Because moving image is so new to me, I initially felt very lost with how to structure them and keep movement simple but effective. My animation research is what helped me to do this. All of my examples demonstrated how sound can be used as a vehicle to add depth to simple movement and to introduce character. I also thought that the way Soul Bass turned one object into another between frames was really effective. This directly inspired my transition of the lid from the bin into the bird.
I also really struggled with adding sound to my moving images, particularly with the gun. Here, I crafted all of the movement and its timings before introducing sound. This was a mistake because for it to work the objects have to work with and react to sound. I therefore had to totally reanimate it. I learned to from this and planned out the sound before animating my bottlenose dolphin.
Another mistake that I made was leaving my fourth final, the gun poster until two days before hand in. As a result, it does not feel fully resolved because I didn’t have time to personally reflect or gain feedback on it. I could have avoided this by working on it alongside animating. However, generally I am pleased with my decision to create two posters as my fourth final because they work well to broaden the context of my animated outcomes. For example, the gun vignette from my gif would work nicely within an newspaper editorial, alongside my red gun image.
Personally, I thought that my bin, sea life animations were more effective than my gun. This is because they encompass my research of the value action gap better, in effect making people think more about the implications of their personal actions. I also like the anticipation of watching the journey of a moving object and seeing where it ends up. However, the gun gif received much more positive feedback because people liked its bolder statement and movement and thought that its clever simplicity made it more confident. Based on this feedback I have reevaluated my aims and in my future animations I would like to try to maintain this confidence.
Overall, I really enjoyed this project and feel that my work is finally going somewhere. I liked the long timeframe because it gave me time to process and reimagine ideas. I think that there is a clear development and refinement across SB1 and SB2, as my confidence in concept, simplicity and boldness increased. In future I am definitely going to continue to animate and focus on editorial content as well as working on different outcomes along side each other. I also want to start bringing texture into some of my vectors.
