In this project, we separate the storyboard and animatic into four parts, and each of us handles 1 part. I was assigned to do the character design for Timmy and Elly, storyboard and animatic for scene 2, and the voice acting for mommy.
I had negative attitudes towards drawing because I think my drawing is not pretty enough by comparing it with other classmates, and I feel it is time-consuming to draw frame by frame for a long time to create a few minutes of the animatic. However, my thinking has begun to change. You made the atmosphere which was fun to learn, give us some classwork exercises to help get a better understanding of the topic. You always told us that this course is focusing on the idea-generating instead of drawing skills. It reduces the pressure when I am working on the project and more excited to create the idea. And this time, I challenge myself to design the character for the project, I enjoy drawing what I am interested in. The ballet dance movement gave me a challenge for drawing body movement, and it also improves my drawing skills as I haven’t draw 2D animation for a long time after I finished Animation Principles in Year 2.
Besides, I discovered it is more effective to work as a group so you can share the workload with others when time and resources are limited. As I am always a “deadline fighter,” I have bad time management to finish my assignment. I am glad that my group mates Mary help me to set the schedule for the processing, and that reminded me to finish according to the plan to avoid late submission. However, since the school canceled all face-to-face classes this term, I found it is hard to for us to hang out and discuss the process. It is also difficult for us to communicate our opinion through messages and distribute the task properly.
There was quite a lot of time given to us to do this group project, but we slacked off at the start of the semester. Also, I found out it is hard to maintain the same drawing style if we work separately for the storyboard and animatic, and it makes the character did not look like the same character.
After finishing this project, I discovered that we could improve our time management and distribute the work in a more effective way for the next project. I should start the project earlier, and tasks should be allocated according to the strengths of each group mate instead of split the work equally to each member.
