The collaboration project was somewhat of a challenge first and foremost because I'd never worked in a group for a big project of any sort before, though worries I had were eased when Shannon, Liv, and I got together and started working on our studio and discussing ideas for our film. It didn't take us very long to decide on a studio name nor did it take very long to get our logo sorted out - I found that working in a group was easier than I thought it would be, since we could all have our say and use different viewpoints to make well-rounded ideas.
Something crucial that I learned this project was to become more comfortable offering and receiving constructive criticism from the peers that I was working with, such as suggesting improvements on designs, ideas, and animation - this was doubly important since I'd been allocated the role of the director and had to oversee everything to make sure we were at least somewhat on track to get a large portion of the film done by the deadline. It has also improved my communication skills a little by having me make sure that what I'm saying is clear, and it's encouraged me to be more active around the people I'm working with. Being assigned the role of director also taught me to take charge and to check in on my teammates (and myself!) to make sure that the work was getting done and to a satisfactory standard.
I think my strengths during this project were mostly during the pre-production phase, where I had to design the set and props as well as model them, work on the skits, and polish the characters' personalities with Shannon and Liv's help. I'm satisfied with the aesthetic that we managed to achieve together, and the characters were all distinct enough that they were recognisable from appearance alone. The design phase pushed me to create readable sketches fast enough to receive feedback, make alterations, and reach a semi-finished product in a short enough time frame that we'd have everything done but so that my teammates could still understand the content of the drawings.
I would've liked to have gotten further with my storyboards, though, instead of having incredibly basic sketches. It would've been nice to have explored the characters' expressions in more detail. After all, though, this wouldn't have been particularly necessary as we'd recorded reference footage with Vincent's help, and we began moving onto the later stages from there - polishing storyboards at that stage would've likely been a waste of time when we had the footage necessary after tweaks had been made to it so we could start animation as soon as possible.
One part of the writing that could've been improved was the treatment of Cici's character - Simon suggested that we'd been a little too harsh with her, which I agree with - smaller tweaks and forethought to her design possibly could've done a lot to make it seem a little cruel. There were also times when I thought the content of a scene to potentially be somewhat overambitious as well (the scenes containing three characters at once were ones I found to be very difficult to manage). We also could've had more camera angles that could've been used to enhance the emotions and/or comedy timing of certain scenes as well, such as close-ups, instead of sticking with the main three that we used, but this was mostly as a result of confusion of whether or not we should've had a rule to limit the amount of different angles used. If we'd done the project again, I would've made sure to include extra camera angles for this reason.
I feel like my time management could've been a lot better - we as a group spent a lot of time on the design phase and perfected things and went into detail that perhaps wasn't entirely necessary, though I do feel as if this might've paid off somewhat as the attention that was directed towards making sure the skit was character-driven and had a rewarding ending all the while juggling this with the comedy aspect worked out relatively well in the end, and it was much more well-received than I'd expected. I intend to watch out for procrastination next time, since I did that a lot due to the fact I was dreading the animation part of the project and I felt somewhat discouraged and frustrated at times with the outcome of my designs and my abilities to write and draw as well.
This did, though, mean that my sound design and animation was comparatively last-minute. I'm proud of the animation that I managed to polish up a little, and towards the end, I felt like I was finally getting the hang of how to move a character in a space and how fundamentally important the rough-blocking stage of animation is as well as keyframe placement and flow. My abilities to use the graph editor to refine my animation and add extra movement such as overshoot has also improved much more than I thought they would - I even ended up enjoying the animation process when I assumed it'd be the part of the project that I had been dreading the most. There are still lots of improvements to be made in regards to my understanding of animation and how to make it look better, but I'm satisfied with how far I've managed to come in just a few weeks when I'd been struggling massively with the in-class animation tasks beforehand. If I were to do the project again, though, I'd make sure that enough time was left over so that we could've all of the animation out of the rough-blocking stage and onto the next.
My sound design was one thing that definitely needed some improvements. I got as much done as I could, and it wasn't as badly received as I thought it'd be, but I think a few more tiny details such as footsteps, better music, and other such things could've gone far in making it more believable and more enjoyable. I did enjoy picking out music that had different instruments but retained the same sort of feel to it, as it ended up giving each character a specific instrument motif that worked to amplify the character and the comedic side of it all (such as Cici having the very defined trumpet playing in the background of her scene). I think it would've been helpful if I'd have gone about this by collecting some sounds a long time in advance rather than leaving it until later on, and it would've made the rush in the last few weeks of the project a lot less hectic.
Overall, I think this project has done a lot in terms of helping me understand how to work in a group - from designing to writing different characters - as well as the process of animation itself. Even though it was one of the projects I'd been dreading the most and it was as stressful as usual, I did find myself taking the time to enjoy the process this time around which was a nice change. I have a lot of practice to do in terms of improving my animation and sound design, but I'm satisfied with what I've achieved thus far with the help of my teammates.
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