Don't Be Mean Mr Carradean is complete - time for reflection

Now that I have finally finished my film Don't Be Mean Mr Carradean after months of hard work, I feel really excited (as well as a little nervous) to hand my film in tomorrow. So to finish off, here's my self-reflection for this project:

I really enjoyed making my grad film Don’t Be Mean Mr Carradean. I liked having the freedom to do a film on whatever topic I wanted, in whatever method I wanted. It gave me a chance to learn how to use TV Paint, which I actually think is a really good program.  I feel proud of myself for having taught myself, through trying and persevering, how to use this new program. 

Coming up with the idea was quite difficult, and I spent my whole summer thinking, “what am I supposed to make my film about?” But when I got my inspiration, it was really easy to come up with a storyline. Because I wrote the story while I was really angry, it made my storyline better as there was an emotional drive behind it.

The design process was quite easy for me because I pretty much saw how I wanted my film to look while I was writing it. However, if I’d had more time to work on my film, I would have liked to add more detail into my backgrounds and add a shading and watercolour painting effect to my characters. Although I do like the texture I made for my film.

The most difficult part of making my film was figuring out how to stage the scene where Jimmy is helping his friends to escape the net. I found my tutorials with Zuri Ainz really helpful for this as she gave me some great advice. It also helped to hear a different person’s opinion on my film; plus she really liked it which gave me a needed confidence boost.

While making my film, I learned that my time management skills are good and my speed of working improved. This lead me to be able to complete my film before the day of the hand in. I have also found that this project has made me feel more confident in myself, as well as my skills as an animator. Don’t Be Mean Mr Carradean has consistently gotten good reactions from my classmates and tutors.

Overall, I am really proud of my film and I think it has turned out really well; and this has given me new confidence and a stronger drive to go out and start a career in animation. This, combined with the professional portfolio project has made me feel far more prepared to find a job in the animation industry than I did at the beginning of my third year.  I also feel more inclined to carry on making my own short animations, especially if I can’t find a job straight away, and I still plan on improving my show reel.

Possibly Finished

I have now added in all the music and the texture. I'm going to show my film to my classmates next week and if everyone else approves of it, then my film is finished.

Sound Effects Completed

I now have my film with all of the sound effects on, just need to add the music to make it more emotional.

Animation Completed

I have now finished all of my animating and colouring, and all of my frames are in Aftereffects with the dialogue. I just need to do the sound effects and the music.

Crit feedback

After the feedback from the final crit, I now know that I need to add in another shot of Jimmy having fun at the coral reef, as well as adding a little something to the design. So I need to finish animating and colouring, then I will animate the extra shot, and then I think I will add a texture onto my film to make it more visually interesting.

Ready for the crit

I didn't get a 2nd year assistant, so i've just been pushing through with key framing my film. I managed to finish all my key frames, ready for the final crit tomorrow.

Upto Date Animatic

I've done a lot of work over the last couple of weeks, so I have rendered out my animatic with my completed animation so far to present to the second years. This can be seen below.

Feedback from Zuri

Zuri said she really liked my film and found it funny, which I found reassuring. She gave me a few things I could improve on so I spent this week going back over, and improving, my film.

Animatic for Zurine Ainz

This animatic has been updated with the completed shots I have so far for my tutorial with Zuri on Wednesday

This week I finished three more shots, and almost completed another shot with a lot of lip-sync, which has taken me quite a while. I have now reached just over 1 minute of completed animation.

After recording my voice actors, I got down to animate a scene with some vocal lines in; the scene where Mr Carradean asks the class what the answer to 5x7 is. This went very well, and after staying late, I managed to get it finished.

I then went on to start animating another shot with dialogue, and one without. These are both unfinished at the moment. I also altered my animatic as a few shots weren't quite working, but I think the shots I have replaced them with are working much better.

The screen shots of the finished shots from this week are shown below;

Voice recording

Yesterday I recorded the voices for my characters, after I typed up the script over the weekend. I sieved through the lines afterwards and picked out all of the usable ones, I think they came out pretty well and I am now less restricted on which shots I can animate so I feel more able to make a big leap forwards in production.

Animation

This week, I didn't get as much finished as last week. I completed a shot, and started another two complicated shots. One of them gave me a lot of trouble when I was trying to figure out the perception, so I think I will have a think about it over the weekend and try to tackle it again next week.

Animating

This week I chose to do some more simple shots. In total I completed two, which I am very pleased with; far more progress than last week as they were quite long shots. The screen shots are shown below;

First shot finished

This week I learned how to use TV Paint to animate a shot. I also completed the first shot of the film, which only took me a day because it was very simple. I then completed a second shot, however it took me four days to animate and colour; which is far too long for if I want to get this film finished by the deadline, so I need to speed up. Having said that, it was my first time using TV Paint so hopefully I will get quicker at animating as I get more used to the program.

Below is a screen shot of each shot that I animated this week;

Beginning Animation

Back at University now, and after a quick post-Christmas holiday review with my tutor, I am ready to start animating.

I am going to animate the shots where there is no dialogue first, simply because I wasn't able to book a session in the sound studio on the dates I wanted; the earliest it was available was the 3rd February, which I have now booked a session on, but until then I cannot animate my characters accordingly to their speech. I think animating this way will prevent me from wasting time.