I have enjoyed this project, though it has bought many new challenges. I was a complete novice when it came to after effects, but I feel like I really developed over the past few weeks.
I think as a group my team worked really well, and were the main reason I enjoyed this process. When we began we were’t sure of the direction we wanted to take, but through some individual research we came together and discussed it. From here we started to look at our script and use the skills we learnt in the first workshop to break it down into 6 beats. I think that we probably spent too long on this initial phase and didn’t leave quite enough time for the design. This is something I will keep in mind when working as part of a team again.
We kept the design relatively simple which I think was the right way to go about it, as we wanted to create the story visually but not over complicate things. We took the idea of silhouette and shadow puppets as it contextually related nicely to animation and it’s history. We created assets as a group and shared them which was also useful to keep a constant style to the animation. I really enjoyed the research side of this project, as I think this is one of my strengths and the subject matter was something I found really interesting. In the future I would like to explore the story and narrative side of things in more detail.
I think what I struggled with the most with this project was using after effects, and I found it frustrating when I what was on the screen wasn’t what I had visualised. Saying this I am very pleased with the progress I have made and I am looking forward to doing more in the future and hopefully getting better.
Maddy Caulfield Animation 