Animation Evaluation

How will I be reviewing my piece of work?:

To review my piece of work I will be creating a written report, this is due to the fact that I can put all opinions that I feel about it back in at any time in an easy to do manner, this is something which I wouldn't be able to do with a video commentary or oral presentation, due to the fact that once they're done, they're done, whereas with a written review I can chop and change whenever I wish to, something which I like to have when reviewing my work.

How did I exhibit my work?:

I exhibited my work through YouTube, this is due to the fact that it is a platform for people to showcase their work to the world without having to spend money to have it shown to people, so YouTube is the best platform for our independent work to be shown. This is no the only way for us to share this video, we also could of shared it for free via Facebook/Twitter and other social media sites, however, with YouTube we're able to see how long people have viewed our work for and other things which allow us to review how well the video has gone which is key for reviewing analytics etc.

Here is our ESTing directly from YouTube:




I made a survey on the site: SurveyMonkey to get some feedback on: DE4usion, here are the results and what they meant in terms of our project:


Question 1:

 

From these responses I got it's clear that the respondents also feel the key demographic is Teenagers and young adults as combined they take up 80% of the respondents votes with 16/20 20 of the responses selecting them together. This is perfect in terms of feedback as it means that we met our target demographic in terms of age range which is always key so that it gets the correct response in which it was intended to.

Question 2:

Due to this question receiving Qualitative data responses there was a wide range of answers which meant that it's hard to show that these answers are hard to generalize to wider society, however, most of the answers did get the plot perfectly which was great to see as it was one of our main concerns when making it, due to the fact that we actually had 30 seconds worth of footage which had to be cut down to 10 seconds so we had to make sure the plot was kept in tact as if it wasn't then it wouldn't of made any sense at all.

Question 3:

For: What Animation Type Was Used? we also received very encouraging responses with 85% of respondents giving us the response in which we were looking for which is key when receiving feedback. However, we really would of like 100% of respondents to of put Live Action due to this one being pretty obvious, this can be down to people trying to be humorous and put the wrong responses in and therefore causing anomalies so this can't be read into too much. What is key is that the vast majority noticed it was live action which is great.

Question 4:

In terms of Question 4 we weren't certain whether 10 seconds was enough time for people to develop a connection to the character, also the fact that it's in a light hearted way also indicates that the character and audience wouldn't have a strong connection with the character, we understood this. Although, it seems that the respondents to the questionnaire felt that there was a slight connection to the character with 85% of the respondents stating that they felt some sort of connection to the character. This is an added bonus for us as it meant that the viewers felt something to the character which adds to their connection to the piece as a whole.

Question 5:

For the responses in regards to whether or not the animation ran in a smooth manner it was clear that it didn't run entirely smooth, however, the responses were very positive with not one person selecting 'No' which is great to see however, if we were to do this again we would of taken less footage therefore leaving us in a situation in which we had to cut less of the photos which would of allowed it of flown in a much smoother manner.

Question 6:

This is a very pleasing response pool due to us looking to ensure it was not only flowing well but that it was pleasing to the eye and it seems like we have achieved that with the survey responses which is great to hear.Only 1 respondent selecting 'no' which is really great to see, however, I feel we should of added more colour to the piece, although, it was hard with our location.

When producing our ESting we encountered some constraints when doing this, the issues were involved with copyright, this is because the E4 rules specifically stated that we were only able to use content from their site and using any other content would mean that our work would be made redundant. Furthermore, any sounds downloaded from the internet would ultimately be likely to be copyrighted anyway which would not be ideal at all and would once again leave any work that we had down to be made redundant.

Time management was not really too much of an issue for us and we actually ended up 'finished' a couple of days before the deadline, this allowed us to go back through our work and add some more touches to it and round off any edges that there were in our work and all in all make the final piece, so thankfully time management was one of our strong points throughout this task which was extremely helpful for us in the task.

If there was anything that we could of done with our time management better, I feel it would of been to re-take some of our shots just for the final product to end up better as a whole, but other than that I'm happy with how it all turned out in regards to the use of time.

Above is a man chunk of the brief in which we given from E4, we managed to comply with all of the rules and regulations set here which allowed our final product to be eligible to enter the whole competition if we see fit, which is great to know from our perspective that we did meet the regulations. To ensure that we did this, whenever we had another idea or before we were about to shoot the next section of our ESting we checked the brief thoroughly to ensure that we didn't go off the task which turned out to be the reason the kept in line with the brief which is always important when carrying out a task like this one.

In regards to feedback, we obtained most of this via our SurveyMonkey questionnaire which is shown earlier in this post, the way we obtained these responses was through both of us tweeting out the survey as we didn't just want peers and our family members reviewing this just incase there happened to be a bias effect which ended up not giving us feedback that would actually help us if we were to carry out a task like this again, so in the long run I feel like it benefited us more to have feedback from people we weren't necessarily close to on social media.

I have learnt several new skills through completing this task, the main has been to produce a stop-motion animation, this is something that I had never attempted to do before as it involves alot of patience and determination and I personally had always seen producing full motion animations to be easier and better. However, after completing this task and learning the ropes of using stop-motion I can say that I would 100% like to work with stop-motion again and hopefully produce a longer, smoother piece of work by doing so now I have learnt how to use it correctly. I also learnt many new editing tricks, the main being how to speed up and slow down certain clips, I know that this is a simple technique, however by completing this task I have finally learnt how to and it will help me greatly in the future both in college producing work but also out of college when producing work.

If I was to work to a brief professionally in the industry I feel I would be able to do this with ease as I am very capable of following instructions and guidelines usually. I feel this is shown by the task in which we just carried out as we managed to finish the task successfully whilst maintaining everything in which the brief had requested. On this logic it would seem that I would be able to follow a brief, however I obviously can't be positive that I would be able to as I haven't seen the brief, nor have I been tasked with completing one professionally.

Now that I have worked with animation I'm not certain that I would like to take it further in all honesty. I enjoyed the task but I don't feel that my skill level is anywhere good enough, neither are my personal qualities to take this seriously as a career. Working using stop-motion has made me greatly appreciate the work in which the people in the industry have to complete to finish their work, it really is a painstaking art in which every single tiny detail has to be considered to the very final point and this is not something in which I feel I would be able to see as a viable career option. However, I would like to try my hand working with it again as I personally found the experience thoroughly enjoyable and it made the final product a much more enjoyable experience to see when finally complete.