Minor Project - Reflective Statement

When looking back at the complete minor project, I am content that I managed the project well overall. There are however two incidents I experienced during the project that highlight weaknesses I have yet to overcome.

The first of these incidents was at the very beginning of this project. I had continued this project on from my Adaptation B project, where I had designed and created an animation ready character model and an animatic adapted from a poem. At the start of the minor project I knew I wanted to improve upon the character model I had last year. While I was happy with the overall model, there were parts that I knew I needed to change. It took longer than it should have to figure out the things I wanted to change about the character. I didn't get off to a running start with the project, despite having the resources of another project behind me to drive me forwards. Slow starts have been a problem for me with projects throughout this course, and as evidenced by the minor project I have yet to overcome that. It is something I will have to pay close attention to with work in the future.

The second issue I faced during this project was with the storyboard and animatic. At the end of the Adaptation B project, the animatic I submitted underlined the weaknesses in my skill set regarding shot direction and pacing. With this in mind I gave myself extra time during the minor project for improving my animatic. I struggled more than I thought I would. I believe this was in part due to putting too much pressure on myself to make something perfect for the story. As I came across a lot of problems it required a great deal of help from tutors to get my work moving in the right direction. In the end a significant amount of time was lost to this endeavor and that has weighed on the rest of the project afterwards. However, I do feel content with the quality of the animatic I produced in the end.

While these two problems cost time during the project, there is one thing that I did better than I expected I would. When we left university over the Christmas break I had a clear list of the things I wanted to achieve and have ready for the deadline. I managed to be efficient with my time and stay undistracted throughout. As a result I was able to produce a good amount of work and push myself to a satisfying hand in. I have had problems with working efficiently while away from university on previous projects. As such I feel very positive about overcoming that obstacle during this project.

Overall, I am pleased with my progress on the minor project. I have only become more enthusiastic about my work as it has steadily improved in quality during this project.