Animation Evaluation

To review my stop motion animation project I have chosen to produce a written report as I feel that I can go into more detail when evaluating my work and I can then ensure that I include all the information I need. Where as with an oral presentation I don't feel comfortable with standing up infront of the class and it would affect the amount of information I would give therefore it would be a big risk as I would miss out vital information about my e-sting and then not deliver the information I need such as; what my stop motion animation project is about, how the development of it came about, the constraints I faced and also evaluating the audience responses effectively.

To ensure that my stop motion animation will be seen I have firstly placed it onto YouTube, which enables it to be seen publicly by anyone who choses to want to watch it. When it came to gaining feedback there was certain criteria I wanted to achieve such as what my audience thought of the intended genre and audience, the content and narrative, the style (of animation; Claymation, puppets, models, etc.), the characters (development, quality of production, costume, etc.), the techniques and technical qualities (frame rate, movement, skill in animating multiple actions) as well as aesthetic qualities (the way it looks; mise-en-scene etc.) and creative qualities (imagination and flair).

To obtain this feedback I created a survey on a website called SurveyMonkey. I sent out this survey via email to various students at my college and I also posted my survey on several media sites that I use such as Twitter and Facebook to reach a variety of audiences. Below are screenshots of some of the questions I asked and the feedback I gained.

To begin with the first questions I asked the audience their age and gender, I wanted to see if they were in my target demographic  I also asked this because it could influence the results I may receive from the other questions, as well as the fact that I wanted to see which age groups and genders were most interested in taking part in this survey to do with animation. As we see a predominately male audience who answered however there is still a good amount of female feedback which balances the responses out. The age groups however were mostly 18-24 which could be because I sent it to students within this college and also on my social media sites that is the dominant age group, therefore they were more exposed to the work. Although there was some respondents above these ages which I suggest are most likely to come from my social media sites as well.

For question 3 I asked if they believed the animation was smooth running in terms of the frame rate. 71.43% said that it was, however 14.29% said it was too fast and another 14.29% said it was too slow.  

  

For the next question I decided to ask what the audience liked or disliked about the e-sting and why so that I could evaluate what worked well and what could be improved on. Mainly comments were made about how creative the idea was, this was effective because when I began working on the animation project this was one thing I wanted to aim for. In contrast to this I only had one individual say that they disliked my E-sting as they didn't believe that it wasn't appropriate for children.

For question 5 I wanted to find out whether the audience felt that my stop motion animation was unique and then to elaborate on that and give a reason why. Everyone Said that they felt my E-sting was unique and that they haven't seen something similar.

The next question was pretty much straight forward. referring to whether the audience identified this e-sting as an E4 channel ident or not. As the response shows 100% of the audience recognized that this was an E4 channel ident which means I had represented the company well and also followed the guidelines of using their logo and using their soundtrack music clips. It also shows how the majority of the audience who responded were between the 18-24 age gap which is E4's primary target audience.

For question 7 I wanted to find out what sort of audience they believe this stop motion animation was aimed at. All responses stated that they believed it was aimed at a teenagers/ young people aged under 26 and another stated mainly males between the ages of 18-25. And these were my target audience so I was glad that they could identify this.

I then asked what they thought could be improved and why. For this question I got a mixture of different things. One was make it more child friendly however my demographic wasn't children but it would be something I could improve upon if I did it again. Another suggested improvement was to add more colour however i believe that if I did include more colour it wouldn't give the same effect.

The last question i asked was whether they felt that my stop motion animation was creative as this was what i was aiming for and why. I was pleased that all the responses stated that they thought that my E-sting was creative.

When it came to creating my stop motion animation there were several constraints I had to face and overcome. The first constraint I had to face was how time consuming my choice of hand drawing each frame of my stop animation was which caused my pre production to take longer than expected which caused struggles with the deadline. Another constraint I had to face was that I then had to Photoshop each frame due to the date being on each image and lighting issues. Just like the first constraint this was very time consuming and to begin with I found it quite stressful as I originally wasn't familiar with the software however I did manage to overcome this.

When it came to meeting requirements of the brief there were several guidelines I had to follow and I believe that I did meet these requirements.

One of the main rules was that it had to include the E4 logo and I ensured that the E4 logo was visible throughout however Channel 4 own the rights to the E4 logo, therefore you are only permitted to use their logo in the case of making an e-sting, if it is used in any other context or for any other media text, they have the right to enforce copy right laws. Another rule that was given was to not use anyone elses material, when it came to this rule it was easy to avoid using anyone else's material as I didn't use materials such a lego to create my stop motion animation. Another rule that was given was that any actors used had to be over the age of 16, this did not apply to my e-sting because i did not use actual people, I drew my character(s). The reason I didn't use people is because I had the idea of what I wanted to do with my animation and it would work more efficiently and would really only work if I didn't use actual people. When it came to music I could use in my stop motion animation I had to use the e-sting sound track that E4 provided, this did limit the sense of freedom in this area of the project and it was difficult to find one that fit my animation, however the E4 music also made it recognizable to the audience. 

From doing this stop motion animation I have learnt that working with a brief can be limiting at times when it comes to deadlines and what you can create with the materials that you are specified to use and in the time given. On the other hand this has taught me that abiding by the terms and conditions is vital when it comes to responding to a brief as you have to deliver what the client needs created. If I was to work in the industry and have to regularly respond to brief's I believe that I could be a suitable candidate for it, even though there were many set backs which did affect the way I felt about my animation I can only learn and improve on these constraints in the future and if I had to do it on a day to day basis it would become something that I think achieve. When doing this brief there was an opportunity of creative freedom which meant I could add my own creative flair to it, however in some aspects this may not be somewhat benifical as in my case it made it more time consuming however in many other briefs there is not this opportunity of creative freedom and I think if this was the case I may of not faced some of the constraints I did. In conclusion I do not see myself in a career when it comes to animation as it is not something I would like to pursue as a full time job or part time, as I struggled to enjoy it and I did find it difficult at times and even though I overcome the setbacks it would not be something I would choose to do in the future.