reflection

I have now completed all six of my idents and have kept in accordance with my schedule.

I would like the idents to either be on the website for Warwick Castle (as loading screens perhaps) or on monitors around the site between important snatches of information about the castle for visitors. They might even work as adverts during children's television if I find the right soundtrack to go with it.

The things that remain to think about are the use of sound as well as the evaluation of my project from the beginning brief and the application of any necessary changes;


stills from each of my six idents

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I began this brief with quite a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve; six 5 second idents promoting the summer activities of Warwick Castle aimed at children, but the process of getting to this result was quite turmulent.

I wanted to challenge myself so I chose to create the idents in a programme I was quite unfamiliar with but wanted to get better at; Adobe Flash. This led to a lot of problems especially with the 'actionscript' trying to create water effects, using the 'tween' tool and just getting to grips with all the functions.

I feel like I do know the program a lot better now; whenever I was stuck I either asked for advice from a fellow classmate (notably Dean Pankhurst and Steven Pender who have both previously used the program before this course) or I sought online help and tutorials from professionals like Maxwell Langdon.

The style of the idents was also a problem as first I wanted to create it similar to the ending animation of Bolt (see the first blog entry to view it), but animating without lines was a little tricky so I soon sought other inspiration and found it at the HAFF animation festival and through youtube videos. I think the style and vibrant colours I chose will attract the target audience to my animations.

I paced myself well with the project and have finished a week ahead of schedule so that I can get feedback and improve it if need be. I can't imagine how I could have completed this project with more success, I've tried my best with all aspects of it.

The one area I feel I am weakest in is the initial designing stage. Often I rush my ideas so that I can get started as soon as possible since I panic at the thought of deadlines! Going back it might be worthwhile re-thinking a few of the ideas and seeing if I can get them any more original or interesting.

Finally, comparing this work to the industry-standard out there I feel as though I still have a long way to go in terms of drawing skill and using flash to its fullest potential. There were no very interesting camera angles in my work and some of the animation was a little robotic because I didn't have time to dynamically animate everything. I would also be part of a team in the industry and wouldn't have to go through the process by myself so that could be solved later on. I feel the time frame I had was adequate and working a few hours a day really paid off instead of intensely working on it during one short period of time.

I really enjoyed working on this project and want to continue using flash in the future, it is a really inventive program and I feel I have not yet lived up to my animation potential using it, but this is as good a start as any.