Before beginning the Moving Pictures brief I had never animated before and had never used Adobe After Effects or DragonFrame, so being made to animate and go far out of my comfort zone was definitely a new skill that I developed. I did realise that the way I like to work doesn't fit well with animation and I find the whole process too time consuming and frustrating. I was slightly pleased with my final 3 animations even though they weren't as detailed as I wanted them to be. I originally intended to create one 60 second animation, but after re-evaluating the brief I realised I had to create separate animations, which I then decided, due to time constraints and the amount of work I had to complete, would be 3, 10 second stings. I found learning how to use After Effects a useful skill, as I may be able to make very simple animations in the future, but I wouldn't want to do an entire brief based on animation again.
I think that the Printed Pictures brief went much better for me, I said at the end of the 1st Year that I wanted to improve my screen printing skills, which I have done, and I am now in love with the process and feel confident in my ability.
At the beginning of this brief when we were made to create images using only line and shape, I found that that definitely informed the way I created and developed my Visual Journal, especially the textures and background that I carried through into my animation. I had never really been a fan of collage and simple line drawings, but being restricted to only using them, definitely helped me to develop a new way of image making, which I would like to improve on further.
I think the main strength in this brief is my finalised print work. I had never really made finished prints before so I was pleased with how I managed to create images that work well as a set. I also think I've got much better at managing and planning my time within this brief, as I haven't been as stressed and I have managed to spread the work load out so I can work on each brief a bit more equally, I have also found new ways of time management and planning that work best for me, and I now use these much more effectively rather than just making a timetable in order to fulfil criteria for a brief. Throughout this module I have been evaluating my work and my decisions much more than in previous modules, I have changed both my print work and my animation work after evaluating it and feel like I have progressed well because of this.
A big weakness of mine would definitely be animation. Because I disliked the process so much I think I neglected it and ended up not really caring about the outcome, especially with my last animation, which turned out quite jerky because of a playback error. If I had put more effort into the animation brief I think I would have been happier with the end product and would have been able to make them more detailed and would have had time to add text and sound to them. I also had to change quite a lot within the brief, like the animation process I would use and the length of my animations, I think this made it hard for me to get fully invested in my animation because it had to change so much from my initial ideas.
If I were to do this module again I would make a more solid decision on what my animation would be and how I would create it. I would have chosen a more simple theme and done stop motion animation instead of trying to create moving images in After Effects, as using the program was what I struggled with most, as I found it often would create problems that wouldn't have mattered if I had created the images by hand using stop motion. I would also spend more time making the animation into final finished pieces by adding text and sound. For the print brief I think I would have liked to have created something a bit more interesting than just prints, maybe a zine or printing onto textiles. Now that I am completely comfortable with the screen printing process itself I feel like I can take more risks and try printing onto different materials and also create prints with more than two colours.
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