This was one of the first times I’ve collaborated with people in a big project. Working with 3 other people was quite a challenge for me since I had to cater and compromise a lot of my work and ideas to create something that we are all satisfied with. However, when the teamwork and splitting tasks actually worked well, I noticed how much more quality and creativity the work contained rather than doing things on my own. In the beginning, we were quite inspired by comedic plot twists and unexpected endings such as JC Quintel’s works like “Regular Show”, and although a lot of our original concept idea got cut out into an entirely different story, I’m quite amazed by the way we managed to keep this surprising plot twist.
In terms of deadlines and scheduling, we were very on top of it and knew what we needed to finish to keep on going. For such a risky artistic choice of mixing 2D and 3D animations together, we were quite co-ordinated with one another. To improve next time, I think that if we could document all our discussions and findings on some platform, it would be easier to piece together how our work developed in an interesting way.
Within the feedback from the screenings I noticed a recurring pattern of comments stating that the 2D and 3D elements of the animation blended well together. They also loved how fluid and cinematic the camera movements were. Someone liked the comic-y feel of the eagle montage scene that I made which was great to hear. The storyline was really clear and easy to follow.
Although I was the one who mainly animated most of these scenes (or helped in it), seeing my name as main animator in the credits (despite all of us writing the credits together) feels like I’m not giving the rest of my group the recognition they deserve. A lot of these scenes I draw are carefully critiqued, torn apart and reshaped to become the great scenes they are because of them. Jacob also really worked hard on the soundscape and post production After Effect skills to emphasize movement. Within my own animation, I would like to improve further on setting an illusion of a 3 dimensional space within the scenes in the skies – maybe by adding subtle blue mountains/or objects moving slowly in the background. Despite all this, I’m still quite proud of myself for being able to create something completely digital for the first time. My color scheme was very prominent and helped in setting a certain mood within the whole story. I learnt that a lot of things are scrapped during production, even if they are high quality work – and cutting things down helps to reshape it up again into something better.
Looking back at the story from the beginning with a very elaborate narrative and multiple revisions, although I’m saddened by the possibilities of exploring these scrapped ideas, I’m glad that we limited our range and cut down a lot of our ambitions to create a higher quality work, with each scene given more care and time. In the future group projects, hopefully I could use this experience and process to produce even better outcomes.