Evaluation.

For this project, I have had to learn alot I believe in a very small space of time, that is how it feels to me. Before this project I had never done anything properly to do with animation, we were taught different ways in workshops of how to make animations such as cell animation, after effects, stop motion. I chose to do stop motion with plasticine, and I don't think i realised how difficult it could become, I have seen that some people who also chose to do plasticine at the beginning of the project, but then changed their mind, i was tempted to do this too, but decided that I would try to stick at it, and not to be discouraged by it.
    I did encounter a few issues during making me animation, one for example, is as I have mentioned before in my blog, the construction of my plasticine woman, I decided not to make her with a head, as I would only really need the bottom half of her body in the shot, so it would have been pointless, so I just made a headless body really, with arms and legs etc. When i first made her she stood up fine on her own, but eventually began to not be able to stand unaided. So I thought of ways that I could stop her from falling. I thought that the body might have been too heavy so I decided to take off some of the plasticine on her "dress" to reduce the weight of her, which worked slightly, I then redid her legs, which contained wire in them, I thought that increasing the amount of plasticine around the wire may balance out the weight of her dress, I also tried various positions in which the "legs" went into her body, I tried different widths apart, and it helped to balance her out abit too. I reshaped her feet numerous times, trying to make them wide enough and flat enough to support her weight. Making the feet flatter helped to make her stand up for longer lengths of time. However I thought that most of the problem was to do with her legs, maybe the wire? So I had the idea of using drink straws to put in the legs, I thought that I could put the wire through the straws, i believed it would strengthened the legs a little. Doing this technique really helped with the lady's legs, however she wasn't able to stand on her own for really long lengths of time, therefore this caused problems with my desire to have her visually walking in the animation. I tried putting a coat hanger in the top of her torso, but it didnt work, as it bent, So I then tried a pencil, so that I could hold her, move her legs, hold her, take a photo and then readjust her legs again and just keep repeating it, I tried to do this, but because I was trying to take a picture as well as try to hold her in the same position as the previous, I found it really hard, plus my hand cast a shadow over the stage, which made photos different to others. I then just decided to accept that she would not be able to walk within the animation, instead I just made sure that I gave her an effect of "Shuffling" maybe due to the fact, that she appeared to be quite a heavy woman! I think that even though I had this issue, i think that it turned out alright, maybe I would have been able to make her walk if it was a group animation, and there was another pair of hands, it would have been possible. I wish that I had done more experimentation with my animation too, I did shoot it twice, and realised that i didn't have enough footage, i am glad I did this a while before deadline, so that I realised that I had to re-shoot it all. The first run through I too k about 250 pictures, which unfortunately when i put it into aftereffects it came up as 7 seconds of animation. I had to take about 400 more photos to make 20 seconds of footage!
    Another issue I had during this project is After Effects, I had difficulty being able to download a trial version of the program so that I could work with it during the Easter Holidays, so this delayed me a little. Fortunately I did end up being able to download one, however, I'm not confident on After Effects and did not enjoy using it, I just didn't seem to be able to anything on it, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do something hand created. For my "Bang!" sign, I suppose that I could have created that in After Effects, but I wanted to stay linked into the whole "hand crafted" style, so thought it would be better to hand illustrate my sign, and shake it to give the effect of a vibration. I do like my sign, but I suppose I could have tried to create it digitally just to see what it would be like.
    Because I only had 20 seconds of footage, I wanted to make it longer because our animation was allowed to be 20-30 seconds long. So I decided to make opening and closing credits, I created these by hand drawing a template and then editing it in Photoshop, I really think that these credit frames works successfully, and lengthened my animations to 28 seconds long, which I am pleased with.
    I was pleased with my cat model, I think that creating different eyes, and moving the eyes round alot created the sense of sneakiness, which is what I wanted. I think it also added to the humour that I wanted to be there in my animation. I wanted to make a funny animation, something that would amuse it's audience, which is why I decided to make a funny little twist at the end of the cat being hit by the door, because you don't expect it.
   One thing that I am quite concerned with it my file size and type I am worried that I have done it wrong, although it says on the brief to hand the file in as a quicktime which is what I have done so, I am just hoping it will be correct, I am also worried because my movie will not play properly when opened from the memory stick that I have put it on, however it works fine on my blog, So I am just hoping it will work fine when it is transferred to the hard drive at university, I am just really concerned with this. I also am worried about my file size, but I am unsure how to change it! :(