Creative Collaboration- 

Weeks 10 - 12

Evaluation for final animation & Production Bible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaLjM4djPIM&t=16s

After 6 weeks of production, we finally managed to get our final piece animated, and it is insanely satisfying to see all of the group and our collaborator's  work come together. There is a lot that has turned out just as good, if not, better than I expected, however there are a few things which I think might not have been up to standard with the rest, all of these points are listed bellow.

What went well

• We managed to produce an animation that's entirely of our own creation (with help from all our collaborators), we didn't go off of any pre-excising franchise or organisation, therefore creating something original that has the potential to be developed even further. This is something that I've always aspired to do in a scale such as this, but never had the opportunity to do so due to not having external collaborators to assist me, therefore often resulting me in expanding on other peoples intellectual properties.
• Despite originally being unsure whether or not the topic of our choice would be applicable to the 'Creative Conscience' brief, as the majority of topics concern issues relating to human welfare, not animal welfare, I believe that we have worked around it, and have worked strictly to the brief set.
• I am very glad we chose to structure the animation in the quick-cut fashion that we did, as I couldn't see us being able to communicate the story we intended in the time we were given otherwise. The effect, regardless of its time consuming nature, is very effective as well in terms of communicating emotion.
• After testing our animation with someone who fits into our primary target audience, although not getting as quite into it as we first intended (I understand we only tested this with one individual, and results will vastly vary from person to person), she still managed to grasp the issues we were raising and overall experienced the emotions that we intended her to feel, therefore meaning we pulled off what we intended to (the video can be seen below)
• I could see this working as a TV advertising campaign, releasing several alterations, all of which focusing on a new dog's story. This isn't a happy coincidence however, as one of our main inspirations was the Dog's Trust '#specialsomeone TV advertisements, which has a very similar premise to our own. This means that our piece is highly marketable, and therefore is good practice for industry.
• From this, I have produced an even wider catalog of characters designs, an area of production that I am especially passionate about, and I feel as though I have improved my skills in the process, especially in terms of turn-arounds and posing.
• We worked with many professional people who helped to make our project as good as it could be.

What could have been better

• If I was to point out the largest problem that I came across whilst animating, it would be the timings. Unfortunately, when it came to animating some scenes, timing had to altered in favour of spreading out events so they're easier to comprehend. The most server one of these adaptions was as follows; Tony was originally meant to appear in the scene in the streets, offering Talula a treat, but due to the fight having to be extended as I wanted to build up tension and threat, there was no longer time to include his appearance. Fortunately, this wasn't a major plot point as his care for Talula was shown in other aspects of his character. I have learnt from that experience how to pace things out better in the pre-production phase, to save me having to rearrange things later and cause more work for my teammates. 
• The fact that the whole animation had the same framing throughout, meant that I wasn't able to use cinematography techniques to help emphasise certain emotions and atmospheres. This is especially apparent in the scene where we are meant to be fearful of the mean dog, Tyrone, as preferably, he should have consumed more of the screen and been shown from a low angle to signify dominance, however due to the locked angle, this wasn't achievable.
• It was important to establish that a lot of time is passing by after each shot, and it wasn't just poorly made animation. We originally planned to show this via the background changing overtime and Talula slowly growing, which was achieved excellently in the 'pregnancy' scene. However, arguably the most essential scene to let the audience know this is in the establishing shot/scene, so that they understand right away what's going on. We unfortunately didn't show this overly well, as despite from the dogs disappearing in the background and price going down, there is little indication towards the passage of time, meaning that the audience may be initially confused
• I feel as though overall, our piece could have been a lot more informative, as aside from all the situations portrayed through narrative, no facts or figures are displayed, making the research that went into pre-production somewhat redundant. It wasn't necessary for the piece to be overly informative, so it's not a major concern, but facts and figure would likely help audiences take the message more seriously.

What I will change next time

• Have an even more active role when contacting and meeting collaborators, as although helping out as much as I could when we came into contact with them, I always felt that I could have made the project a little more interesting by searching for my own potential collaborators to cover more fields.
• Experiment with more fluid animation, learning and pulling off this style of animation was fun and made for a pleasing outcome, but I feel that skills learnt by perfecting my traditional animation techniques would be more beneficial in the long run.
• Use more industry standard editing/animation software, so that other team members could help a lot easier as they would likely have experience in software's other than the ones that I am using, and therefore animate with my animation rigs, thus helping take the pressure off me. This will also help increase my employability. 

Team Report

I feel that myself, Chloe and Josh worked exceptionally well as a team, and came over many issues together, helping with or taking on jobs that others didn't have time for, ensuring that what they're working on in the meantime is to the standard that they want it to. We all live in close contact to one another, so it was easy to contact one another. I feel as though I wasn't hesitant to politely bring up anything that I wasn't particularly happy with for the good of our project, something that I have failed to do before, and I hope that they feel the same way. I would work with these two again, as our different abilities mixed well.

https://issuu.com/levipeirson/docs/helpahaven_productionbible_final_817ee68d93bc91

Above is the link to view our production bible, we were tasked to produce it for our project. The importance of creating this comes from the fact that it is once again professional practice for industry. A good production bible should clearly detail a projects premise and setting, character bios, design variants, poses and an in depth look into the work behind the project. I feel we included all the relevant material, and left out what we thought was unnecessary (ideation notes, all the different background variants, as we wanted to keep the bible looking varied and engaging, not pieces of paper and repeated shots). 

Unfortunately, I was still working on the animation whilst Chloe and Josh initiated this task, so I wasn't able to have as much of an impact on the design and layout as I wanted, due to my passion with graphic design. Chloe nonetheless managed to pull of a presentable and clear layout design, showing our work clearly and appropriately.