Niru Rai

Personal Evaluation
Project management (Strength and Weakness)
By working on this project for a 7 weeks, I felt like it has gone well even though I was very
ambitious, although my first initial thought was that I definitely should have planned everything
a lot better. But I have successfully produced a 1 minute animation using stop motion.
When it came to the planning I instantly knew what I wanted the animation to be about, Over
the summer I had watched a documentary, about Japan and its labour worker from overseas,
how the companies would trick the vulnerable individuals thinking it was an internship that they
will be learning valuable skills to take back home with them.
Instead what they got was working unreasonable amount of
time and not even getting paid. So that was the whole base
of my idea which I called decided to call In the Factory. At
the beginning it took me a long time to come up with the title
name. I was much quicker to come up with the characters
and plotline. When I was papering my ideas I was able to
plan and illustrate my ideas well like the character designs
of the little red men this was far easier to draw on paper and
make a 3D.
I was pleased that I was able to draw a storyboard that
elaborated on what action would happen in each
scene, so I would not be lost when it came to
shooting the animation frame by frame.
Which I think went really well because I was able
to illustrate my ideas on documents the narrative
was strong the concept of my idea was sensible
when it was written on paper.
Which was clear and ambitious which I wanted to
show the poverty and classes between the people
in a working society (mostly in the Middle East). I am specifically targeting 13 -18 year olds as
it would appeal to these audience because of
the genera, why I picked a young age is
because it animation I thought it would be
appropriate. I would say demographical its for
both gender this is for some who is social aware
of other cutlers.
Which would also have a dark theme to make
people understand how wrong it is. But when it
came to the production of the animations I
wasnt able to produce my plot on film which
was clearly disappointing.
Although I am pleased the way most of my
character design came as well as I described what I wanted and how I will be making the
characters and set designs.
Throughout the process of planning, I felt compelled to change my initial ideas, due to the fact
of poor time management.

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I was basically unable to finish one of the set as I was not able to fit the two set on top of each
other. Started making my one of my set which was quite annoying as someone over the fourth week
had taken bits of what I had gathered to make my animation. Which made me completely change
the narrative of the animation the very last minute. I felt I was unprepared and had that short
amount of time to produce and shoot. I was able to at least keep most of my characters.

The idea of making this come alive in a camera was quite difficult as I was preparing to build
the sets I had gathered all the tools and equipments I needed to make but when to make the
sets there were pieces missing which really bothered me because that was a setback on my
time frame to actual build everything by that short window of four days. That was also not the
only problem I had, to make a character that was 30 cm tall out of copper wire, it took me at
least 3 days to just to complete the head. I realised then I was absolutely to not able to
complete this. I had to scrape my Ideas and go for something that was accessible to me at a
short notice.
Which was fine I guess because my original idea was difficult to produce in a short amount of
time. As the plot changed I didnt think the target age had to be changed because it still would
be appropriate for 13-18 as it as death scene (where the fork goes through the model and
cherry tomatoes).

File Management
I was also able to manage my files. I had a lot of files, projects and pictures so I stored it in one
folder and then putting then in separate folders. I stored the images in my SD card where I
originally took the pictures and for a backup I also stored it in my USB card in a folder where I
have labelled it neatly so it takes less time for me to look for it when I need to edit. When
working on premier pro I also decided to save my work on the USB stick because I couldn't
always guarantee that I would be working on the same mac.
All my productions in
a assignment folder.

I have placed it
on Vikkis folder.

Labelled it in the
Stop motion
animation folder

Like I have said it is

organised as it quicker
and effective to find
what I am looking for.

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I have labelled my preproduction and postproduction in separate

files, which made it
access able and easy
to find.

Evaluation on Tommy and the Tomatoes (Strength and

Weakness)
After shooting the entire stop motion animation, I needed feedbacks. I decided that my
acquaintances, friends, classmates and family were the best people to give me criticism, due
to the fact that they are not only the easiest people to survey but I can also trust them to give
individual and thought-out points, which I would not have obtained had I done the survey on
the streets with random people. This meant that the data collected was of true belief and
opinion of the partakers and was not altered by any time limitations held by people that I may
have encountered if I had taken to the streets.

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I chose to do a survey and a focus group. The survey was fairly easy, where I had at least 18
people watch individual and answer the survey. For a focus group, I conducted this at home
with my family and friends they were very honest about their answers, which made it fairly
easy to do this evaluation. The questions were all straightforward and the same questions
were asked in both the survey and focus group. There was general quite a similar answers
that needed to change which was mostly aimed at: the lack of sound not being on the actual
video which I absolutely agree on as there were comments like lack of sound music needs to
be added they were all valid comments as it was also one the criterias that was being marked
on which I did add on later. There was a comment I am confused about the orange is it meant
to be like that? I did realise this but it was only a minor problem as I was only criticised by 3
people who did the surveys individually they had pointed out on how the orange kept on rolling
dramatically which made it unusual I guess it was the lack of music to emphasise the
movement of the orange.
In the focus group I had someone say the leap between the character changing to the
tomatoes need to be smooth after that comment a lot of the started to agree it was visible.
Hearing that made me see that it was an issue because as I saw the transition I felt it was a bit
slow. I went back to editing and decided to put a special effect that made the transition
smoother. I was able to take all this faults and alter it again while I was editing and smoothing
the frames, while also embedding sounds.
There where few people who didnt agree with my target audience, as they thought it was a bit
inappropriate I dont think its suitable for 13 years to be looking at the death of the tomatoes.
I disagree as there were more people agreeing with me on my target age as. The reason way I
have not changed this because it meant to be humours.
Everyone seemed to understand the narration of the animation which. As I tried to make this
very clear with the way I shot the pictures. I did use a lot of close ups and long shots to
describe the plots when ever the camera was quite close to the models you can clearly see
that they are have a conversation.

Animation Production (Strength and Weakness)

Why my final product is different to my initial idea, as I have said the poor time management
and the mishap with the missing tools and equipments I need to make the models. While I
was working on the editing, which was quite time consuming. As well as making the models
and sets, as I had not added mouth on the models I had to do this while I was editing I had
exclamation mark and question marks to emphasise the models emotion. Even though there
was no sound track you could still understand the narrative and the emotion of the characters

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in each frames. If you look at these examples time marker (00:00:41) to (00:00:45)

See how worried

they are by their
lips expression.

Time marker (00:00:31) to (00:00:34)

A new character is
introduced where
they are curios and
the shocked when it
kills on of there
friends

I think the lip movements were all right as the animation does not have a lot of characteristic
as it just a round shaped fluff with cardboard feets. So I was hopping that by adding lip
movement, explanation and question marks it would give the character more life. However it
took me at lest a week to actually edit the mouths because there werent available macs to use
the premier pro CC programs on. Which made it longer to edit, as I had to keep on moving to
different macs every time I was allowed to use it.

Time marker (00:00:08) to (00:00:10)

I realised that my title is a shade of torques blue, which I am not really pleased it would have
looked better if it was red because of the tittle name Tomatoes it would have made sense to
have the font painted in red.
Which I particular think came out well, as the smoothens of the hand coming into frame and
dropped the tomatoes the frames were not disturbed or paused (had still frames) so each
frame by frames flowed well.

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I have also noticed that the title is in a different position to time marker (00:00:09) to (00:00:11)
you can clearly see the change in the position.
Here the words
are more squished
together and the
Tomatoes as
dropped down.

As of here
you see the
squeal tittle
here evenly
spread out.

Resubmission
My resubmission. I took in a lot of the criticism in consideration. As I have applied these
changes to my animation. I had come across with difficulty when I was editing the pictures
while I was working on the premier pro it abruptly shutdown. Which it said it was automatically
saved and I thought okay I could recover my project, however when I tried to open the recent
project it would not allow me. Meaning I had to start all over again.
The changes I applied is that I was able to put in soundtrack hopeful this helps explanation
some of the actions in the frames. I used Logic and it was better to use this program as it can
manipulate sounds to the way you want it to be. As I could not does this on Premier Pro CC. I
have also fixed the orange that was dramatically rolling over. I had to cut the pictures and
replace it with new ones the program I used was Premier Pro CC as it really good to edit
pictures and videos.
I am very happy that I got to change the sequel title by placing it in a parallel line and I change
the colour in to red with made the title bold.
Time marker (00:00:08) to (00:00:10)

There were changes to the opening instead of having the images in lopes 3 seconds per
frame, which made it the title out of focus. I just used a single image this made it in my opinion
focus on the title instead of the loped background.

Conclusion

Niru Rai

What I have learnt form this project is to clear mange my time when it comes to
producing the models and sets as it takes a lot of time to complete it. I have now
learned that it takes time to edit 1 thousand images and place it in sequence.