Animation Evaluation

Technical quality of final animation

I feel my final animation works quite well. I felt I added appropriate behaviours to give useful effects, and the correct font and colours for my text.

I think my sledgehammer works very well because it responded very well to the effects I added to it. I used the spin effect because I wanted it to hit the rock and teeth, and it always had good response. The same applies to the teeth. I used the move effect in one scene because I wanted it to avoid the sledgehammer and it responded to what I wanted it to do.

I felt I used good effects for the text in my animation. I added an effect for each text because leaving it blank is just boring. These include “Blast In”, “Flare In”, “Stretch”, “Fidget” and “Nudge”.

The only negative thing I can say is my final animation is on a black background, and there is no scenery.

I am pleased with the final outcome of my work because I had not done animation prior to this.

Aesthetic quality of final animation

I feel my animation looks aesthetically pleasing. Since I had not done animation prior to this, I felt that my first animation is a good effort.

In particular, I am pleased with the explosion at the end of my animation. In my opinion, it looks very tidy and the graphic is very realistic. The same applies for the beam effect I added in one shot, where it introduces the fact I was doing. The way the light runs across the screen and the text appears is very revealing in my opinion.

I did these in my animation because I felt it would be very effective.

How well production matched original idea and storyboard

I originally had a different fact, but I changed it because somebody else was doing it first.

I originally had a character to feature in the animation, but I felt it would be very time-consuming to create him and get him on the animation. Some shots in my original storyboard are also missing from my final animation. In one shot, I planned to have my character throw the sledgehammer into the background and hit somebody on the head. In another shot, I planned to have the screen crack after the character accidentally throws the hammer at the screen. I did not do these because I felt my animation would thus run too long because the maximum time allowed is 30 seconds.

My ending is also different because my character was supposed to be hit on the head by the hammer after finally cracking the teeth. Instead, I put in an explosion because it was much easier to put in, and less time-consuming.

Overall, despite some shots and my character missing, my final animation is quite similar to my original idea.

Ability to adjust and overcome problems in animating process

I did not have too much problems during the production process, although there were some small issues along the way.

One of them was trying to get the rock to crack. I could not find any behaviours that could get the rock to crack itself, so I did it a different way. I drew black lines on a layer and added them to the actual layer for the rock. I drew three lines, changed direction for them so that they looked diagonal and put them together onto the rock.

Another issue was trying to get the original images of the rock and teeth onto the animation without having the white background they appeared on. I used Photoshop to put them onto a black background, and use the Magic Wand tool to cut the white. My final animation is a black background, so I saved the image and used that to put on my animation.