Evaluation

At the start of this brief I struggled to find a group as everyone had already split off and formed their own groups the week before, so trying to find a group to join that I thought I would work well in and would benefit me with my work was hard. I had then asked Guy and Dan if I could join their group and although Dan was happy with the idea of me joining their group Guy was hesitant.

We had all met up to discuss our strengths with in our work to make it easier for us when we start pre-production, I was happy that both Dan and Guy put me in charge of Pre-production as this is what I feel like I do best in with in my own work. I feel as if I was really organised at the start of this brief as I had managed my time so well, and I had done all the research on Alzheimer’s ready for when we start animating, the only thing I’m unpleased about is, I had done so much research and spent so much time getting in contact with care homes to see if we could visit with permission, but unfortunately we were unable to find a care home close enough for us to visit.

Guy had also recorded me and Dan talking about our experience with having a close relative suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, because we were all so focused on trying to come up with a really good and effective idea for our animation, we had completely forgotten that both of us know what its like to see someone suffer with the disease, and take a step back and see if we could come up with an idea out of either of our answers to a set of questions that the three of us had written. Which we then used for people who emailed us in response to our poster. The poster was then posted all around the university, which I really enjoyed doing as I like the whole design side of projects and I think this is why I enjoy pre-production so much and this brief has made me realise this, so this will be something that I will continue in the future. Another thing is, I was really pleased with the outcome of the poster as we had so many responses of people wanting to share their stories of experiencing someone so close to them have Alzheimer’s.

 I had also enjoyed creating the room designs, as it gave me a chance to further my skills with layout design and also it gave me a chance to improve on my drawing skills too as I had drawn up different chair designs that where going to be included in the different scenes with in the animation. I personally think that after designing the backgrounds it has made me realise that I would like to improve my skills doing this too as I want my pre-production skills to be the best they can be.

I was unhappy at the start knowing that I wouldn’t be actually animating anything for this brief, as I thought that my work that I had done/ was doing was less important but now looking back I am quite happy that I didn’t as the work that I had mostly completed for this brief was design work and coming from a background where I have studied graphic design for multiple years, I think I was probably the best person out of my group to do the design side of the project and I am really happy with all the work I have done.

Working with Dan and Guy was so much fun and not only have I enjoyed working with them both but I have also learnt so much about how they work as individuals and work with in a team. I think that we have all helped each other throughout this brief as we have not criticised each other’s work but only given advise on how to improve each other’s work. We made sure as a group that we are always helping each other when needed instead of someone having nothing to do and others having too much to do that they are unable to finish any work. I think in the future I would definitely consider working with both Dan and guy again.

If I could go back and change anything it would be how I managed my time towards the end of the brief as I wasn’t able to finish all the backgrounds for scenes 2 and 3 in time for when Dan needed them for the line tests

Study Task 1- For Arguments sake

Most people think that the railway has always been owned by the government but in fact it has spent most of its history in private hands

Britains railways were nationalized by the post war labour part in 1948 and returned to being private in 1993 because of the conservative government, which says it all really!

Renationalizing the railways was suppose to happen again in 1997 but then Tony blair put that to a stop 

The main argument for nationalising the railways again is to reunite all rail networks with the train running on it under a common owner

If the railway was nationalised again it would save money and with all the profits made, it would be reinvested back into the railways, instead of all the profits being distributed to the share holders in other countries.

According to a yougov survey  60 percent of the british public support the idea of renationalizing the railways 

(Train fairs have increased at twice the speed of wages since 2010) and that’s because almost every year for a decade the government has put up the ticket prices by more than inflasion.  But some train fairs have increased by 245% under this system.

Since privatation passenger numbers have  doubled, which has lead to over crowding on trains

Because none of the profits get invested back into the railways they are given to shareholders in countries such as Germany, france and the Netherlands, but the private train operating companies made over 200 million pound in profit last year which we could use to improve the railways instead of the shareholders bank accounts

The promise of privatisation initially was that it would drive competition and competion would drive fairs down but in reality the fairs have only increased making it unaffordable.

The Mersey rail is a joint partnership, it is both a private company and the Netherlands state rail operator’s international arm, and the dutch state takes a share of profits  which totaled £10.77m 

Whereas the London’s Overground network  which is also a joint partnership between the German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn and private company MTR. made £7.54m profit, which is shared between the two

These are screenshots from my presentation for study task 1- For arguments sake, and these are all my notes that I had taken and had used for my presentation.

Week 13- Animated Documentary

These are some more line tests that Dan and guy had both done, I had also helped with both of these scenes too with cleaning up the frames. 

This week my main focus was on creating the DVD cover for our animation. 

I wanted to have the DVD cover quite dramatic looking to grab the viewers attention, so I had taken the background of our second scene and used that as the main image for the front cover. Guy had then told me what font I should include as this is the font that will be used with in the animation. I had researched what typical DVD covers looked like as this would help me with the layout of our DVD cover. 

I had then printed out the DVD to test what it looks like in the case and the image was too dark and the font was too dark also. The image above is of the final DVD cover, I had edited the levels and the colours to ensure that everything is visible and easy to read. I had asked Dan to write the synopsis as I thought that he was probably the better writer out of the three of us in the group. I had also included an image of the first scene with all three characters, I had them made it look as if it was a worn picture from a photo album as I thought that this would fit the aesthetic of our animation as Photos are kept for memories and memories are lost with Alzheimer's, which I had thought would be really effective. I wanted to keep the DVD cover really simple as our animation is quite minimalist.  

These are the finished DVD covers in the case 

Below is our press kit that me and Guy had worked on. Guy was the one who mainly worked on this press kit and I helped with layout. 

Week 10/11/12- Animated Documentary

For these three weeks I didn't have much to do for the animation as the production of our animation had started and Guy and Dan were both working on the key frames and the inbetweens of the characters. because I was working on the pre-production and will be working on post-production, I was not actually animating anything.

After both Dan and guy had finished one the line tests of the characters, I had then took some of the frames to clean up, and save as a PNG file so they were ready to be uploaded on to the animation, I had started off on the grandmother character first. This line test was done by both Dan and Guy. Guy has written me some instructions on the shortcuts for photoshop so that I could complete the clean up of the scenes quicker, I was really thankful for this as it had saved so much time and I was able to complete the majority of the frames for this scene in a short period of time.

 

Week 9- Animated Documentary

Dan had suggested that we should try and create the backgrounds as cut out because he felt as if they would fit the aesthetic of our animation more. Dan had then quickly created this background to test the key frames of the characters on top, we had all agreed that we all liked the backgrounds in this style and that we should stick to the cut out backgrounds 

I had then started designing the background for the first scene of our animation, me and Dan had both decided that having the backgrounds as cut out would bring more depth to the animation as we could layer the different paper. For this background I had kept to the animatic scene as this is the layout that we wanted for the animation. I had changed which coloured card would be used for the walls and the chair because I felt as if they didn't really fit and look right, I had also added a darker bown colour to the background because the background needed more depth and with out it, it would have looked too flat.