[Personal] - Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe that despite time constraints and minor group conflicts, we have still managed to work together and create a good enough animation for our client to use as an advert for her website.

After seeing that almost every other group went for an ultra-realistic style of animation, I am happy to believe that we made the right choice in going with the more cartoony Pixar-like style. Not only did this separate us from the others, but it also allowed us to go for a more light-hearted animation and include a bit of humour, and humour is always a good technique to use for advertising. It also allowed us to get away with adding huge amounts of detail to the sceneray, giving us more time for the animation and editing.

As much as I do like our style, part of me does wish that we had also gone for a realistic style. I would have loved the chance to test my skills and experiment with new techniques in order to get the best looking model I could achieve. However, I dont quite think that I am ready for modeling a realistic motoring machine which includes so many individual moving parts. Perhaps it worked out for the best.

I am happy with my individual part of the animation. It took me some time to model the scenery and the racers themselves. However, upon completion of the final animation, I cant help but feel that my section was a little boring compared to the others. Mine was purely just following the racers once around the track before linking to the next scene. I wish I had come up with some other way to either add some humour to the scene or make it more exciting to watch. To make it more humourous, I could have used my Stig parody character to the fullest and try to reflect The Stig's smug attitude to the other racers. To make it more exciting, I could have made better use of the camera and maybe follow an individual racer around the track from a close up view. I will make sure to take all of the possibilities into account when animating in future.

If I had the chance to make any improvements, I would first of all re-think the animation. It would need to be about 10 seconds shorter, have some more humour in it and have better use of the camera for more effective angles. I would also like to improve the scenery by modifying some of the textures. I am happy with most of them, but I could have probably found better ones for certain sections, such as the track itself. I wouldnt make any changes to the introduction part of the animation, as it turned out exactly as I planned. I am very happy with this part.

I believe that overall, the four of us made a good group. For the most part, we were all on the same wavelength when it came to ideas. There was one member of our group who I personally felt made it harder for us by not agreeing to compromise with any ideas that he did not like. Not only this, but due to the same member we were unable to create the interactive flash that we had planned from the start due to him not agreeing to make a template of the flash for us to fill in ourselvs at a later date like he agreed to at the start of the project. However, differences aside, we still managed to work together and in the end, create an animation that we are all very proud of.

Overall, I am very happy with the final animation. I do believe that I could have done a better job with my personal scene, but I am still quite happy with the final result. I very much enjoyed the experience and would love to do it again. I just hope that next time, we'll be given a little more time!