Minor: Reflective Statement

Reflective Statement

The Minor Project has been a very enjoyable and challenging project for me to work on. From the beginning I knew roughly what style I wanted to use, being the 1930’s style, and I enjoyed developing the story for the two characters, when I first tried to find the right stories for the characters I had hit a bit of a block with the ideas as to where it should be set and scenarios in which the characters would be in, I then settled on the idea of the Catcher hunting for the Fairy in an outside setting rather than in a cottage. Once I started to turn the scenarios I had into animatics I experimented with the movement of the characters and began to establish the character’s personalities through the animatics and storyboards.  I was extremely happy with the feedback of the animatics at the Interim Crit, and feel although not all the animatics were successful, I was very pleased at the reactions to the Door and Tree animatics and consider them a success.

As well as experimenting with the animatics, I too enjoyed in developing the character designs for the Fairy and the Catcher, I produced more development work for the Fairy than the Catcher as early in the project I had an image of roughly how the Catcher would look. During the development of the Fairy I was concerned that I would make a typical ‘lady in a dress’ rather than the more impish and mischievous character I came to for the final design. As well as developing the characters in terms of fitting the character’s personalities, I was worried that I would not be able to replicate the style of 1930’s animation. Again I was extremely happy with the feedback I received for my characters and consider them successful in being influenced by a 30's style as well as showing their personalities.

I did enjoy bringing the character designs into 3D in Maya, spending significantly more time on the Fairy's model as I was unsure of how I would model her hair. During the modelling I ran into problems which I did not expect when designing the character such as the eye and the hair, which I should have considered during the design of the characters. I am quite pleased with the current outcome of the models, especially that of the Fairy.

However, for the Minor Submission I did set out my goals to hand-in two fully modelled and rigged characters but I was unable to. During this project I found that I have lacked in management of the project. I was working frequently and somewhat quickly on the project before the holidays, however I didn't consider or allow time to both model and rig the characters and for the submission was only able to produce two character models with simply bones put in place to pose the characters.

Overall I found most of my project to be successful, and that my strengths were prominent in the developing and designing stage of the project, in which I worked quicker and close to the influence style. I did find that my time management skills were lacking for the project during and after the holidays. However overall I did enjoy this project and look forward into turning this into a full animated short.