THE PROCESS
I came into this project with an immense amount of joy and enthusiasm. This was my first ever real group project (not including the stop-motion rotation), and I was extremely eager to start working collaboratively to create something great and to push the boat out in ways I’d never done before.
I was rather nervous about the time limitations we were given – 30 seconds simply did not feel like enough time to convey a convincing story to an audience. So, as a result, as a group, we decided to base our idea generation around conveying a feeling rather than trying to tell a story with a distinct start, middle and end. This, and working with the word cloud provided to us, ultimately helped strengthen the quality of our final film as I believe if we attempted to tell any more of a story, the concept would have been lost on our audience, and there would have been less time to appreciate the animation itself.
Before we began our project, we discussed as a group what we would most like to take from this experience. I made a point to the group that I wanted to avoid making conventional animation as entering the “dream-like state” mentioned previously was something I wanted to attempt to understand, so that helped influence the decisions we made in our idea-generation process. Additionally, we discussed as a group the things we could do to exit our comfort zone- and for me, that was character designing and creating backgrounds. I have always been confident in drawing pre-designed characters but never as confident in making them myself. These goals were kept in the back of my mind throughout the creative process, and I tried to achieve them as much as I could.
I was the one to “assemble” the team, reaching out to people I admired and wanted to work with the most – and had never worked with before. Another important part of this project for me was stepping outside of my comfort zone socially and working with people I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and this worked out to be a great bonding experience! Aemilia was my first choice as I had seen her art before and admired her style as well as her work ethic- and this was the same for Husna and Sofia. Each of them had such a unique and appealing style that I believed would elevate one another- and this worked out in our favour, with two people (Husna and I) specialising in 2D animation and two people (Aemilia and Sofia) specialising in stop-motion.
IDEA GENERATION
Once we had established what we wished to take away from this experience, we began brainstorming ideas for our film.
Most of the ideas surrounding this film were based on what we wanted to achieve personally rather than what would make for the best story. Ideas around the mediums we wanted to use, the feelings we wished to convey, and how those feelings could relate to our own personal lives. This is where we really solidified the idea that this was not a complex story with intimately detailed characters – rather than a person that the audience could ascribe themselves to.
The idea of materiality came up in this process as well, as Aemilia and Sofia really wanted to create a stop-motion set, so discussions about how we would integrate 2D and 3D together got the ball rolling. I had already done some work in combining 2D animation and 3D live-action footage in my A-Level Media Production coursework, so I was extremely happy to be able to give it another go in a project solely based around animation. For context on what kind of animation I had done before, here’s the aforementioned music video:
Ideas surrounding a feeling of being in an unfamiliar environment, feeling uncomfortable in your situation, and then shifting to a state of control and tranquillity kept coming up in our idea generation. We played around with the idea of “coming out of your shell”, perhaps with a character literally emerging from some sort of cocoon. However, it did not feel like there was much to work with in terms of fun animation (and it felt a little obvious), so it was inevitably scrapped.
The idea of a character feeling uncomfortable and overwhelmed in a situation seemed to stick with us, however. Coincidentally, several members of our team brought up the same animation as a point of reference- “HORNY” by Zhangir on Youtube. It follows the story of a jackalope troubled by his horns growing at his best friend. The themes surrounding stress and fear, and that having a physical impact on the protagonist, were extremely inspiring and something we decided we wanted to focus on in our piece.
Jumping off of this idea led us to decide that a main character going from an uncomfortable, unsafe environment to a more comforting and tranquil one would be a fun challenge given the time frame, but it would make for an interesting story and fun visuals. This, paired with the idea of incorporating both 2D and stop-motion animation, lead us to have a stop-motion character in a 2D environment and vice versa. This was the foundational idea of our animation that led us to our research and development of ideas.
RESEARCH AND IDEA DEVELOPMENT
We made the decision to create a Powerpoint to document all of the research we conducted over the course of the project. I believe this was very beneficial in allowing us to keep track of our ideas and bounce off one another easily. Below are some of my points surrounding inspirations from pieces of media I enjoy personally and how they could link to our own project:
Development of the Party Scene:
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish – A Colour Analysis
Moodboards
In hindsight, it would have been helpful to return to these initial research points, especially in the later stages of character design and composition. However, they still played an important part in the film’s production and were a useful resource to have as a backup in case I was feeling stuck or unsure of where to go next or what our intentions were to be.
We also spent some time looking at previous students’ work on the same project that we could find online and seeing what we thought could be improved and taken into account for our own work. One project that we discussed as a group was “The Girl and the Stars”, posted several years ago.
The animation itself was great, but we agreed as a group that the idea of having clear individual styles stitched together into one piece was not something we personally enjoyed. While, in this case, it worked for the plotline they were going for, we agreed that we would have to split the work up between us between scenes, as well as attempt to create a cohesive art style between us so the film could feel fluid and cohesive, rather than clearly created by four separate people working independently.
I immediately thought it would be good to begin storyboarding and roughing out my ideas, but I was quickly stopped in my tracks by Jess and told to slow down! This was frustrating at first as I was extremely eager to begin illustrating my ideas, but I believe this was a good call, and she suggested we create a character analysis for our main character in order to get to know him better and, therefore, contextualise the decisions he makes in our film. This was actually a very fun process as we came together as a group and had a great time deciding on arbitrary elements of our main character’s personality. You can read his full biography here:
Once we had established who our main character, Hughie, was, I was able to establish a solid logline and synopsis for our film.
“A man is at a house party and is surrounded by people partying hard and enjoying themselves. He is deeply uncomfortable and is slowly reaching his boiling point. It all comes to a peak when someone spills their drink on him, contaminating him with the colours of the party. That’s his last straw, and he barely has time to react to the events before he steps back and stumbles straight into the bathroom. He falls over, and as his vision adjusts to the new environment, he realises that the bathroom is strangely beautiful. The colours are warm and inviting, and the party noises begin to fade away. He collects himself and gets up to look through the window, taking in the colours and shapes of the street outside. He notices a spider/butterfly/something that encourages him to step out of the window- but the camera is cut off before we see the story’s conclusion. The final credits shot is of the bathroom interior, where a party-goer is banging on the door asking to get in, but no one is there.”
We also established a group logline: “A guy at a party gets overstimulated and stumbles into the bathroom for a moment of rest.“
Having these to hand was extremely useful as a reference, keeping us on track and ensuring we constantly maintained the original concept for our piece.
Jane also introduced us to a great animation—Night Club (1983) by Jonathan Hodgson. This had some fantastic stylistic animation that utilised straight-ahead rather than pose-to-pose animation, with a deliberate lack of volume as characters moved. This perfectly encapsulated a lot of the chaos and interpretive movement we were looking for, so it was a great addition to our research. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMen9FVdxPI&t=1s&ab_channel=MarianaVieira
Sound Design Inspiration
While I was in no way capable of being able to produce music and sound design, I still wanted to help Aemilia find some inspiration for her work. I immediately thought of the song “Neuron Activator” from the indie first-person-shooter Cruelty Squad due to how horribly overstimulating it is, and how it makes the audience feel on constant edge. The song itself has a note that constantly sounds like it’s rising in pitch with no end, which is extremely unpleasant and scary to listen to. This was exactly the kind of experience Hughie would be having at this party, thus an excellent source of inspiration for Aemilia.
STORYBOARDING
Due to my and Husna’s similar skills, we decided to storyboard the first and second half of the piece separately so we could cover more ground and make changes more efficiently. I already had a pretty solid understanding of what the first half of the piece would look like, so I was tasked to create a working animatic.
First Animatic Idea
This was a good first draft to illustrate many of my ideas about the scene being overstimulating and our main character sticking out as much as possible. I attempted to set up the bathroom as being a pre-established environment that Hughie made the conscious choice to run to rather than stumbling in by accident. Many of the shots I established here were present in our final film, which was very validating!
I received criticism, however, that there were far too many quick cuts between scenes and that many of them were unnecessary and could be overwhelming for an audience with an already very overstimulating environment. This was very eye-opening to me as I really did not realise that this was such a present element in my work, but it was!
Second Animatic Idea
In this iteration, I tried to experiment with the “slop” (as we had dubbed it throughout the project) – alcohol, vomit, and other toxic substances. My comments at the time were:
“Was playing around with the vomit being pre-established by the guy next to him. Made it a gross green colour, and I love the idea of the drink behaving like acid, something we can add with sound effects? It literally sizzles his skin away; that’s how much he hates it. Had the moment of the guys above him so we could play around with obnoxious facial expressions, like the ones we saw in the film Jane recommended.”
Looking back, I realise how little we utilised the acidic nature of the drink, and that could have had a much larger impact on Hughie as well as other background characters. I believe it was very strong as a concept, but we simply forgot about it in execution, which is a disappointment.
First Animatic Version 2
This version of the animatic tried to focus on more grounded movements between Hughie and the character holding him, with it being a smooth motion from one interaction to another. However, this animatic suffered the same problem as the previous iterations, in there being far too many cuts between actions. The motions and compositions of the shots themselves were solid, but there was simply too much for the audience to digest, as well as there not being an establishing shot for the audience to take in before we were introduced to the main action of the film.
So, as a result, I enlisted the help of Aemilia to create a good establishing shot for the environment of the film. She has a very solid understanding of perspective (although she tried to argue otherwise) and was able to draft up a shot that greatly boosted the readability of the entire film.
In addition to this, on a day when I was not present in class, the group decided to change the ending of the animation, so rather than Hughie leaving the bathroom at the end of the film, he becomes comfortable and acquainted in the bathroom, and the film ends with him in a state of relaxation. While this was a nice idea, I had my concerns about the ending feeling complete, given the very short amount of time we had to work with.
These were Aemilia’s notes on the updated ending, V.S my comments on them:
I was very concerned with this new ending feeling satisfying to the audience, and whether or not it would make sense altogether. The cliffhanger of the original ending, with the interpretation of whether he ended up leaving the room, where he went, etc., felt much more interesting than reaching a state of calm within the bathroom, which I believed may fall flat and feel disappointing. In an attempt to win over my team on the original ending, I drafted up an animatic with the original, intended ending:
Original Ending Animatic
This new idea seemed to sway my teammates, who then agreed that this ending would be more impactful to an audience. However, my piece continued to struggle with the same issues surrounding quick cuts in action that felt too overwhelming for viewers. That, combined with the fact that Husna created a draft for the new ending and was lost on friends and tutors that we showed, we decided to continue with our original idea.
Original Ending Animatic Version 2
More updates on the animatic, with the help of Husna, helped make the shots feel much more seamless, and each shot felt as if it had a purpose. We decided to make the second shot a continuous tracking shot, with a cinematic slow-motion shot to add tension. The story was really taking shape, but there were still issues with the ending feeling cohesive and readable. Discussions with tutors showed us we still had more work to do in making something that felt resolved, with our character making their own decision and sticking with it. We discussed camera angles with Ben and how they influence the way a character is presented, and we came to the conclusion that a low-angle, central shot would make the ending feel cohesive and strong.
At the same time, Aemilia was developing the soundtrack and sound design, which helped make clear what needed to be timed correctly. I am thankful she did the audio when she did as if she didn’t, we would have had nothing to animate from later down the line!
Greenlit Animatic
Husna was able to really amp up the visuals of the second half by including some soft lighting to illustrate how beautiful the bathroom would be. This solidified the visual identity of our piece and, paired with the cliffhanger ending of someone knocking on the bathroom door, made the animatic feel complete and ready to be animated. This was just in time for the deadline and winter holidays and meant we could further plan our piece’s visuals over the break.
CHARACTER DESIGN
My time was almost exclusively taken up by creating the animatic, and therefore, I did not have as much time for character design as I would have liked. However, I was still able to draft up a few ideas of what Hughie could look like based on my own interpretations of his character.
There were lots of conflicting ideas surrounding how Hughie would look, as we all had different interpretations of him. It was a good exercise to be able to draw him out and visualise aspects of his character that we had discussed previously, and utelisign shape language for this process as well. The second pair of drawings used sharp lines vs. curved lines to see if that would influence his meek appearance. It was clear that I was going far too stylised in my work as my style clashed with some of the techniques my teammates used, but it was still a good exercise nonetheless.
Aemilia and I also did some sketches of the girl character, where we also discussed shape language and how that could impact her appearance. We decided a nice mix of curves and sharper lines would come across as feisty and confident but not outright evil or scary.
In hindsight, it would have been nice to have more of a role to play in the character-designing process. It is one element of my art that I believe I could improve, as I feel like I struggle with my characters looking the same and lacking originality. It was a good experience to be able to discuss my ideas with others and receive critiques about my proportions, scale, etc., so I am glad I pushed myself, even if it was only a little.
ENVIRONMENT DESIGN
Since we had decided to do a very even split of 2D environments and stop-motion environments, I decided to develop the party scene further to try and hit some of the marks based on our mood boards and original ideas.
I created a brief colour-pallette test to try and envision how Hughie could look in comparison to his surroundings, trying to make him stand out as much as possible while still not being unattractive in doing so. Having a cohesive palette of purples and blues surrounding Hughie, who does not fit into the same palette, seemed to stick out to me as a great idea.
This test was also very helpful as it opened our eyes to consider using alternative colours for Hughie’s palette, rather than a realistic colour palette. This was something we ended up including in Hughie’s final design, so it was a good springboard for Hughie’s character creation.
I also created an environment based on the sketch Aemilia provided for me in our storyboards, which made me realise that a disco ball would be unfit for a house party environment. A chandelier felt a lot more fitting for this environment, and I was able to develop my ideas about this being a dingy uni house with stains, family photos and other artefacts of human life- compared to a nightclub setting, which felt unfitting compared to the bathroom scene. This change also came about as I showed my extended family my animatic, and they all thought it was a nightclub rather than a house party. Creating this piece helped elevate the overall aesthetics of the scene and allowed me to experiment with lighting and colour palettes.
This was a beneficial experience, but I wish I had more time to develop more of the environment as I felt like I had to rush the backgrounds in the final piece. While less was more in this instance, environment design is something I want to improve as I continue this course.
Husna and I also discussed using gradient maps for our colouring, as keeping our tones consistent between shades would help create a more cohesive piece.
ANIMATION
After the break, it was time for production, which, on my part, went by rather smoothly.
Husna and I decided that it would be best if we divided our shots evenly between us, so we could prioritise both the background animation and the interaction between Hughie and our 2D characters. We decided that Husna’s skills in character animation would be perfect to animate the jock and the girl character, so I was assigned all other scenes in order to keep things even.
We colour-coordinated these shots based on how difficult it would be to animate without Sofia and Aemilia’s stop-motion animation (with the bright green shots being easiest, yellow being difficult but doable, and red being borderline impossible), but Aemilia assured us that she would make something Husna could work with right away. She stuck to this promise, and soon enough, we had lots of animation to work with to ensure Hughie correctly interacted with his surroundings.
Working on Adobe Photoshop for animation was a relatively easy skill to pick up, as I have years of experience in the programme already. I was pleasantly surprised with how simple it was to work with, and it meant I had access to a fantastic array of brushes and tools. Husna and I decided to stick to a brush stroke of around 15 pixels- however, I ended up accidentally straying from this at one point, which negatively impacted the overall visual appearance of our piece – a good lesson in checking my work and not getting too deep into a trance!
At the same time, Aemilia and Sofia were finishing up Hughie’s model, meaning I could have a crack at bringing him to life with his face- and I found this process surprisingly easy as well! I was happy to pick up this job, despite it being a larger one, as my teammates told me they enjoyed how I draw lively expressions on characters.
I started with the montage shot (the quick shots of the guy and girl talking, two guys smoking weed, and two guys shredding it up on the dance floor), which took me much longer than it should have. I was extremely thorough in my animation, which I believe is good practice, as a rule, but was far too much detail for a montage that only appears for a fraction of a second. I felt overwhelmed with the amount I had to do compared to how much I had gotten done, which is when Jess kindly reminded me that it was a bad idea to rough out a scene, line a scene, and then move on to the next. It was much smarter to rough out all of my scenes at once, and then go in for lineart after- meaning I was able to divide my workload to the more important and animation-heavy shots. This was a fantastic piece of advice and helped me with managing my stress about what needed to be done by when.
The first establishing shot was a lot of animation in a short amount of time, but I managed to make the piece feel as cohesive as possible by having each character move on a 12-frame loop. This meant the audience did not need to take in any new information and meant I could produce high-quality backgrounds relatively quickly. I struggled with the perspective of this shot, and, again, I enlisted Aemilia’s help to create something accurate and believable:
I managed to get pretty speedy at the animating process, taking around 30-45 minutes to complete a simple character loop. I also enlisted the help of Jess to animate the swinging chandelier in After Effects, which was a very rudimentary form of rigging – something I am very eager to get into in the next unit!
As Aemilia finished up with her sections of stop-motion animation, she then had the time to begin animating Hughie’s face. The pair of us came together and decided on an expression sheet for him, including several emotional states to help keep our styles consistent as we both picked up different shots.
I found it very difficult to animate the backgrounds of my shots without Husna’s animation to guide me. In the final days of the project, I had completely finished all of the shots I set out to make and was instead waiting on animations from both Husna and Sofia. Aemilia and I were in a tricky situation where we simply did not have much to do as they both tried to work on their shots, but we received their parts so last minute that we went from having nothing to do to being swamped with post-production.
This was a very fundamental problem with the wellbeing of our group- there was a clear lack of communication surrounding boundaries and what people could get done in a reasonable amount of time. There were an incredible amount of roadblocks as well- several of our team members got extremely ill very quickly. We discussed the importance of pulling your weight in a group environment – or admitting when you simply can’t- yet Aemilia and I ended up picking up a lot of extra work very last minute, which was an immense strain on the pair of us.
In one instance, Sofia provided us with the shot for the bathroom scene, where Hughie notices a fly escaping from the window. The storyboard she was provided prioritised the spiderweb, which took up more than half of the screen. However, the footage she took was completely misaligned and was not accurate to the storyboard whatsoever.
The shot I was given versus the storyboard – it simply would not have looked good if I drew the spiderweb over Hughie, as the priority of the screen would have been completely ruined.
So, in an attempt to be proactive in fixing problems rather than settling for a mediocre shot – I went through each frame and digitally repainted/remastered them so the shot would be more closely aligned with the original storyboard. I am extremely pleased with how well I carried this process out, considering I had never done it before, and several people mentioned that they could not tell it was digitally crafted at all!
This, however, took up a big chunk of the final day of this project and meant I could not focus on some of the other shots I needed to pick up from Husna. Allowing time for ourselves to make mistakes and get parts wrong would have been vital for the success of this project – these issues were absolutely manageable and fixable, but tensions rose as we were so unbelievably close to the deadline.
Due to so much of the 2D and 3D animation being provided so last minute, I was not able to create many of the special effects and colour-correcting that I initially wanted to implement. I was able to somewhat correct the orange overlay that Sofia could not fix in production, but I was stretched completely thin- I had to enlist the help of my partner, who was more confident in colour correction. However, I still feel like it could have used much more attention, and I am extremely disappointed with how little time I had to experiment with the features Adobe After Effects provided.
In the end, the final product was incredibly rushed, especially in the last few hours. Aemilia only had time to work on the sound the day of the deadline, and Husna only managed to get one shot done, which she gave to us only a few hours before the deadline. This was a huge stress on me as I had to do the editing and additional animation that Husna could not complete in time, and I am already a very anxious person – I was fully intending to have all of the work done the day before the deadline, but this just was not the case.
Afterthoughts and Reflections
This exceptionally turbulent project posed many challenges I had never encountered before. Once the project was submitted, we came together as a group to debrief and discuss the successes and issues we had with this project. Below are my thoughts, based on our discussion in said session:
Honouring Original Intents
Looking back at our initial ideas for this project after its completion, many elements of our final piece were not exactly how we originally envisioned.
There was much less experimentation in the 2D animation than we originally intended. We could have experimented with different drawing styles and animation methods; we discussed as a group that having straight-ahead, experimental animation would have made for a more chaotic final piece, but when it came to animating, I worked to what I already knew well and ended up looking more consistent than what I would have liked. It could have been weirder, wackier and more dream-like. While my work was still expressive, it was very standard to what I knew about animation, and this could have been down to the fact that I was tasked with learning a new drawing programme and had never animated to this scale before, so I stuck with what I knew as to not overwhelm myself with new ideas and concepts. This is an issue I must deal with in future projects, as sticking to our brief is more important than feeling comfortable in my work.
While it was not my responsibility, we discussed as a group that Hughie could have been more fleshed out in his character design and transformations during the final film. While there was lots of experimentation on his design initially, his actual production was extremely quick, and it would have been nice to experiment further with his materiality. Aemilia and I incorporated some of the melting-face ideas we had in post-production, and a few shots illustrated this element of Hughie. However, they felt lacklustre- similarly to how conventionally animated the crowds were, Hughie’s design and animation were far too safe and generic. We could have pushed the boat out more and tried something new.
Sticking to our storyboards and creating something visually appealing and believable was an interesting exercise. I believe we nailed many of the boards (my personal favourite is the shot of Hughie escaping the grasp of his jock friend, which was pretty much perfect compared to the boards), but some left a lot to be desired. For instance, the lighting of the second half of the piece (again, while not my responsibility) was very lacklustre compared to our storyboards. I feel we did not capture the same beauty we were going for and may have been too ambitious in the idea generation process. I was willing to make some lighting effects in post-production, yet I simply couldn’t due to time constraints (I will discuss my issues with post-production later), so the final product looks mediocre compared to the storyboards. However, I still think we did well keeping up with our boards, especially when I digitally altered Sofia’s shot to fit the board’s original intent. That was a particularly gruelling lesson in how important it is to stick to the storyboards we created, as they are the foundation of our animation and could not be changed unless necessary.
Animation and Post-Production
Due to time constraints, I did not have time to engage in the stop-motion portion of the piece. While it was established from the beginning that I would be working on 2D, it would have been fantastic to have more creative input on the set, Hughie’s design, and the overall visuals of the film’s second half. Having a 2D artist present on the 3D portions of the film would have helped avoid many of the problems I had to counteract in post-production.
For example, Sofia and Aemilia decided that for the shot when Hughie enters the bathroom from the party, they should shine a purple light through the bathroom door (so the light can reflect off Hughie to add to the transition’s believability) and add a crowd of people in post-production. However, this ended up being a waste of time as the purple light was not nearly as apparent as we would have liked, and I had to mask Hughie out in After-Effects, something that took me a while and left a lot to be desired visually. If I had been present in the studio at the time, I would have been able to point out the issues with masking in post-production, and using a green screen would have been much better for time-saving and organisation.
Additionally, if I had been present when Sofia was filming the scene of Hughie interacting with the fly, I would have been able to let her know that she was not adhering to the storyboards we had created—something I had to fix in post-production that took me a significant amount of time. While I recognise it is not my responsibility to ‘watch over’ everyone else’s work, it would have been nice for this project due to the massive overlap between 2D and 3D animation.
Many elements of the 2D animation left a lot to be desired and highlighted my issues with staying consistent in my work. The lineart of the 2D sections varied greatly between shots- we initially established that we would stick to a pixel size of 15. However, I unknowingly broke that rule in the first shot, and Husna and Aemilia also broke this rule. This is glaringly obvious to me in the final piece and has illustrated how important it is to establish a style guide with specific brushes (both size and texture) to avoid inconsistent animations.
I believe our colour palette was very strong but inconsistent. I was stressed entering the production stage as I was very concerned about our lack of an established art style and colour palette. I did several test shots to demonstrate what our palette could be to stay consistent, but these took up too much time, and I felt the colours were rushed anyway. Jess informed me that I could work on tweaking my colours in After Effects, so I should focus on finishing the animation as soon as possible. While I am grateful for this advice as this kept me on track (and I would have run out of time if I tried putting off animating any more), I ended up doing a lot of random, inconsistent colour correction in post-production that did not follow a particular palette and varied slightly between shots. While this was not a big issue for my audience, I knew that my colour palette was not established from the beginning and added a layer of stress in my already completely rushed post-production stage. Thus, I am eager to enter my next project with a more clearly defined colour palette that I could use across my entire piece – and then colour correct as one entity rather than as I go along.
The colour-grading stage was one of the weakest elements of our piece, and I am deeply frustrated that I did not have the time to experiment more in post-production. I had to enlist the help of my boyfriend, who is much more knowledgeable about colour-grading, to help clear up some of the most critical shots the night before the deadline. I feel like I learned nothing from this process, as I was trying to make it look presentable rather than good. Hughie’s colours in the party scene and the entire second half could have looked much more interesting if I had experimented with colour grading and changing the curves of the footage I was given.
Many other post-production elements were utterly ignored- special effects, lighting, and making the transition between 2D and 3D look as clean as possible were all neglected due to time constraints. This was a profoundly frustrating inevitability, but due to my peers’ sheer lack of animation, I could not focus on the details, making for a mediocre final product. As this was my first time on a group project, as well as working in post-production in After Effects, this was a great lesson in allowing myself enough time to work on the final stages of production and making my boundaries clear to my peers about how much time I need to work.
Organisation
I am very pleased with how we decided to organise our shots so that more than one person could work on a scene simultaneously. This gave us more flexibility in the post-production process, as having everything as separate assets meant we could move elements around as we received more footage from our other members. If we had one person working solely on a scene, our work would look “stitched together” (like an exquisite corpse of animation!) and less professional and seamless overall.
I also believe we were correct in assigning both locations the same amount of time—the pacing felt rather consistent, considering the myriad of problems we had with timing and pacing in our storyboarding process. This also meant we had an equal split of 2D-oriented and stop-motion-oriented work, so the workload was rather evenly split.
It also became clear to us during production that having a more established shot list, outlining each panel from our storyboard, who was doing what, and how much progress we had made on each scene would have been incredibly beneficial. I noticed another team had such a list, and they told me how helpful it was to keep track of each shot and to see how much of their work was completed (they ticked off a board if they had finished it)- it looked very gratifying to be able to tick shots off once they were complete. Considering I was stressed about the progress of my teammates and me, I think having an itemised list of what was done (perhaps with deadlines for when each section should be completed) would have helped our organisation and would have highlighted areas that my teammates were struggling in- thus helping to avoid last-minute animation. This would have also given us a better perspective on how the film would be shot and could have highlighted issues such as the green screen needed for the bathroom transition shot.
So many of the issues in the production of our piece could have been solved by simply organising ourselves better and being more strict with adhering to our deadlines. While I did well in this, there was an apparent lack of initiative to get things done. I was of the attitude that “as long as I get my parts done, it will be okay,” which I now see as an unfair way to view this project. This has been a great experience in illustrating how important it is to work as a team and lift my fellow teammates rather than treat all of our work as separate. I could have been more of a team player and offered help to my teammates much more, as some team members struggled with opening up and asking for help. I am disappointed at this element of our final piece, but it was an important lesson to have to learn.