feedback results

I gathered feed back on the final product and they confirmed the problems with my product that I was already aware of  yet didn't have time to fix or change

results-

feedback questions

Did you enjoy the short animation?

Did the music match the atmosphere of the film? 

did you you feel you could empathize or maybe sympathies with the character?

would you have prefer more changes  in the character and the backgrounds?

how could I improve my work?

FMP evaluation draft

For my fmp research initially I planned to use the information I gathered from my research a lot more than I did, I wanted to gather information from local schools and health organization so I sent questionnaires to 2 local schools however neither of them ever got back to me even after multiple emails as for the health organizations I looked into the organizations and charities that deal with stress and anxiety however I never found a way to include the information on the charity's and I was unable to contact them as well to see If I could use their name or logo in my work so I decided I needed to research the symptoms of stress and the different way of countering stress however I did not plan on showing these in my work the were more so I could understand the mental state of a student under stress to do this i also looked at student forms and page on stress during exam season and I believe my final product reflects this in its mood and atmosphere.

However before any of this I did my audience research I surveyed my friends on facebook to see what topics and ideas were easiest to relate to the two most popular ideas were a story on bullying and exam stress I decided to use the story on exam stress because it gave me a good idea on how I would present the story through animation.

I also did research on the effects of colour on mood I planned on having my works backgrounds transition into colour as his mood improves or changes however in the end I found I was being too ambitious with my plan in the end I was unable to include this in my work, due to a problem with timing and a problem using photoshop to add colour.

As for the production my final product is the best I feel I could achieve in the time I was give the end product is not exactly how i imagined it when I started however it conveys the same story in a original and creative way which is what i set out to do however I wish I had time to include all of the things I had planned to add to my work i wanted my work to be a little longer and included a transition in the character and  the backgrounds however this was too ambitious for the time I was given since the majority of my project was dedicated to self study on animation and the flash software as well as other problem I encountered like trying to justify my creative decisions with research and moving my animations between softwares i encountered many problems with this however thanks to the help of my teacher i was able to overcome this problem.

I choose to do this particular story because it was easy to relate to especially for my target audience who would maybe going through something similar, I Still believe my idea was a good idea even for all the problems I encountered along the way my idea left a lot of room for change and creative changes. My idea slowly change thought review from my peers and tutors like with my music originally a calm track changed into a emotional piano piece and character movement trying to make it as realistic as possible thanks to the help from others.

In terms of time management I wish I had properly timed myself planning what i'd do in advance if I had done this properly I believe my work could have been a lot better and maybe even being able to add some of my other creative ideas like creating a more in detailed timeline and referring more to my schedule.

Early on in my development I knew my project was going to be harder than expected while creating my animation I encountered many problems like when creating the design of my character I spent hours redrawing him so that the body, head,arms and legs all worked together and were in relative proportions to each other then I had to redraw it on the next frame this process was most a trial and error stage however thanks to this I now understand the flash software better I learned many tricks and shortcut that will be useful in the future as well as the importance of planning my character on the stage in advance ,I also didn't understand the way the pen tool worked, I believed the pen tool added a free hand line which when connected to other lines on the layer creating a symbol however it turns out that the pen tool makes every line you draw a different symbol making moving and exporting the clip all most impossible this also prevented me from using shortcut methods that would have made animating a lot easier to do. I found out I was supposed to use the pencil tool however I didn't find this out until I had draw all the frames individually, I also didn't understand how the keyframe systems worked being able to merge and stretch frame which also speed up my production.

I also encountered trouble when I tried adding colour to my background on photoshop the way the images are draw makes adding colour to difficult and if I had tried add colour to every be able to finish  my product in time for the end of year show. I felt that it help my work a lot having a different pair of eyes review and look back on my work because sometime my opinions stopped my from improving my work or see flaws in my work because of how much time I spent on it however others were to see flaws i was unable to see like with my animation when I exported it I didn't see that I hadn't removed all of the background and small dots flashed in and out of my clips.

For my end of year I had a breakdown of the animation process and I made use of my research in to stress and anxiety and put the information up on display for anyone who maybe didn't get the story/message my work was suppose to convey.

Word count - 1052

By Connor Stewart

may schedule

				1 begin setting stage	2	3
4	5 add ALL backgrounds to stage start ordering them up	6	7 complete backgrounds and add effects-passivity changes and site adjustments	8 adjust script  add text to stage	9	10
11	12 Finish adding text and add effects to text	13	14 plan display for end of year show	15 add both animations to stage adjust timings and colour key the backgrounds	16	17
18	19 finish of anythign for the final edit and export	20	21 write evaluation and get feed back	22 update blog and finish anything that need doing
					30

Finished poster

synopsise

For my Final major project I self studied and learned animation and created a short 5 minutes long animation about the stress of exams on students my video is less of an awareness video and more like a relatable story for students moving between there last year at school and college,

change of mind

I have decided to cut out all non useful scenes that i feel are not necessary for the story cutting the run time back down to 4 minutes and i have added the text to the video.

I only have to get feed back from others and evaluate.