Wednesday 8th January 2014

Critical Evaluation

• Recolour each season
• Have a wipe transition
• Duplicate what I have to produce a looped sequence
• Possibly join each season from a separate file
• Bus stop has a poster to indicate each season
• Walk cycle was well done
• No sound
• Cat needs improving - tail
• Needs more action

After screening my animation too my peers I received some feedback on what I need to improve in my animation as well as what I have done well. Overall my animation needs a lot of improvements and there is a lot I believe I can accomplish from this feedback.

Good Aspects

The only main aspect that I got praise for was that of the walk cycle. The walk was fluid and didn't have much going wrong for it.

Areas for Improvement

I got quite a bit of criticism due to the fact what I screened really wasn't much. So it was to be expected that I got a lot of feedback regarding what I can do to improve my animation. I got told that I should take inspiration from a scene from a film called Noting Hill. Upon watching this video it's quite similar to my idea already, but there was something that I never thought about was having parts of the animation act as a wipe to transition into the next scene. I got suggested that I should make a looped sequence using the animation I have already made. This will mean I only need to recolour each scene and add little bits of animation like, for example, a bus driving past to act as a transition.

One bit of feedback I received was that I need to add colour to my animation. Each season also needs to have a different colour scheme. Having a grey as the only colour really doesn't make an appealing animation and it's hard to distinguish each season when there is no colour. Another way to indicate each season is to have a poster on the bus stop, and each season has a different poster representing something that usually occurs during the current season, for example a Halloween poster during autumn.

Other areas I need to improve the animation would be that nothing actually happens during the animation. There is no action. Something needs to occur during the animation other than a cat sitting down at a bus stop after 20 seconds. With the types of weather and various transitions between seasons this should provide enough action for the animation. It's fairly similar to Notting Hill in that way as the main character is show walking through a market, not really doing much, whereas the scenery around him is constantly changing.

Finally, and possibly a crucial area in need of improvement, my animation needs sound. Sound really helps drive the narrative of a story but my animation has nothing. Even if it's just sound effects for certain areas of the animation, it'll help my animation out. It's also worth considering a backing track, possibly even one for each season.

Personal Evaluation

Regarding all of the feedback I mostly agree with it all. My animation needs a lot of improvement and all of the feedback should help me accomplish a better piece of work. As for my opinion on my work so far, I am very discontent with how much work I have actually managed. I have not put in nearly enough effort and because of this my animation is unfinished and still needs a lot of work to get it passable. However, although my animation isn't exactly up to a good standard, I am content with the outcome so far. 

The fact people also said that my walk cycle worked fairly well is good enough for me as that was probably the hardest part of the animation. I have learned quite a bit about walk cycles just from creating this cat animation, however I still need to improve on my walk cycles as I was unable to get a natural bounce and tail swing for my cat.

Regarding the cat, I should have found references, during the development of my idea, to use during the animation. With the lack of references for this kind of animation I struggled greatly and this caused the animation to be very boring as there is no animation involving the cat other than the walk cycle. I did have a scene prior to the walk cycle however, this ended up being cut out due to me being very unhappy with the outcome.

If I had spent time on the animation earlier than I probably could have added some animations of the cat into the movie, but due to my poor time management this didn't happen.