Unit 4 Animation

What we had to do 

For this project we had to make a 60-90 second animation that had some form of recognisable and communicable storyline, i.e. that it was clear and you can understand the story, as well as have some sort of entertainment value to it. We chose the story of a woman who was living on her own in her flat and that she would try and work in her flat and then get distracted by food and drinks around her flat. I believe we did this quite well and it was communicated easily enough to the viewer what was going as well as the ending showing that she had a video call coming in while she was in the middle of the mess she had made in her apartment.

This was done in a group of three, I worked with 2 girls from the course and hadn't worked with them before so this was a new experience for me to see how they worked and to learn how to adapt to other peoples work styles. This was 12 week long production and we had to do most of it online and this made certain communication elements of it very tricky in the beginning stages as there were a lot of ideas that people had and lots of things that people wanted to say. This was hard to filter out everyone's thoughts and feelings throughout though I think we found a way to do it in the end.

Production Schedule

This is our production schedule that was used to dictate when we did what part of the project as well as let each other know what part of the project we were working on. The schedule achieved its purpose though and proved a helpful tool in the production of this animation as it streamlined a lot  of the teamwork parts of the project which ultimately helped us out a lot in the early stages as communication was a lot harder when we were entirely online.

What went well

The parts of the project that went well were the aspects of the animation as in we managed to easily discuss what each person would do from home and made it a lot more simple when it came to actually putting in the hours on Blender, this took a lot of stress out of it. The animation was successful in the end and communicated a clear and precise story and theme for the character which was the goal in the end. We stuck very strictly to what the production schedule says to us, this was edited in parts but other than that this was very similar to the original version of it which was very appreciated as this made it a very clear and saved a lot of time and hassle. 

What I would change

The main issue that we faced is that there was a few issues regarding communication in the earlier stages of the production, this was when we weren't able to meet in person and discuss issues pertinent to the project and a lot of things were communicated online which made things very difficult I have to say. So the early stages of it weren't all that successful and this probably had knock on effects to the stages further through the project.

Other issues that we faced is that we didn't see each other that often even after we all came back to Uni, this also meant that even in the latest parts of the project there was still communication issues from the group. This meant that vital time was lost of parts of the work didn't match up very well and therefore created situations that the work didn't seem to fit with the other parts so the animation looked a lot like it was made by 3 different people as opposed to a group of 3 people as a cohesive unit.