Year 9 Creative Media Animation – Term 04 Mr Andrews Task 4: e-pub, commentary and poster self-reflection and evaluation:

Part One: Discuss your feelings about the e-pub, poster and commentary task:

1.    Are you satisfied with the final result?

I am satisfied with the final result of my iBook, considering the hard hours and dedication it took to get done. I do however believe that I could have put more work into it and make it even better with more time. Nevertheless I’m still very pleased with the ePub I have completed and handed in.

2.    Did the e-pub require more/less time than you originally thought?

The ePub ended up taking more time than I actually thought originally, due to the difficulty it took to make everything perfect and exactly how I wanted it. The project took a good 6 or 7 solid hours to complete, due to all the recordings over each scene and writing out our directors commentary to explain to the audience the troubles we had and the things we went to, to create our movie.

3.    Would like to change any aspects of your final project (layout, links, images, video and audio content, colour scheme etc)?

I would like to change the aspects of the layout, video and audio content and the colour scheme. This is due to the fact that I didn’t have each scene for my scene directory commentaries, so I ahd to go over the whole movie, rather than each scene selected. However I was happy that I had the writing underneath to make sense of the fact that I didn’t have each scene. As well as the colour scheme to make it more appealing and brighter for the audience intended to read the iBook.

4.    If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

I would definitely use all my time more wisely and make sure each scene was ready to go, rather than having to use the whole movie. As well as asking more questions to clarify each part of my book was as best as it could be. This would have drastically helped my project and gave me extra insight to the things I wanted to accomplish with my book.

Part Two: Respond to each of the following dot points (using complete sentences or paragraphs). You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.

1.    Discuss whether your e-pub and poster have turned out the way you pictured them?

My Poster I believe could have been better, but it was still happy with the outcome of it. My ePub turned out better than I expected, because every part of it was completed and I didn’t think I would have finished the whole iBook.

2.    Explain whether your e-pub and poster clearly depicts the style of your animation and describe some specific design principles that you have used to achieve this;

The poster does clearly show the audience that my movie is an animation, due to the way the characters are drawn and how they are done with the program animationish. It also tells them the song composed and written by Ron Pope and directed and created by myself. The ePub shows how each scene was designed with certain criteria we wanted our animation to look like.

3.    Describe any problems or technical difficulties you encountered while creating your director commentaries in GarageBand. These may include; sound or video issues, corrupt or missing files, difficulty using the iBooks Author or GarageBand software, problems importing/exporting files, etc;

Firstly I had difficulties trying to make the garageband work on my computer, but after an hour I had worked it out and I was up and running straight away. The recordings done on garageband were very smooth and clear. Due to this things were running smoothly with the movie and directors commentary. Importing the files to the iBook after the recordings were very easy as I saved all garageband projects to my desktop and then dragged them into my iBook.

4.    Did you have all of the necessary resources to complete your e-pub and poster or did you have to create new materials?

All my resources to complete the poster, was already done as I had already created half of it in Photoshop, so then all I had to do was create it into my poster for my iBook. The ePub however was harder as I didn’t have any of my reflections on my blog, but that just meant I just had to write my director’s commentary from scratch.

5.    List the steps you used to plan and develop your project;

~ Director’s Commentary

~ Title Page

~Poster

~ Movie and Introduction

~ Scenes

6.    Did you use content-lists, flowcharts or other documents during the planning process;

I only used content lists to achieve the planning progress of this project, this was due to as it was easy to understand and complete the task quickly. Other things such as flowcharts could have been more useful, can use them for future reference.

      7. Clarify any time-management issues you encountered during the creative process and describe the steps you took to improve in this area;

I had many time management issues, due to other commitments for sporting events and training, as well as trying to accomplish many other subjects assignments and assessments. I found it though planning out what I was going to do each night, however was a good way to stay on task and accomplish what I had set out to do that night. 

8.   Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection throughout your project. i.e. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs and think about whether it looks like a whole terms worth of work);

I honestly can say that I didn’t do enough blog updates, which came back to haunt me for this task. However I have learnt a lesson, to keep up to date with reflections and work tasks. It not only helps you further on future tasks, but good to look back on your work and know what worked out and what didn’t. Really helps also for future reference and to know what mistakes you saw happen.

Scenes 3 & 4 & 5

Scene 3:

This scene contains the lyrics “it’s like  wishing for rain, as i stand in the desert”. The start of the scene starts with the screen being completely black, with white stars that are moving and then a shooting star comes across the screen, making the the thought of someone wishing upon a shooting star. As the song states “it’s like wishing for rain”, therefore creating the illusion of someone wishing fro rain upon this shooting star. The white stars that are moving, are also creating the feeling of it actually being night time and that you are looking at the night sky. The next part of the  scene was done with our little man standing in the scenery of the desert and then a tumble weed crosses the screen, making the feeling of him actually standing in the desert. The tumble weed rolling out of the right hand corner, symbolizes the end of the scene. We had no problems with this scene, because it didn’t take as long as every other scene and was exported straight away and added on with the rest of other exported movies.

 Scene 4:

The lyrics in this scene were “But I’m holding you closer than most, because you are my heaven”. This scene was created with the girl coming into the shot from the top right hand corner. She fly’s in and picks up the male character up and they fly up to the top left hand corner. The two characters are than in a white background, where a then words are written above there heads. The words are “Because you are my heaven”, these words were written there because the lyrics involve these words. The characters at this stage are hugging, to make the audience see that they are showing affection towards one another and that they want to be together forever. These characters have a close emotional link, showing the audience emotion.

Scene 5:

The next scene goes for 9 seconds, because it is the piano part. The piano part was done only for 3 seconds originally, so we had to copy and paste it three times to make it fit the whole piano part of the song. The piano part was done very carefully and took a long time, due to the fact that the fingers had to move and the hand had to move up and down the keys. The piano was created first on the background layer with the drawing of the black outline of the piano and then the white keys. The hand was done on the front layer, because then it was easier to be able to move it along the piano. Therefore creating the illusion that there is an actual person playing the piano. The hand moves along the keyboard, in time with the music.

Scene 1 & 2 ~ Director's Commentary.

SCENES!

Scene 1:

Scene 1 was with the lyrics of ‘A drop in the ocean, a change in the weather’. This scene, as being the first one took a little while. First there is a drop falling from the sky and hits the water and makes an effect on the water. Then rains starts to fall at a rapid pace and then it stops and the sky becomes black and lighting blots come from the sky, therefore symbolizing the changing of the weather. The part where the drop hits the ocean, took a little while longer than the rest of this scene. This is due to the fact that we had the make the drop look like it disappeared into the water, to create the real life affect of the drop hitting the ocean. The problems we had with this scene was the fact that we had problems with the deleting of the scene and then we had to recreate this one scene more than 3 times.

Scene 2:

Scene 2 was a fun and enjoyable scene, because we got to make the hands look like they were praying and then a heart came onto the screen. The lyrics to this scene were ‘I was praying that you and me might end up together’. We wanted to make this scene look different to the words, but in our own creative way. The hands were really cool, because we had to trace them and then make them move from the outside of the shot, into the shot and then move from the bottom right hand corner and move really fast out of the shot to the left top hand corner. Then two halves of a heart move together and make a whole heart. Therefore creating the ‘you and me might end up together’. This image really creates this because it is trying to show that the two halves of the heart are from two different people and that they were hoping that they could end up together.

Director's Commentary ~ 2

In my animations we came across many problems that made us either had to change the scene we were doing or go and get help from our teacher Mr. Andrews. If I had the chance to re-do parts of my animation, I would have planned out my time more so I could have made each scene in more detail and with more accuracy with the drawings. Time management was a huge problem with us, because we didn’t use all our lesson time effectively. If we had the chance to do it over again, we would use every second to be able to help improve our animation. Each scene was shot with different skills, because each scene required different abilities of animationish. 

Director's Commentary.

Hello, my name is Brianna Moore. I am the director, creator and designer of this movie. The name of my movie is 'A Drop In The Ocean', which is a song composed and written by Ron Pope. My animation was done in the software of anomationish and was carefully hand done over two terms. Animation-ish is an easy-to-use animation software program that inspires creativity and enables children to "show what they know." Each lesson consisted of making a new scene and making every second with complete detail. At the start of this project we created storyboards and had to work out all the times that had to connect in with the animation. Each scene was carefully drawn out and made it easier when it came to actually making the animation. The film was done with accurate planning and all laid out in the format that was easy to understand and can be transformed into the animation. Each second was recorded with the idea that needed to be incorporated to make the animation make sense and work smoothly. Most scenes have been replayed more than once, because words have been re-said in the song. So they were then just copied and pasted into where they replayed and it made the song go for a little more than 3 minutes.