Throughout this project I have tried to branch out and adapt multiple new ways of working. This has been a huge learning experience but at the same time has given me a lot of obstacles to overcome whilst producing my animation and working on the project in general. An example of this would be the introduction of software into my workflow that I hadn't previously used a lot of, or specific features within software like Photoshop timeline. As well as trying to learn how to animate with the Photoshop timeline feature, I also had to learn how to use After Effects and Premiere Pro for certain parts of the process as well as drawing digitally, not something I'm experienced with.
The overall experience I had whilst creating the animation for the project was enjoyable and it was a big learning curve. However, there was a lot of complications that I think were quite unmotivating at times and I was happy when the animation part of the project was finally finished. That being said, I did like the brief we were given and it gave a lot of scope to try new things and adapt it to suit the kind of animation we wanted to create.
Aspects of my workflow that have been successful in particular were the pre-production and post production stages, which are also my favourite parts of any project. I feel like I produced a lot of ideas and adequate designs for backgrounds and character concepts during the pre-production process. I thought a lot about the choreography of the fight sequence in my animation and did large amounts of research into Japan, as a setting for my animation and samurai, as well as technical aspects such as the architecture and the way weather behaved. Furthermore, I feel like my ability to produce illustrations as backgrounds digitally and my drawing ability in general has improved greatly because of the kind of things I was pushing myself to do in the design process to find out what I could achieve.
In terms of aspects I didn't do so well, I think the production process and the animation in general is very underwhelming both in story and the final out come. Despite the aesthetic choice to have the characters consist of lines rather than solid colour I think it comes across as unfinished. The process itself from a technical standpoint was also difficult and took longer than it should have due to multiple factors, some as trivial as Photoshop crashing multiple times because of the RAM constraints on the laptop I was using, which made the production of animation harder than it should have been. If I had more time I would have definitely improved the quality of the movement and character animation. I would have also added colour, shadows and hints of detail elsewhere.
Overall, I have enjoyed the project and learnt a huge amount about production, and different software. The pressure I felt was motivating to get it finished as best I could given the time we had and I'm generally quite happy with how I've done this project.
