End of Project Review

It is now time to reflect on my work and look at what I am pleased with and what I am disappointed with.


I am pleased with the animation as a whole. I think that I have showed a good range of understanding and a good work ethic. I don't think I've gone more than a day or so throughout this semester without doing something related to this module. Hopefully this reflects in my work. After a bit of a struggle at first and creating a pretty simple model to start with in the mobile phone, I did get the hang of it and improved quite a lot in the middle weeks. Once we had handed in the models and we started animating, my project really took off. I straight away worked on the gun barrel scene and got it working well which was very satisfying. This led to me doing the first scene with the pro water material and picture of MI6 building. I didn't really have an opportunity to model that entire building, and it would have been unnecessary as it is only in shot for five seconds. I was pleased with how the middle two scenes went as well. I enjoy animating but it can be very fiddly and frustrating at times. I did manage to include some more advanced techniques as well, so this is good! I have really enjoyed the blog aspect of the project and I am very pleased with the work I've done on this site. I think its a good incentive to do work, especially when you see other people uploading their work. It is also a good reference to work and helps me know when I did certain things. I did complete the paperwork and follow it, which was good too as it enabled me to know what I was doing before I went into each scene.


After looking at some other people's animations it makes me feel less pleased about my own. I know it is bad to compare yourself to others the whole time but it does knock your confidence back when you see some of the outstanding work other people have done. I need to remain positive and remember that I should be pleased with my animation this semester, even if there are things I would like to improve.


One of the main concerns for my animation is that it isn't really a trailer. It is more of a story in itself. I think this happened because my mind tends to focus in on creating a story rather than coming up with bits of one. Some of the animating is a bit dodgy as well. Examples of this include the middle two scenes where the hand moves in a very rigid manner. I was fairly weak in understanding the materials editor. This is something I definitely need to improve in over the summer. I still find deciding which material to use a problem and working out how the maps will change the material. I would have liked to have done something else with the gun barrel scene, like in the real Bond trailers where the barrel moves about. This would have meant my animation would have ended up being a minute long, which is far too long when the brief said thirty seconds. The story doesn't really have much of a narrative, it may be unclear what Bond is doing in 006's office as there isn't time to explain. Again this is a problem with making a story instead of a trailer.


In conclusion I am pleased with my work this semester. Even if the final animation is not a really high standard, I am still pleased with how I have applied myself in the last few months. Hopefully I will continue working on my skills this summer, so I can improve my standard to bring it up with some of the rest next year.