Evaluation

To be straightforward this year hasn’t been as appalling as it could have been, in certain words I think I’ve actually enjoyed myself. A lot of mistakes and a lot of triumphs. But more mistake than triumphs. But in total there are also a lot of things that I could have improved on

I'm comfortable with the outcome of my film, but being that I couldn’t come to an end really downs my day. Once; again I’ve made a film that was too ambitious for my own good. A film that wasn’t planned well, a film that wasn’t organized appropriately, a film that procrastination dominated, and most importantly a film that needed more time (Another 2 months). But on the plus side, I made a film that had a good story, a film that had great characters, a film that had some good animation and color.

Certain scenes in my film came out precisely how I imagined them, like the Old lady scene where she runs out of her house, I found that scene to have been victorious. I also feel as If the animation was fluid and her poses and intentions were clearly understandable. There was a lot of scene taken out from my film in order to make the time slot. Sometimes even scenes that I felt had worked and earned their place in the film would be erased, but further down the line, practicality and time made itself the boss of my film and didn’t make sense leaving them in the film. Reason being they were too long, too labored, and well too long!

Animation has never been my difficulty, in fact it’s more of my strength, but experiencing clean up this year was a new level of animation that I feel I didn’t conquer. Toon Boom was my main rival. Only because my animation and clean was never good enough to pass. It came to a point that I wanted to give up entirely. Whenever I cleaned up a scene Toon Boom would immediately erase my images as soon as they had been scanned in. A dilemma I would rather not recommend. Due to time and panic I resulted to thee most laboring method of clean up ever, Photoshop. I came to the conclusion that if toon boom was rejecting my pencil clean ups, then surely it would accept a well painted and gap less, dirty less pen line from Photoshop. So I got to work and recruited as much collaboration as possible. Liam Williams, Scott Lewis, George O’Dowd and Joshua Forman. Have been an enormous help in the whole process of my film, because of them I was able to get the film done.

Backgrounds were never a predicament. The only stepping stones were compositions and layouts, two techniques that I am still trying to comprehend. I had a lot of motivation from the ‘Rhapsody in Blue” film (Color wise), so coloring my backgrounds was fairly simple only because there was only 3 main colors used in every background, not some masterpiece that would take a year to do. But then again because I took the time we had to finish our films for granted, I will make sure that next time the backgrounds are simply a one based color. Simply let the animation speak for the film.

In whole I am very pleased with the outcome of my film. There might have been some rough patches but I suppose everyone has to go through the dark before they reach the light. I feel as if I explored different avenues in animation, in the sense of more elasticized characters, more silly actions and in all a more fluid style. This is a big step away from my norm. I am also happy with the results of sound effects and music. The musician that I collaborated with (Thom Maggs) did an excellent job creating atmosphere in my film. But I think next time I will have the music done and ready by the animatic stage. It saves time and keeps you organized.

So in conclusion I am quite happy with the turn out of my film, but given more time, I think I could have made it look better.