Collaboration Project 2019 – Reflective Statement

Throughout this project I have found the most challenging aspect to be none other than the
collaboration. Basecamp proved to be much useful and simpler as a professional piece of
software as it helped organize our work and messages. I wished I used it more often as it was
a much more efficient tool for sharing resources and I also believe I should have downloaded
the basecamp as it would have been easier to receive notifications. As a team we divided the
work among ourselves which I think helped greatly during the production. We each gave
ourselves two scenes to animate. So were more complex to animate depending on the scene
but it ultimately made production much easier.

I felt that when the project was running into a slump or difficulties and misdirection were
occurring, I would often feel distraught and angered at my colleagues. I believe my emotions
could have been controlled more as it made it harder to concentrate when it came to the work.
I was also distracted frequently by what was in my room or the internet as I felt bored or
exhausted by the project. I also felt I could’ve done more in the way of sound design and
providing narration. When one of my teammates failed to get the sound room for recording
narration, I felt I should of went up to the university to at least try and book it. Eventually I
chose not to and because of the final animations awkward lack of explanation relying mostly
on subtitles for the audience to try and understand the events on screen I now regret the
decision. In spite of these moments of anguish and frustration I think we ultimately did work
well as a team as they were few and far between.

One thing I was quite proud of was the modelling as I was in charge of most of it and I believe
that the props were appropriate for the cartoony and expressive art style. The props that were
eventually put into the final animation I think fit quite into the world which our animation took
place in.

Despite some issues I felt that my skills with animation in Maya and working in a group had
greatly improved and was grateful with the result of the final animation. While challenging
working with Moom I felt I had highly contributed to the project by giving the characters subtle
touches to their movements such as having their hands and arms twitch and flex momentarily,
or their eyes stretching and blinking. It felt like a major upgrade in regard to animation quality
when compared to my last major project Fantastic Voyage which I felt was lacking in the way
of complexities in terms of character movements. That said there is one scene where the
animation could have been better – the headphones scene. The titular object wasn’t properly
connected to the character and upon closer inspection can be seen moving about independent
of the character’s head. The addition of squash and stretch characters for the models enabled
me to add more stylistic and exaggerated expression to help better differentiate one another.
Sharing the right files with my team also made it feel like I was properly aiding them. I hope
with the skills I have learned in this project that I can apply them more so onto future projects.

I think overall, I’m quite happy with how this project turned despite some setback, anguish and
emotional moments the hassle was worth it in the end with how much we were able to pull off
as a team.