Thursday 9th January 2014

Critical Evaluation

Peer Evaluation

After screening my animation to my peers I got given very useful feedback on how to improve my animation and also what I had done well.

Overall my animation worked pretty well. The soundtrack and sound effects were suitable and effective and some of my scenes had a good impact. The usage of flying in the film studio was a good example of this as it is something that couldn't be accomplished using live action. However, the main problem with my animation is that other than the flying scene everything else could have been shot live action. I didn't really push the boundaries of what I could accomplish using stop-motion and that is something I need to improve on. Also my peers seemed to agree with me that the voice did not suit the animation at all and there were also incorrect readings of the text from the voice actor. The text messages also had a couple of grammatical errors that I did not notice at time of the shoot. Another edit I need to make is that when the text messages are on screen, they shouldn't move around for the entire time. They should be a still image on screen to allow the audience to read the message easily.

Personal Evaluation

I agree with the feedback I had been given and using the information given I plan on reshooting some scenes to improve the animation. I don't have the time to reshoot the entire animation so I plan just to reshoot the outside scene because that is the scene that really needs something to show it can be accomplished better using stop-motion rather than video. I also believe that I need to shoot a more sufficient ending as the animation at the moment isn't conclusive at all.

I had mentioned before my discontent with the voice acting and after my peers reaction I will certainly be taking the files out of the movie. However, I feel that the other audio files were used very effectively but I could have made usage of a few more. For example a door creaking when one was being opened could have been effective.

The pacing of the animation felt could have been handled slightly better. There were times the animation would slow down in one scene and then speed up again in another and I don't feel it worked with such an inconsistent pacing. This only really occurred during the scenes where it had a shot of the text message. I had to slow down the pace of the text message so it was possible to actually read the messages. Maybe having it as one image for the majority would stop this from happening. I do plan on changing the text scenes accordingly to what feedback I received.