PPRD

When I started the course I understood that the briefs we would be given would be very open to interpretation and would leave us a lot of room to do our own thing and explore what we felt the brief meant. This was one of the main reasons I chose to do this course, as i felt this would help me progress and find what I the area I wanted to go into, which I feel it has. Throughout the year I have learnt how to use some software which I never thought I would be able to get my head around, and I have improved my skills using the software I already new how to use, I documented all of this on my blog (Appendix 1).

The first brief we were given was about viral videos, we were asked to get ourselves into groups and after looking through a variety of classic viral videos were told to come up with ideas for our own video which would be uploaded to www.youtube.com. I was in a group with 4 other guys, unfortunately with project we ended up arguing a lot about ideas. We hung around on a couple of ideas but ultimately couldn’t agree on how to approach them and they were ultimately scrapped. This taught me that I should pick the people I work with carefully as some of the people in the group were unwilling to compromise on ideas and in the end we didnt manage to come out with a piece that we felt reflected our abilities(Appendix 2). This view was shared by the lecturers marking the critique and we were asked to try it again. The second time we tried it I definitely felt as though we worked better as a team all getting behind one idea and working on things to do within the idea. In then end we managed to come up with 2 well shot short viral videos based around a competition to create an advert for BluTak (Appendix 3) They were made up of 2 extremely short videos depicting what BluTak wont do well then finishing by pointing out what they do do well, the videos worked well and their length really helped with their comic value.

The second brief we were given was something I had some experience in, creating a 2D animated piece to the theme of a night out. Because I have made a 2D animation, using a handmade style and drawing all of the frames by hand, before I decided I would step out of my comfort zone. I decided to create the whole piece using vector shapes and use after effects and the puppet pin tool to animate it. As I had never used the puppet pin tool before I struggled to get to grips with it, in the end I really regretted my choice to do it all digitally as my characters didn’t move right and it made the whole piece look a little amateur. I enjoyed this project as I really enjoy character design and was able to have complete creative control as I was working on my own. This meant from start to finish I was able to give the piece the look I wanted it to have. This I feel is its greatest strength, I love how the way vectors don’t have an outline. Overall i feel this project would of benefited from a different approach and if i were to do it again i would of definitely gone for a handmade approach. (Appendix 4)

The next brief we were given was one introducing us to 3D and Maya. Before I did this project I was always quite interested in learning Maya and  using it in animations, I can safely say now I could happily spend the rest of my life without using Maya or any 3D animation software again. I really didn’t feel confident with this project or have any form of an idea from the start which i feel was my biggest downfall. After not being able to come up with anything coherent I just decided on a building a hand and animating it. I initially wanted it to crawl around Adams Family style but unfortunately it didn’t work out this way, for some reason the rig i built for it really didn’t work and the joints all moved in weird ways, deforming the hand into awkward positions. This meant I either had to abandon the crawling idea and go with something else or i had to completely rebuild my hand which i didnt have time to do. So I ended up doing a much simpler animation which just involved the hand flexing its fingers and then slamming down. Unfortunately not even this looked right, it seemed my hand was doomed to always look kind of weird. In the end I felt that my final piece was a massive let down. (Appendix 5)

When it came to the next project we were given I was sure i was going to do something that I felt really proud of as all of the stuff i had done before i didnt feel showed the best of my abilities. So when it came to the post production brief I got a firm idea in my head about what i was going to do and stuck to it. I decided I was going to put 2D animation onto of film. I originally wanted to animated it by hand, but due to time constraints i had to do it on the computer. I took each frame of the video i shot and imported it into photoshop, where i used vector shapes to add in the animated bits over the footage, then exported it and put it all back together. I liked the effect it gave, but i had to do some tests to get it looking right. In the end I ran out of time and couldn’t make it look as good as i wanted, I was pleased with the overall look of the piece but was disappointed with the ending, the original ending didn’t go with the rest of the animated stuff so i couldnt use it, and as i was running out of time i just did a simple ending which didn’t look as good as it would of. (Appendix 6)

The only real let down about the course for me has been the short form video project. I really haven’t enjoyed this project in the slightest. From the start I knew this one would fail. It was presented to us in a way that made us feel like we had no control over it in the slightest. We were given the storyline, told how to shoot it and what to shoot it like. I feel this annoyed a lot of people in the group as we thought we were going to be coming up with our own ideas for it, and when we asked if it could be changed so we could make our own ideas we were told that we weren’t allowed. Even so we got on with the work and were eventually shown how to use cameras, set up lights and how to use the green screen (all of which I already knew) Then we were split into groups and assigned the sections we would be working on which again wasn’t done in an even and fair way, some groups got exciting sections where they got to perform police raids and things of that nature whereas other groups such as the one I was part of had to record news segments or film stuff from a students point of view. This meant that the people who got the good sections were more inclined to work hard as the work they were doing was interesting and fun whereas groups like mine didn’t feel as inclined and therefore didnt work as hard. I feel that this was a poorly executed unit which had the potential to be one of the best from the year but instead ended up feeling like a big waste of time.

The final unit of the year saw me taking part in 2 weeks of work experience, I did it with a company called GTI who run the Lifestyle portal for the NUS and their 7 million students called Kaboosh. Here I was given projects which mostly included making animated pieces on flash for  websites. This project broadened my knowledge of flash and photoshop and showed me what it would be like to work in the web design industry, I can now safely say I would not want to go into this field.

Throughout the practical units of this year I feel one thing has occurred in everyone that i need to improve on, time management. I always found myself leaving my work till the last minute and this meant that I didn’t have time to correct mistakes or make changes which would improve my final pieces. This is the main thing I will take away from this year and try to improve on.

Overall I have really enjoyed this year and am looking forward to coming back next year.

Appendix 1 – woodsant.wordpress.com

Appendix 2 – http://woodsant.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/viral-video/

Appendix 3 – http://woodsant.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/viral-video-redone/

Appendix 4 – http://woodsant.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/night-out-final/

Appendix 5 – http://woodsant.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/maya-final/

Appendix 6 – http://woodsant.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/final/

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