EVALUATION

 FINAL EVALUATION

My aim for this project was to create a fluent animation based on the storyboard I created. The skills that I thought I needed to develop were animating, as I used spritesheet animation, which was new to me and challenging. I had created a spritesheet running animation to show how I have progressed in doing this type of animation. 

The use of my Timetable, which I have produced, has been very helpful and effective, as I have explained each stage of my project that I have done. What I could have done differently was the use of the spacing of the weeks for the project, as I started doing the animation, but in that week, I did not finish animating the final outcome. 

The biggest development for my FMP Project was starting to do the final animation, as I had created the backgrounds on Adobe Photoshop first. Halfway through the creation process in weeks, Photoshop did not work for me, so I had to use PIXLR E website, as this is the free version of the image editor itself. The second biggest development for this project was creating my own characters for the final animation. This is because I used the existing characters and created them my own way on a programme called PixilArt. After this, I converted the images into PNG files so that I could finally animate them in Adobe Animate. The third biggest development was the research that I had done before producing the final outcome. This is because I have researched different drawing styles and types of animation to choose what animation style I will be using to emphasise my animation, along with the drawing style.

The most challenging part of the software that I had used was animating, as it was very hard for me to animate because of the type of animation, in this case, it was Spritesheet animation. This differs from normal animation as it involves characters already being drawn out for people to animate with different poses of that character. On the other hand,  hand animation, overall, includes hand-drawn images for the animation to be produced. The most challenging part of my practical work was sticking to the same point, as the type of animation I used was very new to me, and I had to get used to using this type of animation.

To be honest, I feel that I have improved, speaking on the practical side of the project, I have improved a little bit because I have used two different types of software-one for animating and one for editing. These were Adobe Animate and Adobe Photoshop. Speaking on the organisational side of the project, I have improved a lot because I have planned every single part of my project on my Project Timetable. The soft skills that I had been able to practice were animating, as I used the character's spritesheet to animate a running cycle for the characters in the animation. 

I am happy with the final outcome as a whole because it shows how much work I was able to put into the final project. What I have to critique is the second part of the final outcome because I wasn't able to finish the animation side as it was very hard for me to animate by myself as this type of animation was something that I had difficulty adapting to, and I had just started using this type of animation and I needed more assistance animating the final product. The overall theme of Location links to the animation very well, as Mario travels through pipes which lead to various locations in the Mario games that were released. 

I did not get a response to my final outcome as I did not finish my animation. When I finish my animation, I will play it to some students in my course to see what they think of my final animation's outcome. 

Based on what I have done throughout this project, what I have learnt that will be most valuable going forward in my future projects, I thought it was the organisational skills such as planning, because I find it easier to plan my projects so then I can do the parts of the project week by week. 

In summary, I have very much enjoyed the entirety of this project, as this involved me creating my own characters, producing my backgrounds, and finally planning my FMP Project of Location. Since there were pathways of doing this project, including but not limited to Film, Photography, Games Design, and Animation. As such, I have chosen to do animation as this was the very first unit in this course that I have done. I was going to be doing a hand-drawn animation, but it was hard for me to use the graphics tablet. What my teacher, Vinny, suggested for me to be doing was a Sprite Sheet Animation, as this was easier for me to animate.