how you look at it, I feel as if my concept art has a good chance to change this project for the better. Now there isn’t much else to talk about other than the editing in this stage, but I feel as if the editing was just a nightmare for me, but I will put down this, that would be the converter “Swivel” it’s a good SWF converter to video/movie for YouTube or editing software such as premier pro, and I only recently learnt this and it helped me a throughout this section of my project, and not only that because of this I helped other students in my course as they was using flash and didn’t even knew that they needed a file converter, which I was more than glad to send them the link for the converter.

The improvements:

As the year and this project went by I can say a numerous of things to improve upon like, learning about Swivel earlier in the process or never even starting to edit in adobe flash, but I feel as if I should only put down what is the most important and what really could have been better in my own performance and my own skill to be improved. For instance, I personally feel the ending could have been portrayed better by having the traveller to do something bad before the ending so we know he is the bad guy, as for now with the 45 seconds I have, I mainly just put words down on the screen, where I could have put down still images making the traveller look for evil while the audio was talking about the crystal/gem. In doing so would have made the trailer/story much more presentable and clearer towards my audience.

One of the biggest improvements that I can see is what I originally wanted but never could happen, you see I have made a script for the concept art both the Traveller script and Duko script each one having their own individual story, which I wish I had enough time to had made all the concept art that was possible for them, but due to other problems such as the editing changing and my mic breaking on the last couple days, I didn’t had the time to create more concept art, although I feel as if it would have been the best as honestly the editing wasn’t the best nor was the actual animation and I was hoping the concept art would have helped me get through the rest, but I did what I could at the time, and didn’t had the chance to do anymore, so my next improvement would be to keep everything in time, and learn that all the time I have is more important to me as, spending one night just watching a film, could change everything as that would be at least 6 hours’ work could have been done and much less to worry about in the future.

Note to everyone, never try to edit in adobe flash… just don’t.

The title: I want to quickly take a note for whom ever is reading this, but in the trailer I wasn’t able to show this because of the “Media file cannot be found” or something similar towards this, and I just want to put down that the title is “Hackmanite: the origins” where even though it just sounds gibberish, I just want to add that I had researched some gems up and found the Hackmanite gem as it is a real gem, that is the colour yellow, but according what kind of lighting it is, it can turn pitch black and I felt as if it’s a good name and my story’s about a gem so it’s more of a perfect match at the time.

50203850This is going to be a bit different: In this section, you will be reading about my whole experience, not what could have been improved as everything but more of what I have learnt and how I can change my problems this year for a different year.

My Experience:

In my own experience in this whole project, I will be telling you what I learnt that could help me for the future and some experiences that helped me at for not just the future but also the project this year. Such as Swivel, helped me out so much as its user friendly and easy to get helped me convert my adobe flash file into a premier pro file, which I couldn’t be more happier with, and obviously the bad times, when my adobe after effects file could have been found in the time I needed it the most, when the file was being uploaded and had no other time, to change it. Where I recently found out the problem, or maybe the reason why but I am still not 100% certain but I do believe it is because of how I got the file and converted it into premier pro, instead of using adobe media converter like they recommend, I had instead exported it from a after effects file to a movie file, and this could have been my downside, but also because of this, I have now more or less learnt to convert it through and make it into the right file before sending it off as the official release, but also, as a beginner animator, try and use the least amount of different software as possible until you know what you are 100% what would happen, otherwise things could go wrong in many ways.

What I have learnt

In this section I will be mentioning how much I learnt throughout the year, and all the things I haven’t mentioned yet. Now I know I have been rambling on about my past experiences compared to know, so I want focus onto that part but more or less how I learnt through drawing architecture in my 3D Design class for 5 years now, and how I mixed that experience in with a cartoony background, actually fitted in rather well, the tree’s where all placed individually making it look unorganized like all forests are and the change of size making the illusion that you are very high up paid well with my backgrounds, and this year I learnt how to mix in both my past and my new experiences together may end up like a good cook book recipe’s some may end up like throwing all the ingredients away and some just complement each other very well, yes it is important to learn new things, but it is also important to experiment with your old style to new style you have picked up over the years and create your own unique style.

Now that is my favourite lesson so far.

What I regret

This is what I regret throughout the year and wish I could have just made a note saying “Yeah you know what you are thinking of doing for that project of the year? Yeah don’t do that.” And just send it to myself. So what do I regret? Making such a complimented story, I mean having, 2 characters to focus on and making it into a trailer to show that these two would have been best friends if it wasn’t for this one problem, but in doing so, I thought so many ways but, all where just plainly too hard to show the amount of detail I have made into this actual movie, where I focused on every single second that could be in the film and then pick out the best scenes for the trailer, by the time I had started to design the trailer, I only had a few weeks left before I had to send it off, so I had to cut a few things off, and look into some YouTube tutorials as everything I wanted to do, I didn’t knew how to animate it at the time, wasting more time. Above although, the one thing I do regret… is throwing away the idea of a baggy eyed man, tired, and all he wants is his toast but the toaster won’t work due to it not being plugged in… but I threw that idea away and I regretfully did the entire project/year.

I would really like to say to whoever is reading this! I did not know if there is a word count or if there is a maximum amount of words I should have left, but I got bored one day and had the whole day to myself and felt like being productive!