Evaluation

After finishing my animation I can now evaluate and decide what went well and what I could of done to do better.  I started my research by looking into what makes an animation what it is by using different techniques and a variety of them.  One of my main thoughts when I received the brief was Tom & Jerry.  After looking into animation techniques and then watching some Tom&Jerry i then realised how many were used to emphasis the basics.  These can be extreme exaggeration, push & pull technique and stretch.  I looked into different animations with different art styles to gain what I thought would suit mine best.  At this point I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do and I thought instantly simplicity was the way to go.  As i've always said, simplicity seems to give the strongest powerful affect.  After re-searching I was for sure that I wanted to use stencil like style using block colours but as I got carried away in Illustrator I realised that, that wasn't the case when I made my detailed plane.  I really liked this plane and I didn't want to scrap it.  I then made everything else fairly simple and stuck to my art style.  I made a few tweaks to my design by not adding the 400ppm in as I thought this was too lecturing and the brief stated not to do this so I left it out and added my slogan at the end 'Cut your Carbon habit'.  I created my 3D globe in Illustrator which then I found out that there was a much simpler way to do this in After effects itself by importing a flat map and using the 'CC Sphere' effect on it.  My design varies around my storyboard as I said I did remove parts and add bits in but I think this is normal as you don't know whats best until it is made.  The successful points of my work I feel is the visual language and art style.  I really like how everything fits together and to me, nothing seems out of place.  My music choice may could have been better although I think it drives the animation to what It's set out to achieve which is persuasion of amount of Co2 that is being produced.  I feel my art work is to a good standard and none of this feels particularly 'rough & ready' and represents my visual language well.  Although there are other things I could of improved on.  I think mine may have been just a bit too basic despite saying simplicity was the way forward but maybe a cut to a different scene without my globe with different types of transport could have mixed it up a bit and change the viewers perspective.  I did find this project hard as this is a new piece of software After Effects like it is to many and I found that I did not grasp everything as quickly as I would of liked it to and I think this does show in my work.  I feel I didn't get enough tutorial time on After Effects but in some ways I think its best to learn yourself.  If i was to do this project again I would allow more time for the building process in After Effects only because I struggled but I soon got the basics of this.  I would perhaps choose a different area of Co2 emissions to focus on such as food or life style consumption.  Overall I feel the project was successful and I am pleased with what I achieved not only in my final outcome but the learning new things with new software too.