Project Report - Term 02 - AFX ProjectFor our second major group project of the year, we were tasked of creating an animated opening for a made up animation awards show in Portsmouth. We were given more freedom than before as our projects could be created in any medium we wanted (Such as traditional cel animation, digital flash animation or 3D animation)The group I was assigned to wanted to create an opening using a combination of traditional animation and digital effects using Adobe After Effects.

For the first few weeks of the project, we ran into some issues that prevented us from continuing, and decided to start over from the beginning. Because of this, our project begun late into our schedule. During this, I was re-assigned to Designer, and was in charge of developing our visual style for our animation.I found this rather enjoyable, as I love to create and develop character designs. It was also a nice challenge, as I had never designed a quadruped character before (As our work featured an Elk) However further into the development of the project, I found this role to become much less desirable.I feel that due to some disagreements in our group, my character designs weren't considered to be beneficial to our project, and in the end, another member ended up finalizing the designs, I felt this decision effected me mentally, and had difficulty expressing my feelings and ideas to the rest of the group.Although my character designs didn't make the cut as I had desired, I felt my environmental designs had more influence on the project. Me and other members of the group conducted various experiments with different mediums to see what different style directions we could take our project in. We tried using paint and other materials to create colour, and in the end, we decided to create 'Boils' made from painted paper.

I created these 'Boil's using After Effects, and while doing so, learnt more about the software.However, despite all these experiments, there was still no clear direction on were our project was going, and I felt our work was incredibly rushed because of it. Due to the amount of time I spent creating digital tests and renders, I wasn't aware of what scenes I was required to animate until a few weeks before the deadline.

After this problem, I also weren't aware of how our work was going to be composited, as there was no clear decision on what style we were going to use, and in the end, we ended up compositing and editing our own animated sections due to poor management and planning.Overall, I found this project rather disappointing. I felt I hadn't really learnt anything and was reminded more of how much disdain I have for group projects. While I did get to create some designs I found pleasing, I felt the work and experiments I created had no real bearing on our final animation, and If I had the choice, I would have waned to partake in another project brief.