This module has by far been the most challenging to get my head around than any previous one. I think it is probably the fact that I have got so used to producing static designs that this has been a real learning curve. It took a long time to realize that on top of what I am used to… I have a whole new programme to learn and an entire new range of processes to go through before my product is complete. This lead to time management issues as I really didn’t consider the amount of time it actually takes to animate, render and upload.
At first, I was incredibly excited about this module and the amount we were going to learn in the process… this soon turned to frustration. I had so many ideas, but when it came to the software, it seemed there was a barrage in my head. It just didn’t seem to want to do what I asked (which is another way of saying that I was clearly wasn’t asking it in the right way). I took hours watching tutorials over Christmas but the information never seemed to go in. However, when I got back into the design swing upon returning in January, things started to click, especially with Mike’s help and the really well thought out inductions we were given. I started to enjoy it more.
Looking back, the decision of doing dogs as my Top ten subject was a rash one. I didn’t want to produce anything I had done before (both twitter and hi-tops came up in my train of thought). I now regret doing dogs just because of the difficulty in trying to get dogs to behave like dogs with the basic training that we have been given. Although looking at my idents, I am rather proud of what I have achieved.
Again, this module, like all others before it, brought time management issues with me. I kept going off on different tangents of ideas… probably went through about 5 different final ideas before I settled on using vectorised dogs. I tried out hand-drawn… which in hindsight was silly as I am not so good at drawing, I just liked what I drew in my head I think.
Along with teaching me a lot about AfterEffects, my illustrator skills greatly improved during this module as my entire animation was based on it. Working out the layers and how they would move was probably one of my favourite parts of the design process… and the most frustrating when one minor glitch lead to hours of unpicking both illustrator files and keyframes.
The part of my final pieces that I am most proud of are my idents, probably because they took a lot more thought (I don’t know why I prioritised them over the title sequence) and they seemed to take a lot more time to produce than the final product.
I, once again, did not leave myself enough time to really do myself proud and I am frustrated that, once again, things happened in my life outside college that took my thoughts away from the project as I feel I could actually have produced a really brilliant piece of work. However, what I have produced still astounded me. If you had told me 3 months ago that I would have been able to do this now, I would not have believed it. It has definitely been a learning curve.
