Evaluation.

I was asked to produce a 30 – 60 second stop motion animation, channel ident for E4. Within in the allotted time, I was asked to produce pre production, production and postproduction materials.

I used drawn animation in my project, this required me to hand draw each frame, the fact I coloured it in makes it look more professional as if It was done on the computer, like most cartoons these days.

Before I could start my project I had to think about a few important factors that I most complete. Firstly I had to think about time, its always important to manage the time well in order to complete the production and postproduction to perfection. In order to do this, I set up a time schedule in which I had dates and completion dates by which I had to finish each task. By working to a time plan it helped me manage each task to perfection and to complete it on time.

I think I managed my time effectively when filming the project, I had 1 day to complete the filming and done it, while other people were still on the pre production I was already filming and therefore I managed to complete my whole project before everyone else. I did this by completing my production first and then doing all the pre production tasks after, I found this way easier and faster because I already had filmed my idea, on other projects I found that by doing the pre production first I change my mind to often and never settle on the original idea I had.

For my postproduction I used Final Cut Pro, it took me a little longer then I expected but I am very happy with the end result. I created my own music by using sound effects from imovie and a given track by E4 from the E4 stings competition. At first I thought I finished my project, but then I thought it didn’t have enough colour and was a bit plain looking. On final cut pro I used the three way colour corrector and managed to colour in my project, I decided to colour it in purple and white, which represents E4 as a brand.

In order to evaluate my work I had to get audience response. I did this by, showcasing my work to the class and had some pupils give me feedback on my blog. Points such as, the picture being unclear were made, which I agree on because the pixilation was stretched out; in order to get the image to fit the screen, which made the picture unclear. Also another thing I could improve on was, near to the end when the paper scrunches it’s a little unclear as to what is happening in the film because of the colour change. I agree with both points but unfortunately to have the E4 colours, some of the project had to be unclear and there is nothing I could do to improve it. I think the only way to improve the colours is to have coloured it in when I drew it, which would have been very time consuming and extremely hard to keep the consistency of the animation.

Overall I think I did really well with time keeping and succeeding in managing to keep to the given brief. I really enjoyed the project and I am defiantly thinking of using animation on my next given projects. Although its time consuming and extremely tiring the end result is very rewarding.