Post production evaluation

The post production was the most successful stage throughout the project. It all went according to plan with only a few small improvement that could have been made.

The lighting in the film turned out very well. In all scenes, it is consistent with all scenes lit to set the tone of the laboratory with harsh fluorescent lights. It could have been improved however by adding some mood lighting to a few scenes. For example in the enlarging scene where he is looking at his gun in a panic, the lighting could have gotten darker to show the wasp growing over him. This could have made the scene funnier and communicate the scene better to the audience.

The rendering section also went well. Each scene has an almost plastic or clay appearance to fit in with the cartoon-like style of the film. Some materials in rendering could have been improved like the green cylinder because due to time constraint the transparency of the liquid had to be removed and no longer looks like liquid. Also with the window material, the goal was to have it as a simple texture to match the rest of the plastic appearance throughout. However, without transparency some people struggled to see that it was a window.

The sound went fairly well but could have been better. There are plenty of Foley effects to immerse the audience into the scene. However there are scenes where the scientists screams and does not fit well with his character. The goal was to have a blood-curdling scream but came out as a faint scream that did not convey how scared he was. This could have been improved by experimenting with different voice actors instead of settling with the faint scream.

Overall, the post production was a success and gave the film some great lighting, textures and sound that really compliment the tone of the film, but with some small improvement in each area it could have improved the quality to make it more professional and easier to read as a film.

Reflection on workflow and motivation

After finishing my group project I’ve started reflecting upon how I approach projects. This is due to the different approach I took to the group project, which was a great success and my previous project with the 3 characters on a bench, which didn’t work out how I planned.

In the group project we had set targets for each piece, which drove me too keep pushing myself as I am always very conscience of deadlines. I also had others who were relying on me, which also helped me too keep working. We would look over each other’s work to and get outsiders opinions to make sure we were on the right track. These elements pushed me too my limit in terms of stress due to time but it also made me produce some of my best work.

Comparing this to my last project, I’m starting to to see where I went wrong. I only had one set deadline. I made my storyboard quite late into the project which affected my organisation. I also made the critical mistake of avoiding criticism from others because I was trying  so hard and became sensitive about my work, this affected the outcome because the pacing was off and there were mixed opinions on the aesthetics. I was overall unhappy with outcome and knew I could have done much better, especially because we had 3 months to do it. In terms of the deadline, I should have set myself mini deadlines or at least an agenda on what to do that day.

I realize now that I enjoy a more structured workflow with mini deadlines, this helps me to stay organised and to really push my self and keep a constant flow of work. I’ve also learned that I need to be sharing my work more to get opinions, this improves the quality of the animation and to spot mistakes early on.

I read an interesting article the other day:

Fuck Motivation
by inselfimprovement

I relate to this because at times I struggle with motivation to do parts of the project e.g. evaluation. I need to learn to be more disciplined in my routine and to basically sit myself down and do the dam work! I feel if I do this, it will help me to stay organised and to stick to an agenda. I work best when I’m in a structured and organised environment (especially when others are counting on me) and so I need to help myself in doing so.

 

Reflection – Project 6: Alter Ego

Even though this code is the bare basics, it seems you can do an extraordinary amount of animation with just coding alone, it could also help save time if you wanted to create a symmetrical shape in Maya. Seeing as I have done Action-script in the past, I already understand the concept of coding, but this was a good refresher, not having to use curly brackets or semi colons is nice too.

I’ve also realized the importance of optimising your code to use as little resources as possible but still getting the same result, this can be achieved by instead of copying and pasting functions, you can defining them instead and call the functions with a single word, saving the system going through more lines of code. This has opened my eyes to a new art form that I’m definitely going to follow in the future.

Final code:

def setup():
size(600,600)

def doggy(x,y): #my doggy code
translate(x-200,y-200)
rectMode(CENTER)
fill(90,62,44)
ellipse(120,320,40,90)
ellipse(280,320,40,90)
fill(121,103,79)
ellipse(190,260,225,100)
fill(111,91,66)
rect(270,170,90,175)
fill(90,72,47)
ellipse(235,120,40,90)
ellipse(305,120,40,90)
fill(193,39,39)
ellipse(285,185,20,30)
ellipse(255,185,20,30)
fill(100,71,41)
line(90,250,30,230)
fill(28,28,28)
arc(255, 230, 30, 30, 0, PI+QUARTER_PI, CHORD)

def draw():
if mousePressed:
background(200,100,160)
stroke(245,15,15)
else:
background(100,200,160)
stroke(0)
doggy(mouseX,mouseY)