Evaluation

The task for the for the unit was to make an animation or a game that had the theme of London. It doesn't have to have a massive connection just something to give a London theme or something that is relate-able. When we was given the choose of to make a game or an animation, I decided to make an animation because I was interested in the animating and also I wanted to use this to learn new skills and improve overall in animation.

The initially idea that I brainstormed was to be have an ancient theme and have things that represent London as well. I also brainstormed to get peers to voice act in my animation and to add a more of a British accent therefore the theme will be clearly heard and defined. The main idea was to have the story set on a Friday and to have that as a school day so that way the other characters can be introduced. And after that when they finish that day it is the boys birthday and he gets a present from his parents, a very ancient game from Egypt. He has a special breakfast made by his parents and after that opens the present and when he finds out that the game is for 4 people he invites his 3 main friends. After a while they arrive and then they put on a golden band (there 1 for each of them) and they end up in a desert that was once Egypt. After they all appear there is a list that is on the floor explaining to finish the game they need to collect all of the Ancient items. The items are: a scale, a ring , a rod and a key. After this they have to go through to go search for the items.

The research that I did includes the environment, and the YU-GI-OH the main anime that I used for research. The main thing that I was looking at when doing research was looking at the lore and then looking at how they relate to real life facts, looking at the meaning of some gods and why some stuff are. Like why pyramids face up how they built pyramids. This also ties into the environment and how pyramids are placed, in Ancient Egypt specifically they used the River Nile to carry the bricks/stones used to build them and it was a myth that they used people or slaves.

The idea that I had before begun pre-production was different I planed on having an animation that was 5 minutes long and a full story but the longer I planned it out the longer the animation seemed it was going to be. I knew that I would not be able to do anymore that 5 minutes and I thought we had a lot more time but when it came to pre-production I spent too much time on it.

The biggest issue that I had with the animation is that 3 quarters through animating the whole project I realized that the size of the canvas was too small and so I had to resize everything and the thing that made this worse was it was a square. The reason why this was such a big issue is that this meant everything had to be changed into a rectangle. The reason why I didn't notice was because when I started off I decided to zoom in so it looked pretty much the same and there wasn't too much that was different.

With this problem I would say that I was quite successful changing everything to a rectangle although it did take a quite a lot of time as well as just resizing it but this also meant that I had to fill a lot of things. For example on one of my scenes there is an alarm clock that rings and because when I did the background I never converted it to a symbol or shape so when I moved it, it left the outline of the clock so I had to fill it when resizing it. Other parts on the animation I didn't change all the frames when I thought I did and this made the teacher ghost look like hes teleportation when he isn't meant to look like that.

Some of the skills that I learnt was how to create a skin color using a gradient, also how to make it look like something is on a surface instead of resting it right on top of the shape put it in  the middle. I used this technique for a few scenes and it really did give a better effect. I also learned how to combine two shapes in Adobe Animate. When I made an ankh I faded both of the pictures and then I traced most of the shape but I add features from the one which gave it a complete new look.

Specifically when I did research for YU-GI-OH the way it influenced me was that it wasn't something that I knew too much so it would be a new topic and I would be learning new things that I didn't know about. Some of the things that I learnt about Is why pyramids point up the, the truth on how workers were treated. And what some of the hieroglyphics mean and what RA- the sun god was for and the demon Ammit. I found this an interesting topic and I knew that one of the key features that I wanted to do was to teleport the main character and so this were he was gonna be teleported, Ancient Egypt.

I think with the final piece the only shortcomings with it is that I didn't get to have it as long as I wanted it to be also there are some small faults such as the teacher teleporting in one scene. Another one is that some of the frame by frame are not smooth they look quite jagged, what I mean by jagged is that it looks rough and that it doesn't flow well. Things that I would have differently to make it better is to make sure the canvas is right before this way I wont have the problem of having to resizing it. Have it planned better because it was gonna be a full animation but it got changed into a trailer.

I would say that to that it is semi-successful only because the trailer is done but the way that it is done is not great because in away it doesn't tell u what is going to happen properly and it is quite confused it. I should have added some subtitles to indicate what would happen. If someone was to watch it they wouldn't know how they got to the desert and the only indication that shows that they are in a game is the RPG style menu at the bottom in the fight scene, which is the only scene where they are in a game. In my original version I planned to have one day before were it is a school day on Friday and this way all the characters would be introduced and clarified only who they are.

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