Stop Motion Animation Assignment 3

Stop Motion Animation 3

After watching my finished animation I felt that first of all the over the top humour went really well with the overall theme of my animation, it matches it perfectly. Although I felt like my unusual models also matched this, I thought that they were a bit poorly done myself with a limited amount of time to plan my models, I quickly made them on the spot also my skill with creating plasticine models is not my strong point. I feel the main strength of my animation is its short charming, humorous story it takes a very serious known story (taken movie) flips it and turns it into an over the top comedy parody of it, it's fast paced and short meaning it's not overkill so it's not boring and just fun and exciting. My editing in the video could been seen as fairly lazy as I only really had to colour grade it and take out any mistakes that I left and also added sound effects, I could of maybe added some visual effects in post but I decided not to. Also there's a shot where the character does a jump movement very slowly as it appears to almost be like a slow-motion shot, it looks a little silly which I guess does go with the theme however it may of been a better chose to speed it up to make it appear faster and more natural.

Here is the animation that inspired me for the similar design of my models, although the themes are completely different this was what I was trying to match in quality of content I don't feel I was at this level however I do feel like it was a good attempt and can prove that I could re-do it and make it even better and eventually possibly achieve a similar level. This animation is far smoother than mine that would be mainly due to duration, I had to create mine as I was a bit rushed to create it especially towards the end of the deadline and it shows in some of the less smooth movements in my animation. My sound effects may of been cheap, cliché and lazy however the overtop cartoon like sound effects was what I was going for to add to the humour I did think that it worked well however it may of been a little repetitive.

I feel like music in my animation went really well, music was picked specifically for certain scenes to relate to the scene, for example when the character enters the vehicle the classic song "drive" starts to play and then end when he crashes this adds to the humour of the scene as it's a well-known classic song and also its name relates well to the scene. For the fight scene I used the 'FarCry Blood Dragon' theme music as I really enjoy this old school style of electronic game music and it went really well with the fight sequence then I ended it with a very well-known final fantasy theme music as people would be able to recognise it and it matches the ending feeling well.

For my feedback the first question I asked was, "At what level did you think the animation was made at?" and it averaged out between a moderate level, high level and very high level it was split between these three, I was very impressed to hear that most thought it was at a high level or above. I do also understand why someone would only say moderate as there is some stuff that could definitely be improved and it's a short animation so it’s difficult to make a great animation when it’s so short.

For my second question I asked "What did you think of the plasticine models?" most people said that they were good which was nice to hear as I thought this was my weak point of my animation. However some did say just "Fine" and 1 person did say it was "poor" so hear I definitely could do with some improvement and perhaps plan out what I want to make my characters to look like and then spend a good amount of time creating them.

For my third question I asked "What did you think of my editing in the animation?" this was actually very positive as most said "good" one said "great" and 2 said "fine" so here there was no negative comments however, I agree that although the editing is at least fine it could so with some improvements with some maybe more ambitious editing.

For the fourth question I asked "What did you think about the sound in my animation?" this includes all music used plus sound effects. This again was very positive with nearly all saying it was "good", one person saying it was "great" and one saying it was "fine. Here like I said before I think although the music choice was pretty much perfect some sound effect choices could maybe need improving although it did match the comedy theme well it perhaps seemed a bit lazy.

For my fifth question I asked "How was the story in my animation?" Here most people said it was "Great" which was awesome to hear and like I said before I myself felt like the story was the strong point of the animation because of it being so different, funny and over the top, not much improvement to be here.

My last question was "Would you watch my animation again" and 5/6 people said "yes" this proves that I have pretty much achieved on what I have intended to make, a fun, humorous short animation that people find good to watch. The person that said no maybe just an outlier for now or perhaps the genre or animation style wasn't there main interest which is probably the most likely answer for that.

So if I was to create a second animation I would maybe stick with the same story and theme, however spend more time and planning on creating the models for the characters so that the quality appeals more to audiences. Also perhaps spend some more time on editing, using more and better sound effects and perhaps adding in some more ambitious visual effects such as explosions etc.