What Went Well?

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One of the best things about this project was my consistency. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited and inspired by an idea, and my determination to fulfil my vision and create something amazing was what kept me going all the way through, which is not what I can see for any of my other projects. I didn’t always stick to my schedule 100% but I was always working hard, always staying productive in some way. I was incredibly efficient at the start and the blog-writing went really well – I felt motivated and in control. Efficiency decreased slightly when external factors such as family matters came into play but I finished the important parts on time. On that note, production management was a great success as well. I feel like I’ve made such a big change this year; after seeing how stressed out I was because of work piling up in the first year, I vowed that I would not procrastinate the second time around and keep my head above the proverbial water. Although it is impossible to work 24/7, I feel like I have developed my personal skills and techniques for working, and it’s going to help me massively with the workload at university.

Another aspect which I believe went well was my concept art. I didn’t feel like I grasped the creative opportunities that were available with my last project, in terms of visual development, and I really wanted to “let loose” with this one in order to fully realise the surrealistic theme. My illustrations, I feel, are one of my strongest points in this project and I really poured an impressive amount of time and effort into character and environment design. I think that I made good use of all of the methods that I have learned are used in pre-vis, such as turnaround sheets and colour palettes and my illustrative and world-building skills have greatly evolved. Re-discovering the surrealistic art style, and in-depth too, has been so enjoyable. Experimenting with how elements of my fantastical world would look, translating ideas into settings and even creating the assets – everything was so much fun, and I am far happier with the results than I was with my other projects!

What Could be Improved On?

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I am embarrassed to still be having this problem but perhaps the third time is a charm: timing. Similarly to my previous project, I don’t think I gave myself enough time to make my animation measure up to the standard I expected – not in its entirety since there are some parts which I am really proud of, but a few scenes. Unlike my last project, however, I actually kept to my rough plan and had way more time for production. Another mistake that I didn’t repeat was spending too much time on blogs, I think I spent the most time doing concept design work, which I don’t regret since I wanted to be perfectly clear on what my world would consist of and what the animation would look like, which was something I wasn’t that clear on in my culture brief. I think my downfall this time was overestimating how much I could get done whilst travelling. My trip to Bulgaria was strictly necessary but it messed up my production quite a lot since there was continuous distraction around my family there and a lot of work I had to do outside of college. Additionally, it was probably the busiest week without my family in terms of celebrations and altogether, so much of my time was taken away from me. It’s been a valuable lesson however since usually when I plan ahead things work out, but this time, despite knowing I would have less availability to do work and taking measures such as adjusting my workload and focus, things fell through a bit.

Adding further to the problem above, I completely left out marketing, which was something I wanted to hone down on this time. I was kept busy constantly with blogs or practical work and I didn’t even have time to think about social media or making forms, but even then I suppose I didn’t prioritise that part in my head as much as I should have either. So many personal projects/habits/events were put on hold for the FMP, it’s like I hit pause on the outside world. I believe that this is because of how passionate I am about these topics as I mentioned earlier. My enthusiasm lead me to put more heart and soul into the work than ever before but it also put me in a bubble that would sometimes block out logical thinking. I need to work on keeping myself grounded, staying realistic and scaling back when needed because my stubbornness kept me churning out work at times when I should have been making smarter decisions.

Also, I have a lot more that I want to add to some of my blogs. I think that I added enough by the deadline to get a good grade but I am not doing this project just for the grades, I also want to complete everything to the level of detail that I want and be satisfied with my research and presentation. I could have improved by doing more blog work in Bulgaria instead of just production, which is what I was focusing on since I had some blog work complete but no animation. A lot of the blogs say ‘In Progress’ even now because the work has been thrown on, with no time for sufficient explanation, or none at all. They all start out strong but it is clear that I ran out of time. I am determined to finish everything however, and will continue working on the blogs even after the project has finished.

What Would I Do Differently?

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In the B1 brief, I want to communicate more with the people around me. I feel like I have isolated myself quite a lot with this project – I had no time for feedback, no time to share ideas, it was just work, work, work. I want to be more open with what I plan to do and how I cope with the workload because in the industry, receiving criticism and constantly changing and evolving the idea is a core aspect of the animator’s job. Especially freelance animators, which is what I hope to be on the side, or perhaps in the distant future. Depending on when it is necessary, I am going to ask for teacher and student opinions and perhaps the hardest one, help. I didn’t feel like I needed to ask for help at any one point in this project, but perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I did since my plans ended up going wrong in the final two weeks of the project. There was no way that anyone could have predicted how much time I would have to work in my home country, however, not even me, so I don’t know how much of a difference I would have made.

In my projects, I always seem to end up spending too much time on one thing – whether it be blogs, pre-production or idea generation. After my first project, the Fantasy brief, I felt that poor time management was the reason for my having to rush toward the end. After my second project, the Culture brief, my scheduling was much more efficient, however, procrastination and loss of motivation got in the way. Now, not having either of those problems and having worked my hardest all the way through, I am still not fully satisfied. I wonder if the lack of experience is what leads me to feel this way, and if those who know what they’re doing feels much more pride and joy with their final work, or perhaps it is simply because my standards are too high. I still have not defeated my perfectionism. It is what drives me to want to add more to my blogs and make better animation when I have to remember that I am still just a student who is learning how to do all of this. Students ask for help and absorb as much information as they can, this is the best time to do so! For the next project, I want to use more online resources and engage my audience instead of neglecting them.